AC: it takes too long to create a complete cfg file. If you want to append to the file I already started, I'll check out the other settings. I'm curious what numbers your board has to offer.

MikeSG, unfortunately, CAS Pulse Width has no bearing on performance.

I only ran a brief comparison of 4 motherboards; SiS Rabbit also beats C&T by a respectable amount. The other setting which would have an impact on performance is Force RAS High. Disabling this offers another boost, but no matter what other BIOS settings I try, disabling Force RAS High returns HIMEM errors. Curiously, disabled is the BIOS SETUP DEFAULT value for it. AC, are you able to leave yours disabled and avoid HIMEM errors?

I just realized something. You are using 64kx4 SRAMs. That means you need 8 chips to make single bank of cache. Perhaps part of the performance hit is that you are unable to take advantage of dual-bank cache.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2024-11-26, 15:22:

I just realized something. You are using 64kx4 SRAMs. That means you need 8 chips to make single bank of cache. Perhaps part of the performance hit is that you are unable to take advantage of dual-bank cache.

What cache configuration does your board use? My previous C&T board also used 4-bit cache.

My FU3 has eight 32kx8 chips and two 64kx4 tag RAMs. I would assume that the cache memory is interleaved...but I'd have to double check that C&T chipset manual. Maybe the chipset doesn't support it

*edit*
The manual contains no mention of cache bank interleave, and also doesn't appear to support write back mode.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2024-11-27, 01:14:

My FU3 has eight 32kx8 chips and two 64kx4 tag RAMs. I would assume that the cache memory is interleaved...but I'd have to double check that C&T chipset manual. Maybe the chipset doesn't support it

*edit*
The manual contains no mention of cache bank interleave, and also doesn't appear to support write back mode.

The manual mentioned something about a post write buffering scheme, which sounded like some stop gap scheme between WT and WB technology.

Are you able to run your PeakDM board at 80 MHz with SXL2 and 13.3 MHz ISA (it corresponds to the CLK2/3 bus clock option in the BIOS) to see what DOOM timedemo 3 score you receive (-nosound -nomouse + fullscreen with utility bar)? I'm having trouble accepting this board being slow.

Page Hit Wait State is related to DRAM as well. Pretty much all options in the Advanced Chipset Setup in BIOS are related.

If you run out of options, 50ns DRAM should allow tighter timings.

Eg. Migron 50ns https://migronelectronics.bigcartel.com/produ … -memory-modules
On this page he said it allows 0WS 46Mhz (or 92Mhz).

Unfortunately, Refresh Pulse Width and Page Hit Wait State had no bearing on cachechk results, nor on DOOM results.

Here's a rundown of the only settings which have had a measurable improvement:

CAS Pulse Width, adjusted from 6 to 4 CLK2s, increased DRAM Read speed by 14.5%
CAS Pulse Width, adjusted from 4 to 3 CLK2s, increased DRAM Read speed by 16.5%, however only gains 0.1 fps in DOOM. I could only use the '3' timing with a crystal oscillator under 80 MHz. I tested 66 MHz.

RAS Precharge Time, adjusted from 6 to 3 CLK2s, increased DRAM Write speed by 20%

Early CAS mode, when set to Enabled, increased DRAM Write speed by 66%

Force RAS High, when set to Disabled, increased DRAM Read by 16% and DRAM Write by 50%. With an 80 MHz crystal oscillator, Cachechk shows a DRAM Write speed of 82.9 MB/s, however the DOOM result only increased by 0.2 fps (18.31 to 18.52 fps). I was not able to Disable Force RAS High even with a 66 MHz crystal oscillator installed. While I'm able to run DOOM, HIMEM displays a memory error.

Curiously, none of these settings improved upon the SRAM speeds. Why aren't there any SRAM adjustments?

If I recall correctly, those MIGRON modules only use a single IC. I was not able to get any of my 3 chip, 4 MB sticks to work on any of these Peak/DM 351/355/356 motherboards, thus I have doubts that a 1-chip module would work. I currently have 60 ns 9-chip modules. The only possible advantage, if it is purely the module speed, would be setting CAS Pulse Width from 4 to 3, but the gain would only mean about 0.1 fps in DOOM.

Tried the 85 MHz crystal oscillator, but could not pass HIMEM, even with relaxed timings. Maybe 82 MHz would work. I'm mostly finished with this work. I guess a MR BIOS image wasn't uncovered?

