Could this be caused by dead CMOS battery?
Or something fatal with a chip somewhere?
Tried async both 256K (original) then 512K chips.
This is a board that use three SiS chipset 5511, 12 and 13. The pentium 133 and 100 tried both.
Cheers,
Great Northern aka Canada.
Could be dead CMOS battery but most likely some other issue..seems there have been a lot of issues with P55SP4 and other boards using the SIS 5511, 12 and 13 in last few months.
Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun
Horun wrote on 2022-12-11, 02:36:Could be dead CMOS battery but most likely some other issue..seems there have been a lot of issues with P55SP4 and other boards using the SIS 5511, 12 and 13 in last few months.
Wow, I didn't see this come up about SiS 5511 series chipset issues. Such as?
Cheers,
Great Northern aka Canada.
Update. I tried another pentium processor, changed to sync cache module and different memory modules including EDO. No cache detected and still stuck at 8MB. Yes, I reconfigured the jumpers.
Other than that, board works.
Chipset is keeping cmos settings and keeping time properly.
Nothing cold or hot anywhere, nothing bad solder, I did check with a probe for loose pins.
What could do this? All this left is SiS 5512 chipset which does hook into memory banks and cache but this does not make sense. The 5511 and 5513 deals with buses for ISA and PCI. The regulator is outputting 3.3V properly.
Oh well!
Great Northern aka Canada.
Possibly a corrupted BIOS chip. Award had the scheme where the boot block does very basic memory initialization, but is able to "outsource" memory size detection / memory controller initialization into a dedicated BIOS block. If that dedicated memory intialization block is corrupt, the boot block might use a "8MB will most likely work anyway" setting. Try re-flashing your BIOS if your machine is stable in the current state.
Absolutely. Had ordered small batch of NOS flash chips from reputable seller about a week ago, can't know till then.
It failed on flashing towards the end (90%) but this fixed most of the firmware. Will boot on floppy through.
Was checking all the pins of sram async sockets and memory slots, found out this board does not use presence sensing pins to know what type of memory modules are, (grounded, no tracks). Cheap out.
Cheers,
Great Northern aka Canada.
I could not find pflash utility for flashing bios. It's not existing on google search.
Does vogons download site contains pflash utility?
Cheers,
Great Northern aka Canada.
I could not find pflash utility for flashing bios. It's not existing on google search.
Does vogons download site contains pflash utility? I tried aflash and it would not identify the flash chip properly.
Update: This is odd that our vogons download site does not host any firmware flasher utilities.
Cheers,
Great Northern aka Canada.
This is an image of the support disk from my P/I-P55TP4XE.
It contains a version of PFLASH.EXE from March 15, 1995. Maybe it works on your board.
TheMobRules wrote on 2022-12-19, 03:59:This is an image of the support disk from my P/I-P55TP4XE.
It contains a version of PFLASH.EXE from March 15, 1995. Maybe it works on your board.
Yes! That was it solved mine! Different flashers does not work, pflash did. Saved the motherboard.
P/I-P55SP4 motherboard. Nothing wrong with this, was corrupted bios. Now both cache and ram detected correctly.
It was the correct flasher was all the troubles I had with other flashers. Use pflash for Asus Pentium boards.
Yay!
Great Northern aka Canada.
pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-12-18, 22:15:found out this board does not use presence sensing pins to know what type of memory modules are, (grounded, no tracks). Cheap out.
No one in his right mind uses presence detect in a consumer mainboard. The idea of presence detect is that you have a 2-bit code indicating speed and a 2-bit code indicating capacity. That means you have 4 different capacity codes. PS/2 SIMMs exist in all power-of-two sizes between 1MB and 128MB, which is 8 different capacities. So obviously, the size code can't be unique for all sizes commonly supported by Pentium mainboards. Also, only expensive brand modules (IBM, HP, Compaq) have presence detect equipped anyway. In the consumer PC market, you are much better off by ignoring PD.
False.
All of these 72 pin simms have the presence detection installed. I know this and I have large collection of 72pin SIMMs.
Having these is best idea thing to limit user mistakes using 70ns in a pentium board where 60ns or faster is required.
Tis' true that not all boards utilize presence detection.
Yeah, two bits determines the capacity but in pair of capacity size comes out to 8 sizes.
Cheers,
Great Northern aka Canada.
pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-12-19, 21:18:False.
All of these 72 pin simms have the presence detection installed. I know this and I have large collection of 72pin SIMMs.
I just checked my set of 72-pin SIMMs:
I don't count the 8MB modules "without" PD, as "60ns, 8MB" is encoded by "no bridges to GND present". Having an encoding that looks identical to "no SIMM installed" makes the idea of "presence detect" quite pointless, though.
The two 4MB SIMMs and the two 32MB SIMMs without any PD resistor (or even PD traces) populated definitely disprove the statement that "all" PS/2-type SIMMs are "with PD".
