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Help with upgrading Edom/WinTech MV035F to 128MB RAM

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First post, by ddoyle525

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Hello, I recently purchased a new Edom/WinTech MV035F motherboard and I am able to run it with 64MB RAM, however the manual and specs state it can support 128MB RAM with two 72-pin 64MB 16M*36 memory modules.
So I purchased 2 72-pin modules from Memory Masters and installed them in Bank1 and Bank2 the when the system boots it counts 66MB RAM and stops counting and DOS loads but it is very unstable and crashes.
I tested each module individually with Speedsys and each one seems to be fine. When either one of these modules is installed in Bank1 the system counts 65535KB RAM.
Changing BIOS settings has not helped.
Also I know that the RAM slots work because to get 64MB RAM working I had to populate the 4x30-pin RAM slots with 4MB modules (16MB) and populate the remaining three 72-pin slots with 16MB RAM modules for a total of 64MB.
Note, all memory in the current config is single sided but the 72-pin 16*36 modules are double-sided.
Note, I tried to flash the BIOS but I get the dreaded error "The program file's part number does not match with your system!"
Any help or advice as to what to try next?
Specs: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/edom-wintech-mv035f

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Reply 2 of 7, by Horun

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Curious why you want to try and run 128Mb ram on a 486 board, max for true ms DOS is 64Mb iirc.

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

Reply 3 of 7, by ddoyle525

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jakethompson1 wrote on 2025-04-26, 00:26:

Many VLB boards do not have a Flash BIOS, rather, you purchase and program another BIOS chip using a hardware programmer and then swap it.

Thank you for that information.

"Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." - John 14:6

Reply 4 of 7, by ddoyle525

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Horun wrote on 2025-04-26, 00:35:

Curious why you want to try and run 128Mb ram on a 486 board, max for true ms DOS is 64Mb iirc.

Just wanted to max it out to see how far I can push it. I've installed Windows 2000 successfully with 64MB RAM.

"Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." - John 14:6

Reply 5 of 7, by darry

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ddoyle525 wrote on 2025-04-26, 06:35:
Horun wrote on 2025-04-26, 00:35:

Curious why you want to try and run 128Mb ram on a 486 board, max for true ms DOS is 64Mb iirc.

Just wanted to max it out to see how far I can push it. I've installed Windows 2000 successfully with 64MB RAM.

It might actually be slower with 128MB of RAM if the maximum cacheable range the chipset supports is significantly smaller than 128MB. No idea if this is the case here.

Reply 6 of 7, by Disruptor

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darry wrote on 2025-04-26, 06:44:
ddoyle525 wrote on 2025-04-26, 06:35:
Horun wrote on 2025-04-26, 00:35:

Curious why you want to try and run 128Mb ram on a 486 board, max for true ms DOS is 64Mb iirc.

Just wanted to max it out to see how far I can push it. I've installed Windows 2000 successfully with 64MB RAM.

It might actually be slower with 128MB of RAM if the maximum cacheable range the chipset supports is significantly smaller than 128MB. No idea if this is the case here.

Windows 2000?
When you can avoid paging, no.
But I use 256 MB of RAM in my 486. Maximum cacheable area with 1 MB in write-through mode.

Reply 7 of 7, by darry

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Disruptor wrote on 2025-04-26, 16:04:
Windows 2000? When you can avoid paging, no. But I use 256 MB of RAM in my 486. Maximum cacheable area with 1 MB in write-throug […]
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darry wrote on 2025-04-26, 06:44:
ddoyle525 wrote on 2025-04-26, 06:35:

Just wanted to max it out to see how far I can push it. I've installed Windows 2000 successfully with 64MB RAM.

It might actually be slower with 128MB of RAM if the maximum cacheable range the chipset supports is significantly smaller than 128MB. No idea if this is the case here.

Windows 2000?
When you can avoid paging, no.
But I use 256 MB of RAM in my 486. Maximum cacheable area with 1 MB in write-through mode.

In the case of software that would otherwise need to use a swap file, more RAM is always better. But for most people here the primary use case for a 486 is not running something like Windows 2000. Making Windows 2000 faster at the expense of making practically everything else slower might not be optimal for running 486 era software under DOS (depending also on how significant the slowdown would be, of course).

If OP's board can cache all 128MB of its RAM, there would obviously be no issue.

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