VOGONS


Building a ''wrong'' system

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Reply 20 of 26, by nekurahoka

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This may be an example of PC chips' infamous fake cache boards. They set up their bios to read out cache that didn't exist. They even fitted fake chips to the boards to give the appearance of having cache.
http://redhill.net.au/b/b-bad.html

Dell Dimension XPS R400, 512MB SDRAM, Voodoo3 2000 AGP, Turtle Beach Montego, ESS Audiodrive 1869f ISA, Dreamblaster Synth S1
Dell GH192, P4 3.4 (Northwood), 4GB Dual Channel DDR, ATI Radeon x1650PRO 512MB, Audigy 2ZS, Alacritech 2000 Network Accelerator

Reply 21 of 26, by meljor

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they did that with some 486 boards, when cache was REALLY expensive.

I don't know of any s7 board or later that has fake chips.

asus tx97-e, 233mmx, voodoo1, s3 virge ,sb16
asus p5a, k6-3+ @ 550mhz, voodoo2 12mb sli, gf2 gts, awe32
asus p3b-f, p3-700, voodoo3 3500TV agp, awe64
asus tusl2-c, p3-S 1,4ghz, voodoo5 5500, live!
asus a7n8x DL, barton cpu, 6800ultra, Voodoo3 pci, audigy1

Reply 22 of 26, by meljor

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WOW, i didn't know this:

Tested both rush cards in my mmx system and both still had corruption in 2d (was to be expected).

I searched on the web for possible solutions and found it.....AT VOGONS 😎

Turns out that a lot of the voodoo rush drivers OVERCLOCK the alliance chip! And setting it at 72mhz (memory can't keep up.) That explaines why the 3d part was working just fine....

So changing the registry setting for the clockspeed of the aliance from 72 to 55 fixed the problem on BOTH cards!! 😎 😎 😎

Glad the cards are fine, and i LOVE this site!

asus tx97-e, 233mmx, voodoo1, s3 virge ,sb16
asus p5a, k6-3+ @ 550mhz, voodoo2 12mb sli, gf2 gts, awe32
asus p3b-f, p3-700, voodoo3 3500TV agp, awe64
asus tusl2-c, p3-S 1,4ghz, voodoo5 5500, live!
asus a7n8x DL, barton cpu, 6800ultra, Voodoo3 pci, audigy1

Reply 23 of 26, by NJRoadfan

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I have a M590 here with all the brackets.... and all the drivers. Despite being crap, the on-board stuff has drivers for just about every operating system including Windows 3.1x and OS/2! The on-board sound would meet your definition of "wrong", the chip has "PCI" silk screened on it, but its an ISA based C-Media CMI8330 that has Soundblaster 16 emulation. Do yourself a favor and upgrade the BIOS to the latest revision, the patched version here fixes PC Chip's buggy mess that disabled the USB ports: http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm

Reply 24 of 26, by meljor

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Thank you!

The newest bios i could find was one from dec 1998, yours is 6 months newer so maybe it fixes my problems. I have no brackets (and don't need them) and use a pci usb card so no problems there.
I DID look at that website but only at the first list and there was no m590 bios (had to look a little bit further....)

I don't use the onboard sound but i saw it during POST that it is an ISA based chip (while advertised as 3d pci sound, that's bad!)

Besides the fact that it is a crappy board, how is performance for you and did you compare it to a ''good'' s7 system? I still believe mine has a cache problem. In the benchmarks that DO work, performance seems to be there but in games it has very low fps compared to other systems of mine (while using the same cpu, memory and voodoo1). It just ''feels'' like a p100 or so...

asus tx97-e, 233mmx, voodoo1, s3 virge ,sb16
asus p5a, k6-3+ @ 550mhz, voodoo2 12mb sli, gf2 gts, awe32
asus p3b-f, p3-700, voodoo3 3500TV agp, awe64
asus tusl2-c, p3-S 1,4ghz, voodoo5 5500, live!
asus a7n8x DL, barton cpu, 6800ultra, Voodoo3 pci, audigy1

Reply 25 of 26, by NJRoadfan

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I never really used the board that much, it came in an AT tower case that I needed for something else. I basically opened it up, said "ugh a PC chips board" and promptly upgraded it to a 486. I have an Asus P5A here, so I'm covered in terms of SS7 machines.

Reply 26 of 26, by meljor

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i'm a big fan of the p5a, think it's the best ss7 board (i have three and still buy them when i can just to have backups).

''upgraded'' it to a 486 made me smile 🤣

The pcchips can't be THAT bad but i know what you mean.... I have no real use for it either but build it anyway.

asus tx97-e, 233mmx, voodoo1, s3 virge ,sb16
asus p5a, k6-3+ @ 550mhz, voodoo2 12mb sli, gf2 gts, awe32
asus p3b-f, p3-700, voodoo3 3500TV agp, awe64
asus tusl2-c, p3-S 1,4ghz, voodoo5 5500, live!
asus a7n8x DL, barton cpu, 6800ultra, Voodoo3 pci, audigy1