Marmes wrote on 2020-07-26, 21:37:

Hello! […]
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Hello!

I just got a Tyan s1590s motherboard, and it has some strange behaviors. Can anyone that has one also confirm me if this is normal?

1. Not every AGP card works, I tested with voodoo 3, S3 Savage2000 and GF3 Ti200, those work. Voodoo 4500, Matrox G200, Kyro4500 Ati Radeon 7500, these do not work or give erroneous display, but work just fine in PII and Athlon machines.
2. PCI graphics cards, do not work unless you put an AGP card that also works.
3. If any of the agp cards from ok list is installed, all works fine, PCI , ISA etc. I also have USB turned on, just in case.
I use an AMD K6 3+ 400Mhz, 128mb SDR 100MHz ATX PSU.
Can you share your thoughts or experiences with this?
Cheers!

Do you have the latest BIOS ? V90W116C.exe

See
https://web.archive.org/web/20021205235924/ht … b_tr_100at.html
and
https://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/archive/Tyan/b … T100/index.html
for download link .

Hi,
Yes , Have latest bios, I noticed if i reduce cpu speed (not FSB, always at 100Mhz) it all goes well.

darry wrote on 2020-07-26, 22:00:

Do you have the latest BIOS ? V90W116C.exe V90w116c.exe […]
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Marmes wrote on 2020-07-26, 21:37:

Hello! […]
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Hello!

I just got a Tyan s1590s motherboard, and it has some strange behaviors. Can anyone that has one also confirm me if this is normal?

1. Not every AGP card works, I tested with voodoo 3, S3 Savage2000 and GF3 Ti200, those work. Voodoo 4500, Matrox G200, Kyro4500 Ati Radeon 7500, these do not work or give erroneous display, but work just fine in PII and Athlon machines.
2. PCI graphics cards, do not work unless you put an AGP card that also works.
3. If any of the agp cards from ok list is installed, all works fine, PCI , ISA etc. I also have USB turned on, just in case.
I use an AMD K6 3+ 400Mhz, 128mb SDR 100MHz ATX PSU.
Can you share your thoughts or experiences with this?
Cheers!

Do you have the latest BIOS ? V90W116C.exe V90w116c.exe

See
https://web.archive.org/web/20021205235924/ht … b_tr_100at.html
and
https://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/archive/Tyan/b … T100/index.html
for download link .

I had this board back when AGP was new and struggled with it back then, but eventually figured it out.
I haven't used most of the cards you mentioned on this board, but I have used an AGP Matrox G400 (non-Max) without issue. Others I've used were Geforce2 MX and S3 Virge GX2 (all AGP). I'd like to try some others but I got bogged down with benchmarking experiments, and now I've partly disassembled the machine.

If I'm understanding correctly, all of the cards you listed are AGP. Is that correct?
Can you elaborate on the failure symptoms you have with these cards?
Do they display properly in the BIOS boot screens? Do they boot into Windows only without drivers loaded, but go black after drivers are installed? Or do they still work *with* drivers loaded but then glitch out when doing 3D?

What board revision do you have? I'm not sure if it matters, but they might have made changes that affect power supplied to the AGP slot.

It's good that you're using an ATX power supply. If you use AT, then the 3.3V supply is powered with an onboard regulator only. Using ATX it should be drawing from both the regulator *and* the PSU's 3.3V rail, but some revisions I think have a pair of jumpers that need to be correctly set for this.

The onboard 3.3V regulator is in the upper right corner of the board (as viewed when mounted in a typical case). It has a small heatsink on it and gets very hot. Does blowing a fan on that help?

USB does need to be enabled. That was a weird stumbling block for me back then. If you turn off USB then AGP doesn't work, the video will just go black as soon as Windows boots with drivers installed. That little tidbit was buried on Tyan's web site back then and not mentioned in the manual.

Back when I fought with this, my card was a Geforce2 MX AGP. I had corruption in 3D until I got it to run in AGP 1X. I did that with an older version of the VIA 4-in-1 driver which had the option to install in "Safe" mode. The effect on performance is negligible, like 0.1% or something. Unfortunately there's no 1X/2X option in the BIOS.

I was using nVidia v5.32 back then. Some later version driver (I think 6.31) fixed the corruption issue on it's own, but it was way slower so I didn't like that solution. In modern times I found that nVidia 8.05 and 12.41 are fast again, but I don't know if they still solve the corruption issue without putting VIA's driver in "safe" mode.

Do you have a multimeter? Can you measure the supply voltages while the system is running, and see if they're sagging? If it runs better at a lower CPU speed it makes me wonder if power load is the issue.

3rd party patched BIOS for using the K6"+" CPUs:

I use this on my board. Other than adding support for the "+" chips, I think the only other change is that it re-enables the health monitor display that official v1.16C removed.
I wouldn't rely on the health monitor though for checking voltages. It's a lot better to use a multimeter because onboard sensors are sometimes way off.

I had problems using a 40GB hard drive even with this BIOS. I had to cap it below 32GB to avoid trouble. I also had to *not* use the "IDE HDD auto detection" screen, instead just setting the drive to "Auto" so it detects on every boot. If I used the auto detection screen the size of the drive would get whacked.

