leonardo wrote on 2022-06-04, 15:31:

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-05-24, 14:01:

If you were trying to resell, I'd whack a DX2-66 and a GL-5428/29/30/34 VLB in it.

Disruptor wrote on 2022-05-31, 21:00:

leonardo wrote on 2022-05-31, 16:21:

The only place where I notice the age of the system (so far) is scrolling the map, which is clearly laggy.

ISA graphics card? No wonder.

OK, I went ahead and ordered the Cirrus Logic GL-542XVL/H! I sought some benchmarks and this card should be on the mid-end or upper mid-end based on what I saw. Will be interesting to see if it makes a difference before the CPU is upgraded...

OK, now that the PnP fiasco is behind me I can give everyone some subjective analysis on the card's performance. First off I just wanted to say that I was not expecting this to change a whole lot due to the slow-ish 33 MHz DX it's currently paired with... Also here's the pic in case you missed it.

However, I did notice a negligible improvement whilst zooming around the map in C&C. I would still say the game is running acceptably if not smoothly. Difference to the Trident is minor.

The original Worms runs quite well, if not super smooth - you only really notice slowdown in some zoom-in and zoom-out type action.

SimCity 2000 was indifferent to the card swap.

So far the biggest surprise came with Wolfenstein 3D, which I thought already ran great but now seems super smooth... This game however runs quite well on slower systems too, so next up I guess I'll have to get DooM installed...

-

In summary, so far I'm of the opinion that if you had to pick between buying a 66 MHz DX2 or a VLB-graphics card for a slower system, the CPU upgrade is probably the more worthwhile one, especially given the prices these VLB cards seem to be going for at the moment. I did score this one for just $25, so it's not a huge loss especially given that it came with another ISA card that I can sell alongside the original Trident to bring the price of the upgrade down a bit...

I guess you have to upgrade both graphics card and CPU.
Your Cirrus 5248 uses like all Cirrus 542x just 16 bit VL transfers, so you will see most difference in 16 bit games like Wolfenstein 3D.
You may try benchmarks before you toss the old Trident.

Well... summer break is over, time to get back to fixing this thing.

...so I got the other major upgrade, which is the DX2 66 MHz chip. This one was at a premium on eBay, but I figured I'd make the upgrade sting less by selling the older DX rather than keeping it to reduce the cost of the upgrade.

I pondered for a while about the cooling solution and mounts, then finally settled on Alphacool Double-Sided Adhesive Pad. This would allow me to mount a small heatsink atop the CPU without worrying about pins and clips and those kinds of horrors. I just wasn't sure how well the CPU would cool.

After waiting for a day for the adhesive pad to settle, I successfully booted the system and played DOOM for a while. I can clearly tell a difference in performance for the game. It went from borderline unplayable on high detail setting to quite playable, if not perfectly smooth. Duke Nukem 3D went from unplayable to very much playable. The adhesive thermal pad also appeared to be working because the heatsink got hot. Really hot.

This had me worried, so I then decided to mount a small modern fan on the heatsink with some screws, because screw period correctness, and now the system runs all nice and cool:

To accomplish this, I had to find a molex-to-3-pin fan compatible adapter since the motherboard has no fan headers at all.

Congratulations.
Now as your hardware seems to be complete,
have you considered to optimize your BIOS settings too?

Disruptor wrote on 2022-08-10, 07:39:

Congratulations.
Now as your hardware seems to be complete,
have you considered to optimize your BIOS settings too?

Thanks! 😀
I have considered it - there's not a whole lot to fix though. The BIOS has exactly one page dedicated to advanced settings:

Still, if you have any good pointers I will take them. I seem to recall that what I know to be true for later Pentium based systems such as Video BIOS Shadow and/or caching better being left disabled is exactly the reverse for these early DOS-based systems. Or am I completely off?

Hardware-wise, yes - this seems to coming together nicely. Now I'm just fiddlying with the monitor / speakers to get ones that aren't completely dilapidated (monitor issue listed in previous post, speakers sound well but the knobs rattle and the volume jumps like crazy)...

