I'd suggest that you remove this VIA USB card first. Also check if the RAM is ok, maybe put in a smaller module for testing (64 or 128MB).
Then there's this: http://m571.com/m571/m571upgrade.htm
Check the section about "What about AMD chips and the problem with JP5 D?", maybe this is related to the issues you have with this board.

pyrogx wrote on 2021-09-14, 18:02:

I'd suggest that you remove this VIA USB card first. Also check if the RAM is ok, maybe put in a smaller module for testing (64 or 128MB).
Then there's this: http://m571.com/m571/m571upgrade.htm
Check the section about "What about AMD chips and the problem with JP5 D?", maybe this is related to the issues you have with this board.

I had to do that Jumper D thing in order to boot with those speeds, and the USB card doesn't seem to be the issue. Is when I plug an ISA card that it gets wonky, which is bad because PCI slots are limited in this board 🙁

CapitanOdessa wrote on 2021-09-14, 18:20:

I had to do that Jumper D thing in order to boot with those speeds, and the USB card doesn't seem to be the issue. Is when I plug an ISA card that it gets wonky, which is bad because PCI slots are limited in this board 🙁

Did you try a different soundcard? Or the on-board sound (it's ISA too)? If it is somehow related to DMA mode, try a different brand of CF card (I normally use Transcend Industrial cards) or even a "real" spinning harddisk. Not all boards like CF cards, especially with any DMA mode.

Try setting jumper JP5(D) to position 2-3. That should make the PCI bus run at 33 MHz regardless of FSB speed, per the Amptron manual, which can be found here.

BTW, the CMI8330 which is the on-board sound card for that M571 is quite good. If you are unable to get the AWE64 to work, give that a try. Here's my mini review.

pyrogx wrote on 2021-09-14, 18:28:

CapitanOdessa wrote on 2021-09-14, 18:20:

I had to do that Jumper D thing in order to boot with those speeds, and the USB card doesn't seem to be the issue. Is when I plug an ISA card that it gets wonky, which is bad because PCI slots are limited in this board 🙁

Did you try a different soundcard? Or the on-board sound (it's ISA too)? If it is somehow related to DMA mode, try a different brand of CF card (I normally use Transcend Industrial cards) or even a "real" spinning harddisk. Not all boards like CF cards, especially with any DMA mode.

Hello!

I have an update. As I imagined, by default Windows 98 gets installed without DMA enable in the disk. However, with a real spinning disk drive, the problem was not present, so I'll assume that the issue has something to do maybe with the CF card formatting or something. Is a shame. I'll try to get an IDE SSD to pair with the CF cards, use the first for the OS and the other two for regular storage.

I'm still sad I can't use my CF cards as normal hard drives 🙁

CapitanOdessa wrote on 2021-09-14, 22:04:

Hello! […]
Show full quote

pyrogx wrote on 2021-09-14, 18:28:

CapitanOdessa wrote on 2021-09-14, 18:20:

I had to do that Jumper D thing in order to boot with those speeds, and the USB card doesn't seem to be the issue. Is when I plug an ISA card that it gets wonky, which is bad because PCI slots are limited in this board 🙁

Did you try a different soundcard? Or the on-board sound (it's ISA too)? If it is somehow related to DMA mode, try a different brand of CF card (I normally use Transcend Industrial cards) or even a "real" spinning harddisk. Not all boards like CF cards, especially with any DMA mode.

Hello!

I have an update. As I imagined, by default Windows 98 gets installed without DMA enable in the disk. However, with a real spinning disk drive, the problem was not present, so I'll assume that the issue has something to do maybe with the CF card formatting or something. Is a shame. I'll try to get an IDE SSD to pair with the CF cards, use the first for the OS and the other two for regular storage.

I'm still sad I can't use my CF cards as normal hard drives 🙁

The problem with DMA might be due to the IDE to CF adapter used .

Re: CF Card Through IDE - SLOW!

EDIT : This adapter definitely can work with DMA . https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/ide2cf I have one . That being said, the issue may also be due to the CF card used or a incompatibility between the IDE controller on your board and CF media in general . Finding out and hopefully resolving the issue will likely require some trial and error, unfortunately .

darry wrote on 2021-09-15, 00:07:

The problem with DMA might be due to the IDE to CF adapter used . […]
Show full quote

CapitanOdessa wrote on 2021-09-14, 22:04:

Hello! […]
Show full quote

pyrogx wrote on 2021-09-14, 18:28:

Did you try a different soundcard? Or the on-board sound (it's ISA too)? If it is somehow related to DMA mode, try a different brand of CF card (I normally use Transcend Industrial cards) or even a "real" spinning harddisk. Not all boards like CF cards, especially with any DMA mode.

