Stanworks wrote on 2025-12-30, 22:04:

Hello everybody, and happy new year in a day! […]
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Hello everybody, and happy new year in a day!

I obtained the S2567 for my dual P-III build and now trying to make it do the thing I want... The information about this beasts is quite scarce, but I saw at least a few people that actually made it work so I decided to register and ask for advice 😀
Preambula:
My board arrived from China, and had some custom BIOS (Electronics for imaging, Fiery) that, although passed POST normally, did not allow me to boot (after POST information it just proceeded to a blinking cursor on a black screen) nor did it let me enter the settings. After trying all possible keys and combinations I downloaded the 1.05a BIOS image from The Retro Web. This allowed me to enter the settings and to install Windows XP Professional SP3. However, I was unable to install any GPU drivers, and the "Serverworks CPU-to-AGP bridge" was showing error 12 (device has no free ressources to function). I tried to play around with BIOS settings with no success. Well. I downloaded and flashed BIOS v. 1.05 from the same source, reinstalled Windows, and this problem disappeared, drivers installed without any problem. Success, I thought. However, the whole systems stutters every minute for a second, and launching 3DMark2001 results in a fatal error: Failed to validate material (photo attached).
Fabula:
My current system is:
Tyan Thunder HeSL S2567
2x P-III 1.0 GHz
4GB PC133R registered ECC SDRAM
No PCI cards installed
Samsung 750EVO 250GB installed through SATA-IDE adapter on secondary IDE
SATA DVD-RW on the primary IDE using the same adapter.

So far I tried 2 graphic cards: nVidia GeForce 6800LE 128MB (WinFast A400) and ATI FireGL X1-128 (Radeon 9700 equivalent). Drivers are: GeForce 175.19 and ForceWare 93.71 for 6800LE and Omega 2.6.42. Same results in both cases. Bridged cards (tried FireGL X3 and HD 4650) don`t work at all, GPU error on POST.
My current PCI/AGP relevant settings are:
Write Caching P6-to-PCI: ENABLED
AGP Device Address Size: 64 MB (tried 128 as well)
AGP operations: ENABLED
AGP FastWrite: ENABLED
AGP Sideband Adressing: ENABLED
AGP Transfer Speed: 1x (tried 2x as well)

Allocate IRQ to PCI VGA: YES

I turned off onboard SCSI (it`s not soldered anyways) and onboard LAN. I forgot to turn on the ACPI prior to installing Windows, so right now it runs in MPS mode.

Maybe there is somebody who already worked on this board and just has all the know-hows? Many thanks in advance!

Best regards,
Stan

Welcome to Vogons 😀

Can't ever recall having similar problems with my board (seen in the actual Retro Web pics). Wondering if it's an OEM version from a commercial photo or medical imaging station given the custom BIOS and missing LSI SCSI chip (these types of dual boards were popular for that role as back-end data processors) . Maybe updating to versions of the retail BIOS haven't gone properly

Pretty sure mine is on v1.05a, but it'll be after the New Year before i can check / test bench it.

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2025-12-31, 04:59:

Welcome to Vogons 😀

Can't ever recall having similar problems with my board (seen in the actual Retro Web pics). Wondering if it's an OEM version from a commercial photo or medical imaging station given the custom BIOS and missing LSI SCSI chip (these types of dual boards were popular for that role as back-end data processors) . Maybe updating to versions of the retail BIOS haven't gone properly

Pretty sure mine is on v1.05a, but it'll be after the New Year before i can check / test bench it.

Thanks for the info, especially for the BIOS table! I spent almost a day messing around with the board. It's indeed an OEM board that was seemingly taken from Xerox/Fiery EX2000b Print server, which explains the lack of SCSI controller. However, the problem wasn't with the BIOS as I initially thought. Turns out, the board works well with BIOS 1.05a. It's the combination of a funky ACPI implementation and board's pickiness for the installed memory that created troubles. So Tyan (or Serwerworks in general?) ACPI implementation is a bit wonky, and both Windows XP and Server 2003 installation went well at the first time, but both system started hanging at the "Device Registration" step once I decided to wipe the SSD and start from scratch. Turns out, disabling ACPI was a right step towards system stability, as it allowed me to install Windows XP Professional SP3 flawlessly and without weird resource troubles that I described initially. IIRC there is a post on this forum from another user that also ran into problems of ACPI with this board. Maybe it's a question of luck (or board revision?), and we weren't as lucky as others. I will try to replace MPS HALs with ACPI ones on the running windows, but for now it will do.
Well, the clean install did not help with AGP problems. Every GPU I tried until then (GF6800LE, FireGL X1-128, FX5500) crashed or hanged once I tried to start 3DMark2001. At some point I decided to check whether it's some conflict between VRAM and RAM, and removed 2 DIMMs out of the system. To my utter surprise, this resulted in a complete stability of the AGP, I was able not only to run 3DMark on GF 6800LE but also to turn on 2x mode and Sideband Addressing in the BIOS (which resulted in marginal 50 marks gain 😁)! I was using Elpida/IBM 1GB PC133R modules bought form MemoryMasters shop on ebay, which work well as a pair, but for whatever reason, 4 of them were causing these weird problems. In the end, I populated the vacant slots with 1x Infineon and 1x Samsung 512MB PC133R (256x8 Mbit chips) modules, resulting in 3 GB system RAM and stable AGP, which is still good. Sure, maxing out board's capability is nice, but right now I'm not feeling like spending another 100+ bucks on RAM to find compatible modules.

P.S. This board does not recognize Micron (MSM) 512MB PC133R modules with BGA chips (attachment 2), be aware!