You can also get some more Speed by changing Busclk Frequency .

You currently running 33/4 = ~8,25Mhz., changing to CLK/3 will give you 11Mhz ISA Bus Speed.
Some older ISA Cards maybe troublesome, but majority worked for me at 11Mhz Bus Speed.

matze79 wrote on 2022-08-10, 10:59:

You can also get some more Speed by changing Busclk Frequency .

You currently running 33/4 = ~8,25Mhz., changing to CLK/3 will give you 11Mhz ISA Bus Speed.
Some older ISA Cards maybe troublesome, but majority worked for me at 11Mhz Bus Speed.

The only reason I'm hesitant to try is because my soundcard is acting weird occasionally. Right now it's not dropping out of existence like I previously reported, but just today when I was testing the system again, it began to showcase odd artifacts in the FM-synth while it was being used. It never stopped working or went offline, but there were these weird chirping noises that I don't think should be there.

It also became muted when I was playing with aweutil until I hard reset the whole computer. There's something funky in there, but it could just as well be the drivers/TSRs - I know Creative is somewhat infamous for their drivers too.

With some upgrades you should be able to use windows 3.11 or 95 on this and still use it for dos, but windows would make it easier to select your titles and file manage.

A little late to the fun here. Still reading. I think your best cpu options are pentium overdrive, or a dx2 past that, a interposer and a amd 133 or cyrix 586 100/120/133 unless your mobo supports 3.3v? In which case no interposer needed for those options.

But I have seen reports that say the pentium 83 is actually holding its own against those more exotic amd and cyrix chips.

I have been working on a interposer btw.
Re: Socket 3 Tweaker

As for memory you are probably capped out at 32 or 64 mb

But as you said you are only interested in 16mb

As for storage you could upgrade to a vlb ide or scsi controller and adapt to a ssd. But you seem to like the retro. Perhaps a compromise with adapting to a 68 pin scsi or just a nice modern ide magnetic drive 😀

Anyway, you are probably going to want a nice vlb video card.

A isa soundblaster should be fine. Awe32 with the ram like you found is iconic

https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/3612#downloads

leonardo wrote on 2022-08-10, 18:01:

matze79 wrote on 2022-08-10, 10:59:

You can also get some more Speed by changing Busclk Frequency .

You currently running 33/4 = ~8,25Mhz., changing to CLK/3 will give you 11Mhz ISA Bus Speed.
Some older ISA Cards maybe troublesome, but majority worked for me at 11Mhz Bus Speed.

The only reason I'm hesitant to try is because my soundcard is acting weird occasionally. Right now it's not dropping out of existence like I previously reported, but just today when I was testing the system again, it began to showcase odd artifacts in the FM-synth while it was being used. It never stopped working or went offline, but there were these weird chirping noises that I don't think should be there.

It also became muted when I was playing with aweutil until I hard reset the whole computer. There's something funky in there, but it could just as well be the drivers/TSRs - I know Creative is somewhat infamous for their drivers too.

Do you use old AT PSU ?
You may experience ripple current from aging PSU.
I had this issue several times with 30 year old PSUs.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_(electrical)

If your PSU is malfunctioning you may risk hardware damage.

matze79 wrote on 2022-08-10, 22:50:

Do you use old AT PSU ? You may experience ripple current from aging PSU. I had this issue several times with 30 year old PSUs. […]
Show full quote

leonardo wrote on 2022-08-10, 18:01:

matze79 wrote on 2022-08-10, 10:59:

You can also get some more Speed by changing Busclk Frequency .

You currently running 33/4 = ~8,25Mhz., changing to CLK/3 will give you 11Mhz ISA Bus Speed.
Some older ISA Cards maybe troublesome, but majority worked for me at 11Mhz Bus Speed.

The only reason I'm hesitant to try is because my soundcard is acting weird occasionally. Right now it's not dropping out of existence like I previously reported, but just today when I was testing the system again, it began to showcase odd artifacts in the FM-synth while it was being used. It never stopped working or went offline, but there were these weird chirping noises that I don't think should be there.