Hello!

I have an update. As I imagined, by default Windows 98 gets installed without DMA enable in the disk. However, with a real spinning disk drive, the problem was not present, so I'll assume that the issue has something to do maybe with the CF card formatting or something. Is a shame. I'll try to get an IDE SSD to pair with the CF cards, use the first for the OS and the other two for regular storage.

I'm still sad I can't use my CF cards as normal hard drives 🙁

The problem with DMA might be due to the IDE to CF adapter used .

Re: CF Card Through IDE - SLOW!

EDIT : This adapter definitely can work with DMA . https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/ide2cf I have one . That being said, the issue may also be due to the CF card used or a incompatibility between the IDE controller on your board and CF media in general . Finding out and hopefully resolving the issue will likely require some trial and error, unfortunately .

Thing is, DMA mode seems to work as long as you don't use that CF card for booting the OS, which I find weird. My adapter is a dual CF-Card adapter to 44 pin IDE. It has jumpers to select 3.3v or 5v, but they don't have the pins. Instead, is soldered in a way in which it is always 5v. I have no idea why they would do that. I gave up on that, and I'll buy a new PATA 2.5 SSD drive, and use the CF cards as storage for more static files.

I thought this was an interesting article on this topic that covers a quirk that I didn't know about:

http://support.fccps.cz/download/adv/frr/cf.html

Originally, CompactFlash cards in TrueIDE mode only supported PIO modes (up to PIO4) and did not support DMA (MWDMA, UDMA). The original/traditional "IDE" wiring of the CompactFlash socket reflected that status quo. Later on though, UDMA-capable CF cards have become available. If you buy an UDMA-capable CF card based on the past impression that there's nothing to go wrong with the True IDE mode, and based on the total lack of any warning in any relevant marketing and technical documentation, you have a good chance of suffering a nasty shock: you plug the card into your trusty CF-to-IDE socket, and the card appears dead!

The trouble is that, compared to PIO, the DMA modes (not just UDMA, but also MWDMA) need two more signals in the CF socket: DMA REQ and ACK. These two signals are nowadays commonly present in all "enhanced IDE" channels (usually integrated on-chip in the system south bridge), but many CF sockets on the market today lack those signals! In traditional IDE-enabled CF sockets, pin 43 is floating free and pin 44 is wired to +5V (power supply line). In a UDMA-capable socket, these should be wired to the UDMA signals, i.e. CF(43)->IDE(21) = DMA REQ and CF(44)->IDE(29) = DMA ACK.
...
Many of you have previously met the classic UDMA game of hide'n'seek consisting in 40wire vs. 80wire IDE cable, the automatic detection of a 40pin cable, some of you may have worked with a setup where the 40pin cable is not detected and the machine tries the higher UDMA modes (anything above UDMA2 = 33 MBps) and fails to operate reliably, some of you may have experimented with forcing higher UDMA modes on setups where a 40pin attach is normally detected, but the conductors are actually quite short and the higher transfer rates actually work... (ide_core.ignore_cable=[channel_number])

So, for those of you who are aware of that classic UDMA 40wire vs. 80wire stuff, note that this CF DMA/UDMA affair is quite a different story. If you try to run a DMA-capable CF card in an old PIO-only CF socket, the card doesn't work at all, UDMA2 doesn't help, not even MWDMA, and there's no salvation in automatic fallback to PIO. The CF card is identified by the BIOS and OS, but as soon as the BIOS or the OS attempts some UDMA transfer, that IO transaction immediately grinds to a screeching halt, maybe followed by a series of pathetic messages about timeouts and bus resets. Your only chance out of this mess is by forcing "PIO4 only" in some way, ahead of talking (U)DMA to the card at all (since the last power-up/reset).
....
You may try modding your CF socket to support DMA. You may need to lift pin 44 of the CF socket off the PCB, to detach it from +5VSB, or cut the trace connecting to it. And, wire the two CF pins to the corresponding IDE pins in some exposed connector (if any). On many boards, this will be impossible. It's also a problem if you'd need to mod many pieces of some embedded motherboard like that.