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Onboard cache for M571 motherboard causing boot problems

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First post, by drosse1meyer

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Hello All

Working on a new project here, M571 mobo with AMD K6-2, will post some pics and info later on!

The board is in good shape, it would POST but refuse to boot after passing mem check. It would also randomly freeze at Checking NVRAM.

After carefully inspected the board, looking for obvious bad components, checking jumpers, etc. I eventually found a bent leg on the sound chip, shorting to the neighbor. Fixed that and the random freeze went away. Nice! However, the non-boot after successful post was still a problem. Diag card wasn't very helpful.

After calling it a night and sleeping on it, I started the next day by disabling items in the bios. Eventually I hit pay dirt, and found out toggling the External Cache option would let the machine proceed. Win98 install and light use went fine, so everything appears stable in that configuration.

So... There doesn't appear to be anything visibly wrong with the cache chip, again I checked for bent pins, gave them a good alcohol scrub, etc. Tried dropping down the bus speed, changed from SDRAM to EDO, swapped in a plain jane P100, updated the BIOS to latest, but the result is always the same.... external 512 cache will stop the machine from booting.

Does anyone have any other ideas or troubleshoot steps? Could just this be a 'bad' chip?

Thanks!

P1: Packard Bell - 233 MMX, Voodoo1, 64 MB, ALS100+
P2-V2: Dell Dimension - 400 Mhz, Voodoo2, 256 MB
P!!! Custom: 1 Ghz, GeForce2 Pro/64MB, 384 MB

Reply 1 of 7, by rmay635703

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Unfortunate you can’t get through boot
There used to be apps that could test cache so you at least knew how many KB in was bad.

Beyond replacing the chip, fixing a bad component/trace to the chip or simply using a K6-2+ I don’t know of any way to proceed.

Does your m571 have the working 40mhz FSB?
Have you tried disabling async operation setting the bus to /2?

Reply 2 of 7, by drosse1meyer

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rmay635703 wrote on 2022-07-19, 00:00:
Unfortunate you can’t get through boot There used to be apps that could test cache so you at least knew how many KB in was bad. […]
Show full quote

Unfortunate you can’t get through boot
There used to be apps that could test cache so you at least knew how many KB in was bad.

Beyond replacing the chip, fixing a bad component/trace to the chip or simply using a K6-2+ I don’t know of any way to proceed.

Does your m571 have the working 40mhz FSB?
Have you tried disabling async operation setting the bus to /2?

I think the lowest it will go is 50 mhz, unless I'm mistaken or there is some hidden jumper functionality The board is the v7.0 variant.

Not sure what you mean by the async suggestion, could you elaborate?

Thanks

P1: Packard Bell - 233 MMX, Voodoo1, 64 MB, ALS100+
P2-V2: Dell Dimension - 400 Mhz, Voodoo2, 256 MB
P!!! Custom: 1 Ghz, GeForce2 Pro/64MB, 384 MB

Reply 3 of 7, by rmay635703

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drosse1meyer wrote on 2022-07-19, 00:37:
I think the lowest it will go is 50 mhz, unless I'm mistaken or there is some hidden jumper functionality The board is the v7.0 […]
Show full quote
rmay635703 wrote on 2022-07-19, 00:00:
Unfortunate you can’t get through boot There used to be apps that could test cache so you at least knew how many KB in was bad. […]
Show full quote

Unfortunate you can’t get through boot
There used to be apps that could test cache so you at least knew how many KB in was bad.

Beyond replacing the chip, fixing a bad component/trace to the chip or simply using a K6-2+ I don’t know of any way to proceed.

Does your m571 have the working 40mhz FSB?
Have you tried disabling async operation setting the bus to /2?

I think the lowest it will go is 50 mhz, unless I'm mistaken or there is some hidden jumper functionality The board is the v7.0 variant.

Not sure what you mean by the async suggestion, could you elaborate?

Thanks

It was just a PCI Bus jumper on my Rev 3.2 next to the FSB

There is a bus setting of /2 and 33mhz async
My board would only complete post async 33mhz with a Cyrix ,
Intel / AMD I had to use /2 setting

Reply 4 of 7, by drosse1meyer

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rmay635703 wrote on 2022-07-19, 00:44:
It was just a PCI Bus jumper on my Rev 3.2 next to the FSB […]
Show full quote
drosse1meyer wrote on 2022-07-19, 00:37:
I think the lowest it will go is 50 mhz, unless I'm mistaken or there is some hidden jumper functionality The board is the v7.0 […]
Show full quote
rmay635703 wrote on 2022-07-19, 00:00:
Unfortunate you can’t get through boot There used to be apps that could test cache so you at least knew how many KB in was bad. […]
Show full quote

Unfortunate you can’t get through boot
There used to be apps that could test cache so you at least knew how many KB in was bad.