It also became muted when I was playing with aweutil until I hard reset the whole computer. There's something funky in there, but it could just as well be the drivers/TSRs - I know Creative is somewhat infamous for their drivers too.

Do you use old AT PSU ?
You may experience ripple current from aging PSU.
I had this issue several times with 30 year old PSUs.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_(electrical)

If your PSU is malfunctioning you may risk hardware damage.

Oh crap. It's the original BTC 200W PSU that was in the case. How do I find out if the PSU is failing? It's not like I've got any other / new AT PSUs lying about!

You probably will need an oscilloscope for a non invasive examination, and/ or a device that can measure ESR values of capacitors, and a load.

If you are too uncertain, here is a minimal invasive instruction: You have to unpower the power supply, disconnect it from the plug, and leave it so for one day (so that the capacitors are self-discharged). Then you take it partially out of the case but leave the internal wire to the power switch of the case plugged in. Then open the power supply, make a photograph from the top and both open sides and post it here. After that you can close the power supply and reinstall it in the case. Do not plug in a power wire until you've reinstated a safe condition.

However, it may be likely that your power supply is not from a time where cheap capacitors have been too bad.

Alternate you can use a known good ATX Powersupply to Power the Machine.
https://www.ebay.de/itm/184846347162
Grab such a adapter and try if your sound problems disappear.

i had issues with AWE Series and late Vibra Series with Ripple Current.
it played disorted.

Intel Pentium 60 - Batman - Soundblaster crackling

matze79 wrote on 2022-08-12, 20:58:

Alternate you can use a known good ATX Powersupply to Power the Machine. https://www.ebay.de/itm/184846347162 Grab such a adapte […]
Show full quote

Alternate you can use a known good ATX Powersupply to Power the Machine.
https://www.ebay.de/itm/184846347162
Grab such a adapter and try if your sound problems disappear.

i had issues with AWE Series and late Vibra Series with Ripple Current.
it played disorted.

Intel Pentium 60 - Batman - Soundblaster crackling

What won't they come up with today?! 😁

Well I guess I should look at upgrading the PSU just in case - wouldn't want this system to kick the bucket now that I've put so much effort into it...

Just finding a recently produced, reasonably priced, and high-quality PSU that isn't like a gazillion watts is probably also going to take a bit of tinkering. I haven't been so squeamish about using old 250-350W ATX PSUs of known good brands, but those are starting to be a bit agey by now as well so yeah.

You can use a higher wattage psu it's not going to hurt anything just sadly cost more than a lower output unit.

(Edit: spelling)

Hi @leonardo, sorry for resurrecting this thread but just wanted to ask if you still have this motherboard/build? If so, could you please dump the BIOS and share it? You can use a software tool such as GETROM or NSSI if you don't have a programmer (or just don't want to remove the chip from the board).

I also have this board, in fact my own photo and BIOS are the ones available on TheRetroWeb (https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/msi-ms-4132). The reason I'm asking for a BIOS dump is in case you have a later one, because I suspect mine has a few bugs in the BIOS setup that cause it to have substandard performance (for example, I wrote a small assembler program to check chipset registers and I think the RAM and cache timing options are not setting the correct values). And as you know AMI BIOS modding on this era is not easy as with Award since there are no known tools available to modify it such as MODBIN.

I've also tried Award BIOS from other SiS471 boards and they appear to work properly, but I would prefer the actual MSI BIOS.

Thanks in advance.

TheMobRules wrote on 2023-01-18, 17:23:

Hi @leonardo, sorry for resurrecting this thread but just wanted to ask if you still have this motherboard/build? If so, could y […]
Show full quote

Hi @leonardo, sorry for resurrecting this thread but just wanted to ask if you still have this motherboard/build? If so, could you please dump the BIOS and share it? You can use a software tool such as GETROM or NSSI if you don't have a programmer (or just don't want to remove the chip from the board).