Hi!
I measured with multimeter, every voltage is fine, but funny enough, I tried to use CPU at 1.8v it didn't boot, which is strange, because I was able to boot it before, now only with 2V I can boot it.
I use that bios you gave now.

shamino wrote on 2020-07-26, 23:29:

Do you have a multimeter? Can you measure the supply voltages while the system is running, and see if they're sagging? If it r […]
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Do you have a multimeter? Can you measure the supply voltages while the system is running, and see if they're sagging? If it runs better at a lower CPU speed it makes me wonder if power load is the issue.

3rd party patched BIOS for using the K6"+" CPUs:
v90j116c.zip
I use this on my board. Other than adding support for the "+" chips, I think the only other change is that it re-enables the health monitor display that official v1.16C removed.
I wouldn't rely on the health monitor though for checking voltages. It's a lot better to use a multimeter because onboard sensors are sometimes way off.

I had problems using a 40GB hard drive even with this BIOS. I had to cap it below 32GB to avoid trouble. I also had to *not* use the "IDE HDD auto detection" screen, instead just setting the drive to "Auto" so it detects on every boot. If I used the auto detection screen the size of the drive would get whacked.

Also I have this board and there is a problem with the ACPI implementation. So I have to disable it, and all is fine. I had weird stuttering during benchmarks with it enabled as well. And it kept interferring with motherboard resources when trying to install expansion cards. Specifically HDD controllers. Id recommend disabling both serial ports, the parallel port, I have a lot of problems with this board with IRQ sharing and motherboard resource conflicts. I manually assigned IRQs to the PCI cards per slot they were in. I also had to disable the 2ndary IDE channel becasue I am running a PCI sata card. In the bios and in windows. I disable the external cache since I have a K6 III +.

Under Power management, disable ACPI Function, Disable Power Management. Modem Use IRQ set to NA. Disable PM timers, Video Off Option allways on. PM Control by APM : NO

Also under PNP/PCI enable assign IRQ for VGA

Anyways after lots of fine tuning my board is rock stable.

I have the older revsion so my board doesn't do 2.0v.. Lowest it go is 2.1V and I set the multiplier to 5.5x So my AMD is 550 and 2.1v..... I need to test the voltage with a multi meter tho. Since the bios isn't accurate.

My board has no issue with disabling USB

Hi!
I disabled what you said to disable.
Pc doesn't boot, with certain graphics cards, in agp. In PCI,none of them boots. Unless I put CPU Freq at 200 MHz. Bus Freq stays at 100 and all works. Maybe I have a faulty CPU.

Warlord wrote on 2020-07-27, 00:23:

Also I have this board and there is a problem with the ACPI implementation. So I have to disable it, and all is fine. I had we […]
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Also I have this board and there is a problem with the ACPI implementation. So I have to disable it, and all is fine. I had weird stuttering during benchmarks with it enabled as well. And it kept interferring with motherboard resources when trying to install expansion cards. Specifically HDD controllers. Id recommend disabling both serial ports, the parallel port, I have a lot of problems with this board with IRQ sharing and motherboard resource conflicts. I manually assigned IRQs to the PCI cards per slot they were in. I also had to disable the 2ndary IDE channel becasue I am running a PCI sata card. In the bios and in windows. I disable the external cache since I have a K6 III +.

Under Power management, disable ACPI Function, Disable Power Management. Modem Use IRQ set to NA. Disable PM timers, Video Off Option allways on. PM Control by APM : NO

Also under PNP/PCI enable assign IRQ for VGA

Anyways after lots of fine tuning my board is rock stable.

I have the older revsion so my board doesn't do 2.0v.. Lowest it go is 2.1V and I set the multiplier to 5.5x So my AMD is 550 and 2.1v..... I need to test the voltage with a multi meter tho. Since the bios isn't accurate.

My board has no issue with disabling USB

ATI cards don't work on any VIA MVP3 chipset anyways. Maybe try increasing the CPU voltage to 2.1V and use 5x multiplier and see if thats stable....That shouldn't fry the the chip. Doesn't make too much since to me that when the CPU is down clocked it works. The voltage being to low at 1.8 and no boot sounds normal.

Also what you are describing of AGP incompatibilities with VIA MVP3 chips sets is also kinda normal. AGP implementation on MVP3 is horrible thats why most people use VOODOO 3s in them,

Come to think about it I kinda remember having the same problem as you. My PCI Rendition card wouldn't work unless I put a AGP card in. But once It was working, I set display order in bios to PCI first. then shut it down and took out the agp card and it worked. There is a setting for display order in bios. if it should check PCI or AGP 1st

Also what is the chance you have a bad stick of ram. I would try and get it running and run memtest86 on it to check the ram for errors.

Marmes wrote on 2020-07-27, 00:42:

Hi!
I disabled what you said to disable.
Pc doesn't boot, with certain graphics cards, in agp. In PCI,none of them boots. Unless I put CPU Freq at 200 MHz. Bus Freq stays at 100 and all works. Maybe I have a faulty CPU.

When you say it doesn't boot with certain AGP cards, you mean you turn on the power and nothing appears on the screen at all. Is that right?

