Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-09-16, 19:23:

I've just recently had my first ever experience with cache modules. I recently purchased an AT case that had a PCChips M520 in it. They joke about "Troll builds" here, but this thing was one in real life, and I feel sorry for the person who had to use it. It had a K5 PR133 (100 MHz) chip, 128 megabytes of EDO, an empty cache slot, and fake cache on the board (so no L2 at all). Even by the standards of the time, this thing was slow.

I have a PCChips M507 that I'm not using (it's nearly identical to the M520 except it has the FX chipset FX instead of VX). It has a cache module installed, so I borrowed it thinking it would work for sure in such a similar motherboard, but it in fact did not, so I still had no L2 cache. I had to buy one on Ebay that was a pull from a Compaq and it did work. But it's touchy - I had the FSB set to 75 Mhz to get 188 MHz from the 233 P55 I stuck in it (single voltage motherboard so it's overvolted) and with no L2 this had been perfectly stable; add the cache stick, and it nuked Windows so badly that I had to reinstall. But at 66 MHz FSB it has been perfectly stable, and a major improvement in the system's speed.

In the future I'd like to upgrade the board with a K6-3 450 with an add on VRM. Does Necroware have a store?

I made an adapter for those btw, check my pcb projects.

Omg, that system sounds amazing. Please post more pics and do some benchmarks that thing is a treasure for all the wrong reasons lmfao

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-09-16, 22:03:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-09-16, 19:23:

I've just recently had my first ever experience with cache modules. I recently purchased an AT case that had a PCChips M520 in it. They joke about "Troll builds" here, but this thing was one in real life, and I feel sorry for the person who had to use it. It had a K5 PR133 (100 MHz) chip, 128 megabytes of EDO, an empty cache slot, and fake cache on the board (so no L2 at all). Even by the standards of the time, this thing was slow.

I have a PCChips M507 that I'm not using (it's nearly identical to the M520 except it has the FX chipset FX instead of VX). It has a cache module installed, so I borrowed it thinking it would work for sure in such a similar motherboard, but it in fact did not, so I still had no L2 cache. I had to buy one on Ebay that was a pull from a Compaq and it did work. But it's touchy - I had the FSB set to 75 Mhz to get 188 MHz from the 233 P55 I stuck in it (single voltage motherboard so it's overvolted) and with no L2 this had been perfectly stable; add the cache stick, and it nuked Windows so badly that I had to reinstall. But at 66 MHz FSB it has been perfectly stable, and a major improvement in the system's speed.

In the future I'd like to upgrade the board with a K6-3 450 with an add on VRM. Does Necroware have a store?

I made an adapter for those btw, check my pcb projects.

Omg, that system sounds amazing. Please post more pics and do some benchmarks that thing is a treasure for all the wrong reasons lmfao

I'm planning to do a write up, but here's the initial post: Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Are you referring to this one? Re: IBM Personal Computer 365 / M/T: 6589-17U / Voltage Regulator Module (VRM)

Yep 😀

You can use calamitylime’s power adapter with it. (Or your own power supply) I found it is far cheaper and easier to just use external power supplies. Also the quality of psu that you can bring to the table increases with the ability to use an external one if making overclocking attempts.

It had no hard drive in it when I purchased it - I initially used a 2.75 gigabyte Western Digital I have, and it was just ungodly slow with that. That drive is from the M507 system that I found in a dumpster a few months after I came over here. After losing everything, I had initially given up on the idea of fooling with vintage stuff because I didn't want to have to move a bunch of stuff when I inevitably move somewhere else, but then I found one and it was on again. Anyway, I tried a Sil 3114 card I had in this system, and to my surprise it actually worked! With a Seagate hybrid SATA drive attached to that card, the system was much faster, but still hurting for lack of L2 cache. Looking at these the difference in the scores is substantial, but what you can't see is how much longer it takes to run the benchmarks without the cache installed.

Responding to the original post...

The chips on that cache module are weird. I've never seen chips like that on a COAST module before. So I looked it up, and although I was not able to dig up the datasheet, one of the suppliers describes it as "Fast Synchronous SRAM". It's not pipelined burst. If your board is expecting a PLB cache module that might explain why it doesn't work.
It seems that stick might go with a very specific board, so it might be worth hanging onto, as somebody else might be looking for it.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-09-17, 00:20:

It had no hard drive in it when I purchased it - I initially used a 2.75 gigabyte Western Digital I have, and it was just ungodly slow with that. That drive is from the M507 system that I found in a dumpster a few months after I came over here. After losing everything, I had initially given up on the idea of fooling with vintage stuff because I didn't want to have to move a bunch of stuff when I inevitably move somewhere else, but then I found one and it was on again. Anyway, I tried a Sil 3114 card I had in this system, and to my surprise it actually worked! With a Seagate hybrid SATA drive attached to that card, the system was much faster, but still hurting for lack of L2 cache. Looking at these the difference in the scores is substantial, but what you can't see is how much longer it takes to run the benchmarks without the cache installed.

That’s actually better than I was expecting.. 🤔

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-09-17, 04:59:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-09-17, 00:20:

It had no hard drive in it when I purchased it - I initially used a 2.75 gigabyte Western Digital I have, and it was just ungodly slow with that. That drive is from the M507 system that I found in a dumpster a few months after I came over here. After losing everything, I had initially given up on the idea of fooling with vintage stuff because I didn't want to have to move a bunch of stuff when I inevitably move somewhere else, but then I found one and it was on again. Anyway, I tried a Sil 3114 card I had in this system, and to my surprise it actually worked! With a Seagate hybrid SATA drive attached to that card, the system was much faster, but still hurting for lack of L2 cache. Looking at these the difference in the scores is substantial, but what you can't see is how much longer it takes to run the benchmarks without the cache installed.

That’s actually better than I was expecting.. 🤔

I'll put the K5 back in it and try again.

Lol. It took me almost 25 years to realize that Pentium II in SECC cartridge is technically a Coast module with CPU on it. To my excuse - I've known about Coast existence only few months ago 😀 So they did not put CPU with cache on a stick, they added CPU to the stick with cache 😀