I also have this board, in fact my own photo and BIOS are the ones available on TheRetroWeb (https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/msi-ms-4132). The reason I'm asking for a BIOS dump is in case you have a later one, because I suspect mine has a few bugs in the BIOS setup that cause it to have substandard performance (for example, I wrote a small assembler program to check chipset registers and I think the RAM and cache timing options are not setting the correct values). And as you know AMI BIOS modding on this era is not easy as with Award since there are no known tools available to modify it such as MODBIN.

I've also tried Award BIOS from other SiS471 boards and they appear to work properly, but I would prefer the actual MSI BIOS.

Thanks in advance.

Hi!

I'm happy to help in obtaining the dump, but will likely have to use one of the software tools that you mention to get it since I don't feel competent enough to remove chips off the board without killing them or the board.

A quick search turned up NSSI, - is there a specific process for the dump? I can probably get around to trying this tomorrow.

Out of curiosity, if you're able to confirm the issue, would a possible remedy to this performance bug require programming a new patched BIOS, or could a low-level utility be written that could set desired RAM and cache timing options while loading DOS/Windows?

Thanks in advance for taking some time to do this @leonardo.

leonardo wrote on 2023-01-22, 08:33:

A quick search turned up NSSI, - is there a specific process for the dump? I can probably get around to trying this tomorrow.

When dumping the BIOS from a running machine, it's usually recommended to set System/BIOS shadowing (F000 - FFFF) to disabled if possible in the BIOS setup, so that the dump is taken from the ROM itself rather than a copy in memory, which could have some slight variations (though it's usually nothing critical). You can enable shadowing back once you're done.

With NSSI, it's as easy as selecting the Tools --> Save BIOS option from the menu bar. You will be asked for a file name, and it will save it with extension ".BIO" in the current directory. It should be a file with size equal to 65536 bytes (64KB).

You can also double check by dumping using DEBUG, it's also quite simple. Since the BIOS resides at the F000 location in memory, you can copy 64KB from that location (as two chunks of 32KB each) into files and then you can join them:

1C:\BLAH> debug
2
3-N F000.BIN
4-R BX
5BX 0000
6:0000
7-R CX
8CX 0000
9:8000
10-M F000:0 8000 0100
11-W 0100
12Writing 8000 bytes
13-N F800.BIN
14-M F800:0 8000 0100
15-W 0100
16Writing 8000 bytes
17-Q
18
19C:\BLAH> copy /b f000.bin+f800.bin dump.bin

leonardo wrote on 2023-01-22, 08:33:

Out of curiosity, if you're able to confirm the issue, would a possible remedy to this performance bug require programming a new patched BIOS, or could a low-level utility be written that could set desired RAM and cache timing options while loading DOS/Windows?

Some things are possible to do, there is a small utility called SIS.EXE floating around in this forum that corrects the problem with the dirty tag in SiS471 BIOSes when using L2 WB cache, resulting in much higher memory throughput performance. Other things are not so easy (such as setting memory timings), and I think these must be done by the BIOS before booting. If I recall correctly, one of the things I found was that the MS-4132G BIOS would simply ignore the "Fastest" option for RAM in the BIOS, but trying to manually set that register after boot would make the system crash. Another thing was that the cache timings were always kept at the slowest values, you can verify this by trying different options in the BIOS and run SpeedSys/CACHECHK, the cache performance is not up to par for a SiS471 board. I'll take my board out of storage and compile a list of my findings.

By the way, I've also noticed similar issues with an Acer VI15G, also SiS471 chipset + AMI BIOS, where some BIOS options wouldn't even set the correct chipset registers! Personally I think American Megatrends messed up big time with this chipset, unless I find a 471 board with an AMI BIOS that performs on par with Award. In fact, as I mentioned, you can use the ASUS VL/I-486SV2GX4 Award BIOS on the MSI board and it works and performs just as well as the ASUS, but I'm not sure if there are small differences which could cause issues later on, so I would prefer sticking to the MSI BIOS if possible.

TheMobRules wrote on 2023-01-22, 17:43:

Thanks in advance for taking some time to do this @leonardo. […]
Show full quote

Thanks in advance for taking some time to do this @leonardo.

leonardo wrote on 2023-01-22, 08:33:

A quick search turned up NSSI, - is there a specific process for the dump? I can probably get around to trying this tomorrow.