Beyond replacing the chip, fixing a bad component/trace to the chip or simply using a K6-2+ I don’t know of any way to proceed.

Does your m571 have the working 40mhz FSB?
Have you tried disabling async operation setting the bus to /2?

I think the lowest it will go is 50 mhz, unless I'm mistaken or there is some hidden jumper functionality The board is the v7.0 variant.

Not sure what you mean by the async suggestion, could you elaborate?

Thanks

It was just a PCI Bus jumper on my Rev 3.2 next to the FSB

There is a bus setting of /2 and 33mhz async
My board would only complete post async 33mhz with a Cyrix ,
Intel / AMD I had to use /2 setting

OK let me take another look

P1: Packard Bell - 233 MMX, Voodoo1, 64 MB, ALS100+
P2-V2: Dell Dimension - 400 Mhz, Voodoo2, 256 MB
P!!! Custom: 1 Ghz, GeForce2 Pro/64MB, 384 MB

Reply 5 of 7, by drosse1meyer

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rmay635703 wrote on 2022-07-19, 00:44:
It was just a PCI Bus jumper on my Rev 3.2 next to the FSB […]
Show full quote
drosse1meyer wrote on 2022-07-19, 00:37:
I think the lowest it will go is 50 mhz, unless I'm mistaken or there is some hidden jumper functionality The board is the v7.0 […]
Show full quote
rmay635703 wrote on 2022-07-19, 00:00:
Unfortunate you can’t get through boot There used to be apps that could test cache so you at least knew how many KB in was bad. […]
Show full quote

Unfortunate you can’t get through boot
There used to be apps that could test cache so you at least knew how many KB in was bad.

Beyond replacing the chip, fixing a bad component/trace to the chip or simply using a K6-2+ I don’t know of any way to proceed.

Does your m571 have the working 40mhz FSB?
Have you tried disabling async operation setting the bus to /2?

I think the lowest it will go is 50 mhz, unless I'm mistaken or there is some hidden jumper functionality The board is the v7.0 variant.

Not sure what you mean by the async suggestion, could you elaborate?

Thanks

It was just a PCI Bus jumper on my Rev 3.2 next to the FSB

There is a bus setting of /2 and 33mhz async
My board would only complete post async 33mhz with a Cyrix ,
Intel / AMD I had to use /2 setting

I understand now, the D jumper controls the PCI divider. That's set to 1-2, but good to know. The manual and other resources don't quite explain that but taking a look here makes more sense http://m571.com/m571/franczabkar/freq.htm

Maybe when I have a bit more time I can poke around the pins to see if the chip is getting power and/or test continuity to the rest of the board. KInd of disappointing though.

Anyway the k6-2 @ 300mhz doesnt seem to be a great performer in gaming in my ONE test 🤣, I imagine working mobo cache would help a little bit. Right now its slower than my P-233 in msdos quake timedemo by almost 6 FPS. Suppose the lack of L2 and a weak FPU isn't helping either. Windows boot and usage seems to be pretty decent though.

I bought this machine mostly for the AT style case and spare parts (CD drives, PSU, etc.), but it's nice that this board supports quite a few CPU and RAM variants and seems to be mostly working otherwise.

Last edited by drosse1meyer on 2022-07-19, 14:51. Edited 1 time in total.

P1: Packard Bell - 233 MMX, Voodoo1, 64 MB, ALS100+
P2-V2: Dell Dimension - 400 Mhz, Voodoo2, 256 MB
P!!! Custom: 1 Ghz, GeForce2 Pro/64MB, 384 MB

Reply 7 of 7, by drosse1meyer

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rmay635703 wrote on 2022-07-19, 13:05:

Even though onboard l2 is toast if you have decent sdram try running the FSB at 83mhz

The onboard video takes less of a chunk of your bandwidth at higher FSBs

OK thanks for all the replies
Yeah I read the onboard VGA is a bit of a resource hog, that has been disabled and Im using a PCI VGA card 😀
Will try the slight overclock to the FSB and see the results
Also I need to test the 3dNow patches for quake2 and other games.

P1: Packard Bell - 233 MMX, Voodoo1, 64 MB, ALS100+
P2-V2: Dell Dimension - 400 Mhz, Voodoo2, 256 MB
P!!! Custom: 1 Ghz, GeForce2 Pro/64MB, 384 MB

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