Here's some additional photos for historical reference.

Working 256K configuration on Biostar MB-1340C-CH:

Traced out the square-wave pulse train which is the starting point for the real-time clock (inside the 82C256) and the timer/counters (inside the 82C256). If the 27 pF capacitor goes bad (C24 in previous photo), your clock will get really messed up:

Here's the BIOS settings I eventually landed on for 80 MHz, 32 MB, 256K, and the SXL2-80:

I'll probably get the BIOS modded for PS/2 mouse mode, then put the board to rest in a bin.

feipoa wrote on 2024-11-27, 12:14:

I guess a MR BIOS image wasn't uncovered?

They are on this post: Re: How about a MR-BIOS ROM file repository?

The four zip files. The first zip file contains an index for all boards. C&T.Doc for Chips & Tech.

In the BIOS, changing "Refresh Pulse Width' may allow three chip RAM. Or do nothing.

OK, sounds like these might work:
V051B321
V051B322
V051B324
V051B325

I'll give them a go tomorrow.

I'm attaching my Biostar MB-1340C-CH, B1 rev, AMIBIOS. One is the original, the other has be ps/2 modified using the jakethompson1 method. I find it much better to modify the BIOS rather than rely on PS2SUPPC.COM. With PS2SUPPC, I'm very limited by which mouse driver I can use, for example, I could not use the logitech driver which enables the middle mouse button.

I have run into a strange issue with this board.

Upon fresh boot, I check the Help---> About Program Manager
Memory: 24,906 KB Free
System Resources: 78% Free

Then I start opening programmes, like WordPerfect 6, MS Word 4.3, MS Excel 4.3, MS PowerPoint 4.3 <------------ I cannot open any more apps. I get out of memory error. So I check Help---> About Program Manager
Memory: 22,254 KB Free
System Resources: 8% Free

System specs:
SXL2-80, 256K, 32 MB RAM.
Diamond GD-5434 2 MB at 1024x768x65k.
ES1868 sound.
AHA-1522B SCSI.
3Com Etherlink III network card

I have the swap file disabled in Windows 3.11. In system.ini, my vcache setting shows minfilecache=4096, and the 32-bit disk access cache is at 4096 KB. Enabling swap file, with say 20 MB doesn't let me open any more programmes.

Why are my system resources so low and why can't I open more files? There is ample memory free. Running Quake in DOS uses 1 MB image and 29 MB data, so I think the full 32 MB is working.

Absolutely agree Jake's method is superior to the TSR if you have an AMI Color BIOS. If you don't though, and PS2SUPPC is your only choice, I have had luck getting the middle button to work by loading CTMOUSE with the /3 switch to force a 3 button mouse.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2024-11-28, 13:39:

Absolutely agree Jake's method is superior to the TSR if you have an AMI Color BIOS. If you don't though, and PS2SUPPC is your only choice, I have had luck getting the middle button to work by loading CTMOUSE with the /3 switch to force a 3 button mouse.

That's good to know. Any particular version of CTMOUSE? Has it been selective with which mouse will work with the middle button?

feipoa wrote on 2024-11-28, 12:33:

Then I start opening programmes, like WordPerfect 6, MS Word 4.3, MS Excel 4.3, MS PowerPoint 4.3 <------------ I cannot open an […]
Show full quote

Then I start opening programmes, like WordPerfect 6, MS Word 4.3, MS Excel 4.3, MS PowerPoint 4.3 <------------ I cannot open any more apps. I get out of memory error. So I check Help---> About Program Manager
Memory: 22,254 KB Free
System Resources: 8% Free

System specs:
SXL2-80, 256K, 32 MB RAM.
Diamond GD-5434 2 MB at 1024x768x65k.
ES1868 sound.
AHA-1522B SCSI.
3Com Etherlink III network card

I have the swap file disabled in Windows 3.11. In system.ini, my vcache setting shows minfilecache=4096, and the 32-bit disk access cache is at 4096 KB. Enabling swap file, with say 20 MB doesn't let me open any more programmes.

Why are my system resources so low and why can't I open more files? There is ample memory free. Running Quake in DOS uses 1 MB image and 29 MB data, so I think the full 32 MB is working.