When dumping the BIOS from a running machine, it's usually recommended to set System/BIOS shadowing (F000 - FFFF) to disabled if possible in the BIOS setup, so that the dump is taken from the ROM itself rather than a copy in memory, which could have some slight variations (though it's usually nothing critical). You can enable shadowing back once you're done.

With NSSI, it's as easy as selecting the Tools --> Save BIOS option from the menu bar. You will be asked for a file name, and it will save it with extension ".BIO" in the current directory. It should be a file with size equal to 65536 bytes (64KB).

You can also double check by dumping using DEBUG, it's also quite simple. Since the BIOS resides at the F000 location in memory, you can copy 64KB from that location (as two chunks of 32KB each) into files and then you can join them:

Copy code to clipboard

1C:\BLAH> debug
2
3-N F000.BIN
4-R BX
5BX 0000
6:0000
7-R CX
8CX 0000
9:8000
10-M F000:0 8000 0100
11-W 0100
12Writing 8000 bytes
13-N F800.BIN
14-M F800:0 8000 0100
15-W 0100
16Writing 8000 bytes
17-Q
18
19C:\BLAH> copy /b f000.bin+f800.bin dump.bin

leonardo wrote on 2023-01-22, 08:33:

Out of curiosity, if you're able to confirm the issue, would a possible remedy to this performance bug require programming a new patched BIOS, or could a low-level utility be written that could set desired RAM and cache timing options while loading DOS/Windows?

Some things are possible to do, there is a small utility called SIS.EXE floating around in this forum that corrects the problem with the dirty tag in SiS471 BIOSes when using L2 WB cache, resulting in much higher memory throughput performance. Other things are not so easy (such as setting memory timings), and I think these must be done by the BIOS before booting. If I recall correctly, one of the things I found was that the MS-4132G BIOS would simply ignore the "Fastest" option for RAM in the BIOS, but trying to manually set that register after boot would make the system crash. Another thing was that the cache timings were always kept at the slowest values, you can verify this by trying different options in the BIOS and run SpeedSys/CACHECHK, the cache performance is not up to par for a SiS471 board. I'll take my board out of storage and compile a list of my findings.

By the way, I've also noticed similar issues with an Acer VI15G, also SiS471 chipset + AMI BIOS, where some BIOS options wouldn't even set the correct chipset registers! Personally I think American Megatrends messed up big time with this chipset, unless I find a 471 board with an AMI BIOS that performs on par with Award. In fact, as I mentioned, you can use the ASUS VL/I-486SV2GX4 Award BIOS on the MSI board and it works and performs just as well as the ASUS, but I'm not sure if there are small differences which could cause issues later on, so I would prefer sticking to the MSI BIOS if possible.

Sorry about the long wait! I got sick and didn't get around to this until today. I've attached a screenshot of the report summary and the BIOS-file. Hope you find some use for it.

leonardo wrote on 2023-01-30, 18:37:

Sorry about the long wait! I got sick and didn't get around to this until today. I've attached a screenshot of the report summary and the BIOS-file. Hope you find some use for it.

Thanks a lot leonardo! By quickly examining the file in a hex editor, it seems your BIOS (A75B - Apr-21 1994) is slightly newer than mine (A75A - Mar-31 1994). Very interesting! I wonder if it has fixes for the bugs I noticed in my version, I will test your BIOS in my board in the next few days and will report back.

That is really a nice build for what's labelled as run of the mill, it's one for that 1994 vibe.
The case is fairly correct with the tri-digit LCD - the first 100mhz 486's and 90mhz pentiums were from intel were available for evaluation before october 1994 and Dell shipped them in their review machines.
There was a 2-part feature in PCW magazine in the UK 1994 april and may issues (or was it march?) where Frank Leonardt built something like this, and the cirrus 5428 VLB was in high demand at the time.
His goal was to build a multimedia PC that complied with the MPC2 standard for under £1000 I think he had to settle on a 486 sx25 as a compromise. I can't remember if the price includes a monitor but i do have the article cutting somewhere...