In my experience those 486 PCI implementations are problematic when it comes to controllers ... I have had a couple 486 PCI builds and I tend to just stick a pci VGA and a NIC in them and keep using the onboard hdd controller. It is weird there is no patched bios for the LS486E board - but you can just use XT-IDE bios on a NIC and bypass the 8GB limitation that way.
Maybe someone can offer a better solution to this so I am not saying not using a hdd controller is the only solution - rather it's the most convenient one so you don't spend time troubleshooting 🤣

I was similarly not able to get an Adaptec PCI SCSI controller working in my LS-486E. Tried several members of the 2940 family to no avail.

I tried using XT IDE on an ISA EIDE Max card, and it doesn't seem to be able to boot from an option rom in the D000h range.
What a wonky board.

DNSDies wrote on 2021-03-20, 17:29:

What a wonky board.

IMHO, it's a really good and stable model of motherboard.
I would suggest to try XFX’s Revo64 Serial ATA RAID card..
Although I haven't tested them together properly in real usage I'll definitely give them one more chance 😀

Roman555 wrote on 2021-03-20, 21:05:

IMHO, it's a really good and stable model of motherboard. I would suggest to try XFX’s Revo64 Serial ATA RAID card.. Although I […]
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DNSDies wrote on 2021-03-20, 17:29:

What a wonky board.

IMHO, it's a really good and stable model of motherboard.
I would suggest to try XFX’s Revo64 Serial ATA RAID card..
Although I haven't tested them together properly in real usage I'll definitely give them one more chance 😀

please do, see if you can get a windows installation to complete - that's usually a good indication of stability and will sniff out any corruption

DNSDies wrote on 2021-03-20, 07:19:

then it goes back to normal, but only until I load EMM386 or JEMMEX and try to load drivers into UMB, then the gibberish comes back

Have similar memory corruption on my Rev:D. Looks like you allows DOS to write to the regions occupied by ROM.
Try UMBINFO (it has German interface but still usable) to look where exactly your ROM is located.

Somewhat off topic but has anyone here been able to find a shadow ram driver (the last byte, umb_drvr, etc.) that works with the 496?

DNSDies wrote on 2021-03-20, 07:19:

Any advice would be very welcome.
Here's a picture of the gibberish on screen:
https://imgur.com/a/BB6jNqz

And I forgot to mention that more often LS-486E works only with FPM RAM.
EDO RAM is rarely compatible with this board because it depends on chipset revision. Usually EDO causes errors during the start.

Roman555 wrote on 2021-03-21, 07:42:

And I forgot to mention that more often LS-486E works only with FPM RAM.
EDO RAM is rarely compatible with this board because it depends on chipset revision. Usually EDO causes errors during the start.

The only revision proven to work with EDO is Rev:D.

The only revision proven to work with EDO is Rev:D.

Rec:C2.

froller wrote on 2021-03-20, 23:22:

Have similar memory corruption on my Rev:D. Looks like you allows DOS to write to the regions occupied by ROM.
Try UMBINFO (it has German interface but still usable) to look where exactly your ROM is located.

This board came with memory, and it works fine.
I used UMAScan to see the address of the ROM, and excluded the region (and even tried to define only the free RAM space) and still got the corruption, so I think it's a bad PCI implementation that doesn't work with this particular PCI IDE card.

I ended up putting XT-IDE in a PCI network card and now everything works fine.
30GB hard drive works great, Windows 98SE even installed. I probably won't use 98, as this is only a 486, but it's a good way to see how the hard drive handles stuff.

DNSDies wrote on 2021-03-22, 06:12:

This board came with memory, and it works fine. I used UMAScan to see the address of the ROM, and excluded the region (and even […]
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froller wrote on 2021-03-20, 23:22:

Have similar memory corruption on my Rev:D. Looks like you allows DOS to write to the regions occupied by ROM.
Try UMBINFO (it has German interface but still usable) to look where exactly your ROM is located.

This board came with memory, and it works fine.
I used UMAScan to see the address of the ROM, and excluded the region (and even tried to define only the free RAM space) and still got the corruption, so I think it's a bad PCI implementation that doesn't work with this particular PCI IDE card.

I ended up putting XT-IDE in a PCI network card and now everything works fine.
30GB hard drive works great, Windows 98SE even installed. I probably won't use 98, as this is only a 486, but it's a good way to see how the hard drive handles stuff.

Yep. The issue doesn't seem to be related to option ROMs, the board just doesn't play nice with add-on disk controllers.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-03-22, 13:29:

Yep. The issue doesn't seem to be related to option ROMs, the board just doesn't play nice with add-on disk controllers.

Will check as soon as I find my SiI3112 PCI sATA controller.
It worked on Zida 4DPS.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-03-22, 13:29:

Yep. The issue doesn't seem to be related to option ROMs, the board just doesn't play nice with add-on disk controllers.

Do all PCB revisions of the LS486E exhibit the same issue with PCI HDD cards? Does each hardware revision have its own BIOS? Does the problem present itself with all BIOS versions of this board? Is there a BIOS repository for this motherboard?

feipoa wrote on 2021-06-20, 07:00:

maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-03-22, 13:29:

Yep. The issue doesn't seem to be related to option ROMs, the board just doesn't play nice with add-on disk controllers.

Do all PCB revisions of the LS486E exhibit the same issue with PCI HDD cards?

I only have one so I can't comment on that

feipoa wrote on 2021-06-20, 07:00:

Does each hardware revision have its own BIOS?

AFAIK the different BIOSs are for different super I/O chips and there is also one for EDO support and one without

feipoa wrote on 2021-06-20, 07:00:

Does the problem present itself with all BIOS versions of this board?

It did for me, yes