I spent time in 1995-97 nursing Win311 systems where users wanted to multitask. Truth was that windows 311 usually could only handle 2-3 big apps apps out of the box, regardless of the total ram.

There were static memory pools, conventional memory requirements, and fragmentation of xms was bad, memory fragmentation of conventional memory was good (to keep one program from hogging it all)

There were third party tools for people that wanted to open more that 2-3 apps at a time.

This article from1995 might help

https://books.google.com/books?id=COEmRfcp2RA … 2%80%9D&f=false

Cool! Thank you for that article. It describes exactly what I've been witnessing.

1Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 are amazingly inconsistent in their abilities to run multiple programs. They sometimes run out of system resources or low DOS memory and may run as few as two programs, even if you have 32MB or RAM. Programs that open multiple windows and track many objets gobble system resources...
2
3RAM Doubler was the first commercial product to address the memory problem. Most people look at RAM Doubler strictly as a way to deal with insufficient space for system resources. It compresses the system resources area effectively, but it does more. It grabs the entire low memory area and yields it only to GlobalDosAlloc calls, forcing applications to use extended memory.

I'm going to try out this RAM Doubler shareware.

RAM Doubler works! Before RAM Doubler, I could only open MS Word/Excel/PowerPoint and Corel Word Perfect 6 before Insufficient Memory errors appeared, now I can open this mass of programmes:

The system starts to slow down nearing the limit. IE5 and Netwcape 2 were really slow to load, but they loaded without any errors.

I tried out the MR BIOS options. The first one in the list worked the best. I've attached it here.

MR BIOS had timing options for DRAM at 60 ns, 70 ns, 80 ns, and 100 ns. From the Cachechk numbers, it is clear that the 60 ns setting disables Force RAS High option, and enables it for the 70 ns setting. As with the AMI BIOS, I also received HIMEM errors when Force RAS High was disabled. However, if I reduced the amount of system memory from 32 MB to 16 MB, I am able to use the 60 ns setting (Force RAS High disabled) for the previously noted increase in DRAM read/write speeds.

MR BIOS also let us use 3-chip memory modules, however, both of my 60 ns sets of 32 MB could not be run with the 60 ns DRAM settings (Force RAS High disabled). I doubled checked, and even with 16 MB, I could not get the AMI BIOS to run with Force RAS High disabled.

MR BIOS also sets some DLC/SXL flags that should be changed. I could not get the 8 KB L1 to show up in cachechk unless I ran cyrix.exe -m. My autoexec settings while testing MR BIOS was:
cyrix.exe -i1 -i2 -i3 -i4 -b- -m
cyrix.exe -e -f -cd -xA000,128 -xC000,256 -x10000,64

feipoa wrote on 2024-11-29, 13:05:

RAM Doubler works! Before RAM Doubler, I could only open MS Word/Excel/PowerPoint and Corel Word Perfect 6 before Insufficient Memory errors appeared, now I can open this mass of programmes:

That's great. Some of those memory enhancer utils were frauds and gave the entire market sector a bad name, but others provided vital services that should have been in the core Win31 product. Personally, I think a better name for "RAM Doubler" would have been "The vital memory management patches that have been left out of the core product until Win9x", but advertising copy was never my strong suit.

feipoa wrote on 2024-11-28, 14:26:

maxtherabbit wrote on 2024-11-28, 13:39:

Absolutely agree Jake's method is superior to the TSR if you have an AMI Color BIOS. If you don't though, and PS2SUPPC is your only choice, I have had luck getting the middle button to work by loading CTMOUSE with the /3 switch to force a 3 button mouse.

That's good to know. Any particular version of CTMOUSE? Has it been selective with which mouse will work with the middle button?

I use 1.9.1 a1. So far it has worked with every single *native* PS/2 wheel mouse I've tried - which amounts to a pretty good handful. However, it sadly does not work with my personal favorite: a MS Optical USB Intellimouse using the PS/2 adapter. (The rest of the mouse works fine, just not the third button in DOS. )

Some discoveries:

This motherboard doesn't do well with the ABP-5140 or SIIG i540 bus mastering SCSI cards are installed with the SXL2. Has hang ups during BOOT if L1 is enabled and functioning.

If the SXL is in clock-doubled mode, using the turbo button will hang the system. The turbo button works fine if not in clock-doubled mode.