I'm confused how you can be running 200Mhz at 100FSB. The 2X multiplier remaps to 6X on these CPUs. The only way to get 200MHz ought to be by running 66*3, because the 2X multiplier shouldn't be usable except with a software tool.
Maybe your RAM isn't stable with everything at full speed? I agree Memtest86 would be worth trying.
There's a jumper somewhere to run the RAM at PC66 while the FSB is at 100MHz. I believe the jumper is labeled as setting the RAM clock to "FSB" or "AGP". Setting it to "AGP" slows the RAM down to the AGP clock which *should* be 66Mhz.

I don't remember, but I think there must be separate jumpers somewhere to set the AGP and PCI dividers. Make sure you have those set correctly. For 100FSB the AGP should be at 2/3 and PCI should be at 1/3.
If you have those set wrong, you might be overclocking the AGP and PCI busses and some cards will handle that better than others.

If you blow a fan on the 3.3V regulator (see post #4) does that help?

Do you see any bloated capacitors? I replaced 1 or 2 caps on my board near the CPU but I don't remember if I had a good reason. It was a long time ago.

Good catch. 2x is 600 MHZ on a K6 Plus 2 or 3. It is unstable for most chips. You have to have very good silicon to run that stable. It doesn't run stable at all on my K6 III 450 but 550 is very stable.

Yes there is sort of a AGP divider jumper. Its to run at at 66hmz like normal AGP clock. You want 66mhz. The AGP CPU clock setting is for running the AGP clock at the CPU bus speed. So if you set it at CPU clock with K6 plus it will run at 100mhz and you don't want that.

The Memory jumper should be set at 3.3v also btw if u use sdram. Jp11 for IO voltage should also be set at 3.3v

I'm tempted to take pictures of the correct jumpers for him.

Either 4x 100mhz for 400MHz or use 66MHz. Please do not over clock that CPU too far, 600 is too much for K6-2 400 stay with 400mhz please for now. This is what causing your problems.

Cheers,

I used 2.5x multiplier with fsb 100. My ram is ok.
Now if I set CPU at 1.8v, it will not work. Only with 2.0v. it's an atz CPU. Don't know why. Do I need to set j11? On manual says not to close.

Could that tyan board does not support the K6-2+ properly, try a standard K6-2 CPU or pentium mmx CPU instead? I think this bios does not support the plus version of K6-2 or K6-3.

Cheers,

It supports amd k6-3 + , I wonder if my CPU is broken. Or motherboard.

Do you have another socket 7 cpu to try just for the sake of troubleshooting?

I do not see the purpose of running it 1.8v .
You do realize that the CPU requires 2.0v to operate.
Running it at 1.8 v is under volting it.
While it should work if you reduce the multiplier.

For the purpose of this exercise it seems irrelevant.
why does running at 1.8v have to do with agp cards not working.

CPU is rated at 1.6v core voltage, so it should run. I tried motherboard with pentium 233mhz , it works fine. Even with and k6-3+ works fine if I use 2.5x multiplier. It makes 208mhz. If I use voodoo3 agp or s3 savage 2000 agp cards it runs normal, other cards like kyro4500 voodoo4500 matrox g200 in agp or s3, trident in PCI , they don't even run. Pc doesn't post. Only posts and works ok if I put CPU at 2.5x multiplier.

A lot of AGP cards do not work on VIA MVP3 regardless of board or cpu.
Reason is VIA MVP3 AGP implementation is not complete.
You should know this. Before touching any MVP3 board.
It doesn't have full feature set.
Most people also have to install the chipset drivers at 1x (compatibility) instead of (Turbo) regardless of board.
Some AGP cards like ATI Radeon are not supposed to work per ATI press release.

Like I says, the CPU might work under volted or overvolted, if it has good silicon.
you do realize that not all chips are the same. Some chips might be on the outer edge of the wafer and be inferior.
So even if some chip might run at 600 that is probably 1 in 10 chips.
Some chips even if really good bins will run at 1.6v. Probably a lot dont.
Unless they are specifically embeded bins.

The VIA MVP3 platform is total junk, its buggy and has been know to crash all the time. It is only good at going slow thats why people around here like it.

Marmes wrote on 2020-07-27, 16:30:

I used 2.5x multiplier with fsb 100. My ram is ok.
Now if I set CPU at 1.8v, it will not work. Only with 2.0v. it's an atz CPU. Don't know why. Do I need to set j11? On manual says not to close.

That's the same CPU I have (K6-3+ ATZ 400MHz 1.6V).

JP11 should be open. Do not close it with a K6-3+ or it will ruin the CPU.
JP11 bridges the 3.3V rail into the Vcore circuit. You don't want that. It might even damage the motherboard because it would fight the Vcore regulator.

Have you measured your Vcore with a multimeter? Are you *really* getting 1.8V when you try to set it that way? You can measure Vcore on the metal tab of the MOSFET near the CPU.

I don't know why your Matrox G200 won't POST. I'm not sure if I tried a G200 AGP before but I know I ran it with a G400 AGP.

Does your board have JP7 and JP14? Make sure they're set correctly for an ATX PSU.