SB16 crashing - hidden refresh, incompatibility with ARK1000VL card? \ VOGONS

SB16 crashing - hidden refresh, incompatibility with ARK1000VL card?

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First post, by Byrd

Posted on 2021-10-02, 04:35

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Hi,

I've been playing around with an ASUS VL/I-486SV2GX4, Pentium Overdrive 83 @ 100Mhz, Sound Blaster 16 PNP CT2940 and most recent addition ARK1000VL VLB graphics card.

The recent addition of the ARK1000 graphics card proved nice and speedy for DOS, but Windows 3.1 and the ARK1000/2000 driver would cause sudden pauses and slowdowns in any colour mode (higher colour depth = more slowdowns) - the system became unresponsive all of a sudden, you could see graphics being slowly drawn to the screen before suddenly reverting to normal after 30 seconds or so. After some trial and error, disabling hidden refresh in the BIOS ceased the slowdowns in Windows.

A consequence of disabling hidden refresh, however, is playing any sound through the SB16 would lock or crash the system in both DOS games and Windows 3.1. Moving the card around caused some games to run a little longer but would crash within 30 seconds with sound playing.

A similar issue is documented here (same motherboard, same graphics card but more related to noise not lock ups)

Re: Yet another 486 DX4-100 build

I'm a bit stumped, wondered if others had any further suggestions or workarounds with SB16 crashes and/or experiences with the ARK1000 graphics card.

Thanks

Reply 1 of 7, by retardware

Posted on 2021-10-02, 05:18

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This is a WDC card.
Do you have an oscilloscope and can look how the 14M signal on the ISA bus looks?

Reply 2 of 7, by Byrd

Posted on 2021-10-02, 05:50

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Hi retardware,

Ah no oscilloscope is beyond me 😀 Prior to the ARK1000 card, I was using a Tseng ET4000 w32 which worked fine with SB16 and hidden refresh, albeit with graphical corruption in certain DOS games and demos (a future project to fix either RAM or RAMDAC issues).

I've an AWE64 value or really cheap generic sound cards that might have to go in place of the SB16.

Reply 3 of 7, by bloodem

Posted on 2021-10-02, 06:53

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Byrd wrote on 2021-10-02, 04:35:

A similar issue is documented here (same motherboard, same graphics card but more related to noise not lock ups)
Re: Yet another 486 DX4-100 build

In my case, the I/O VLB controller + SD card adapter was causing all the major issues (including graphical corruption/freezes). Once I replaced the VLB controller with a different one, and also switched to a case bracket CF adapter, all graphical issues/freezes were completely gone.

1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k

Reply 4 of 7, by Byrd

Posted on 2021-10-02, 09:14

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In my case, the I/O VLB controller + SD card adapter was causing all the major issues (including graphical corruption/freezes). Once I replaced the VLB controller with a different one, and also switched to a case bracket CF adapter, all graphical issues/freezes were completely gone.

We seem to have very similar builds! I'm currently using a Winbond VL-IDE controller (dual IDE), and backplate CF adapter.

I've tried an AWE64 - reinstall of DOS and Windows driver - same take.

Hidden refresh ON + AWE64 = DOS fine, Windows GDI slow downs.
Hidden refresh OFF + AWE64 = quick crash after 5 second of any audio.

Have also tried all BIOS options like memory holes, any video caching, shadow caching, enabling 1WS on the ARK1000VL = no change

Reply 5 of 7, by Byrd

Posted on 2021-10-04, 03:11

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Playing around with more BIOS settings reveals much better stability; AT bus clock @ 7.xxx Mhz works well, as does setting L1:WB and L2:WB (even though it's still set to L2:WT, but I just came across this thread with a WB patch)

Re: Evolution of a Socket3 System to a POD @100MHz

Funnily enough Doom and Quake, with all settings optimised to the fastest settings works fine, it's more Descent 1/2 and Windows 3.11 causing the crashes and GDI slowdowns. My POD83 @ 100 is set to 3.3V or 3.45V; the motherboard manual does not document the 5V setting which I suspect doesn't matter as the board is detecting the voltage automatically.

Reply 6 of 7, by canthearu

Posted on 2021-10-04, 03:21

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Byrd wrote on 2021-10-02, 09:14:

Hidden refresh ON + AWE64 = DOS fine, Windows GDI slow downs.
Hidden refresh OFF + AWE64 = quick crash after 5 second of any audio.

Maybe you could also get it working with Hidden Refresh OFF but Slow Refresh ON ... to minimize how often the CPU is tied up waiting by memory refresh cycles

Reply 7 of 7, by maxtherabbit

Posted on 2021-10-04, 13:19

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Voltage "detection" doesn't exist in socket 3. The POD *requires*5V. Otherwise the regulator on it will struggle to provide solid power to the CPU

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