In another thread, Kanevcr noted slow performance from a FIC 486-VIP-IO which prompted me to drag out my own one and in doing so I noted similar performance, even after convincing the board to run an AMD X5 at various clock speeds. I gained an improvement when replacing a PCI video card with a VLB Trio64 but the board is still performing slower than my baseline 486DX2-66 - ironically, I use FIC's Leo Data Book as the baseline, my ITOX Star is about the same however, but can yield an unfair boost due to the level of integration, being a SoC.

In general, the issues I noted are.
1. The L1 cache can not be set to Write-Back. JC7 selects this, it either stops the board from entering POST or does noting and the board starts with Write-Thru regardless of jumper, BIOS setting or CPU used. The interface DOES exist however, as I can install an M1 (BIOS even recognises it!) and enable WB through software.

2. The L2 cache won't work. I can set ANY CPU type and ANY BIOS version with any settings I want, no matter what I try, the board says there is no L2 cache in the configuration table which appears after POST. Programs like NSSI confirm that the external cache is not running. The chips do get mildly warm which implies power is getting to them fine and using a multimeter confirms that power is where it ought to be. I did replace the chips just to be certain.

3. Overall, the slowness of the board. I have tried everything I can think of, but to no avail. Not what you'd expect from the owner of the world's fastest VL-BUS 486 (Hooker, Aquarius) which makes me wonder what exactly is going on. An interesting find I made, is that all the socketed ICs on this board have solder on their pins... did FIC use salvage to make this thing or something?

Just wondered if anyone had any ideas, mostly about the L2 cache as it seems unlikely FIC would overlook such a flaw, surely?