VOGONS


First post, by Anonymous Coward

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The majority of the Baby Screamer motherboards I see out there are REV B, but I was pretty sure at least one person here on VOGONS has REV C. It's easy to tell if it's a REV C at first glance as the stickers covering the BIOS chips are black and silver, rather than silver and blue.

I would really like to get a BIOS dump from a REV C board. I own a REV B, and I am curious if the REV C BIOS will work in a REV B board and I want to see if there are any interesting upgrades. The main problem with the AMI BIOS on my board is that it doesn't really let you tinker around. It's more or less an OEM BIOS. There should be additional features to unlock, but I don't think AMISETUP worked on my board and I've been looking for V2.1 of the AMIBCP customisation utility for years without any luck. The missing feature I really need is the ability to adjust the ISA clock. The manual for the Baby Screamer indicates the ISA bus will operate at 1/4 the CPU speed regardless of which CPU you have, and there are no jumpers on the board to change it. I traced the CLK signal from the ISA bus through a few ICs and back to the chipset. According to the chipset manual, the ISA clock divider can be changed, so it's a mystery why AMI decided to lock that feature. Also, it would be nice to adjust memory timings, but admittedly performance is already top notch.

Recently the MR-BIOS repository was updated and included BIOS files for the VLSI Topcat chipset which the Baby Screamer uses, however Topcat does not include a cache controller, and the only Topcat BIOS which supports cache uses an i385 controller. It's not really clear what cache controller the Baby Screamer actually uses, but it appears like it might be a custom IC from AMI.

So, if you have a REV C board please send me a PM.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 1 of 2, by Anonymous Coward

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Okay, I found the member with the Rev C board. He hasn't been active for a year or two, but hopefully he'll reply to my PM. If I manage to get a dump of the BIOS I will post the results here.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 2 of 2, by Anonymous Coward

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Here it is.

It seems to be the same BIOS from the Rev B board.
Strangely it's dated 07/07/91. A 12/12/91 is available on Rev B.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium