I guess fake and real cache are incompatible with each other and a BIOS can only support one or the other.

Black PCI slots look nifty.

THATS WHAT MAKES IT SO SAD!!!

How do you know the cache chips are real? Just because they're socketed doesn't mean they're not still fake...

But if they are indeed genuine, you might try a different BIOS version... it's supposedly flash upgradeable, and the latest one seems to be '9151108s".

the flash chip isnt socketed. and I dont have a "proper bios" meaning I'm not 100% sure its going to work. I'm willing to give it a try, I just have other projects on the front burner at the moment.

let me pull the sticker and see if its even flashable.

GXL750 wrote:

Black PCI slots look nifty.

Never seen that, but I have seen while ISA slots 😜

Shame it's a pc chips though.
Socketed BIOS is no good in this case, gives you pretty little options.

GXL750 wrote:

Black PCI slots look nifty.

PCI Slots?

VLB Slots surely.....

PeteUK wrote:

GXL750 wrote:

Black PCI slots look nifty.

PCI Slots?

VLB Slots surely.....

No, take a look at this picture: download.php?id=9012
It's really black PCI slots on this board. Never seen that before, but I have seen a black s370 CPU socket, amongst a couple other different colors 😉

Looks like PCI to me 😀
There are 2x VLB slots on the board as well, but I'd say the PCI slots are what tetrium's referring to.

486 boards that suport both PCI and VLB are pretty uncommon and quite versatile, its a shame they all seem to be made by pc chips 🙁

DonutKing wrote:

486 boards that suport both PCI and VLB are pretty uncommon and quite versatile, its a shame they all seem to be made by pc chips 🙁

They are uncommon, but many manufacturers made at least one, including ASUS 😉

PC-Chips == avoid

well teh board has gone from the back burner to one of the burners closer to the front. I looked up the bios strind ID and it is a PC chips M915I board. And the bios is from 1-1-1995. found a website that has a link for a bios dated 8-11-1995 that "adds support for cyrix 133 chips." http://www.rebios.net/biosdown/pcchips1.htm

But the link to the bios is borked. I emailed pc-chips driectly but havent heard back, and likely wont. Anyone happen to have this bios around? or a newer one even?

Look AT this site:

http://forums.windrivers.com/vb/showthread.php?t=18635
He said bios is not flashble..

This page has the BIOS ROM.

Some of those things have flash chips, some have EPROMs, and I'm not sure how you'd tell just by looking at it, since I believe the chip is just generically marked '915i' underneath the AMI label.

BLEH.

I'm wondering it I can get a generic chip, flash it, and re-solder it onto my board. I'd use a socket.

damnit, if I had a dollar for every time i've wanted my own bios flasher... I'd probably have about $20. 😜

oh, and under the sticker its marked "D" thats it.

Well, flashing programs should at least be able to tell you whether or not it's a flash chip, so you could try it and just see if it recognizes it as flashable.

If it is an EPROM, then it'd most likely be a 27C010, and those can be directly swapped for a 27SF010 flash chip... so yeah, you'd still have some options available, it's just a question of how much work you feel like putting into a PCChips board.

its one of those things you know, I paid MONEY for this board. If swapping the bios chip lets me make use of that money then so be it. The board works surprisingly well for a no-cache board. 😜

Tetrium wrote:

PeteUK wrote:

GXL750 wrote:

Black PCI slots look nifty.

PCI Slots?

VLB Slots surely.....

No, take a look at this picture: download.php?id=9012
It's really black PCI slots on this board. Never seen that before, but I have seen a black s370 CPU socket, amongst a couple other different colors 😉

Meh.... Didn't see those... because they were black! 🤣