jasa1063 wrote on 2021-03-27, 01:52:

I was looking into building a Cyrix 5x86 system, but then decided on a Cyrix MediaGX system since this has a Cyrix 5x86 core. I […]
Show full quote

I was looking into building a Cyrix 5x86 system, but then decided on a Cyrix MediaGX system since this has a Cyrix 5x86 core. I thought this would be a much more interesting build. The biggest obstacle is finding a motherboard. I saw a video on this topic on the CPU Galaxy YouTube channel and he had a link to a seller on eBay. I ordered a motherboard, CPU and accessories. Here are the system specs:

ECS P5GX-M motherboard
Geode GXm-266P CPU @2.9v overclocked to 300MHz (Same as a MediaGX just sold by National Semiconductor after buying Cyrix)
256MB (2x128MB) PC100 SDRAM
3Com Etherlink III network card
TopView ET6000 4MB video card
8GB CompactFlash with a CF to IDE adapter
1.44MB 3.5" floppy drive
16x DVD
Windows 98 SE with Unofficial Service Pack 3

I opted not to use the onboard video as this made overclocking easier and tighter memory timings. I did end up using the onboard SB16 audio. The next issue to resolve was finding a way to tweak the MediaGX register settings. Thanks to this post by feipoa, I was able figure out how to use CTCHIP34 to tweak the MediaGX CPU including enabling Branch Prediciton. I already posted some results in that thread.

Re: Register settings for various CPUs

I have CTCHIP34 in my AUTOEXEC.BAT with the following parameters:

CTCHIP34 cx586 /20:=7
CTCHIP34 cx586 /0e8:=0f8

I have no stability issues except for trying to run DOS Quake at resolutions at 640x480 and above with the tweaks applied. The system just reboots. I got around that problem by using UNIVBE 6.7. There seems to be some issue with the VESA BIOS in the ET6000 card that does not work with the tweaks, but does with UNIVBE. I have no issues in Windows 98 SE and WinQuake runs just fine. Here the results of some DOS benchmarks.

No tweaks applied:

3DBench 1.0c - 156.6 FPS
Chris's 3D Benchmark - 320x200 - 124.3 FPS
Chris's 3D Benchmark - 640x480 - 35.7 FPS
PC Player - 320x200 - 48.7 FPS
PC Player - 640x480 - 19.1 FPS
Doom - Max Details - 86.54 FPS
Quake - 320x200 - 35.2 FPS
Quake - 640x480 - 13.7 FPS
Norton SI 8.0 = 793.9
Topbench 40a - 686
SpeedSys 4.78 CPU Performance Index - 151.09

Tweaks applied:

3DBench 1.0c - 162.3 FPS
Chris's 3D Benchmark - 320x200 - 128.9 FPS
Chris's 3D Benchmark - 640x480 - 35.7 FPS
PC Player - 320x200 - 50.2 FPS
PC Player - 640x480 - 19.7 FPS
Doom - Max Details - 89.02 FPS
Quake - 320x200 - 39.8 FPS
Quake - 640x480 - 15.6 FPS
Norton SI 8.0 - 1020.6
Topbench 40a - 690
SpeedSys 4.78 CPU Peformance Index - 179.82

Overall this has been a fun build. It's basically like having a 486 system on steroids:)

Slap a voodoo 1 in that thing and apparently it's more like having a Pentium 1 system and it's perfect for early accelerated games

I'm working on one of these myself. a few questions:

• So you got it to run stable at 300mhz with the full 256 megs of ram. What are your settings? (Cas latency and divider)

• What kind of sticks were they?

• Did you manage to get the IDE drivers to work in Windows 98 or are you using PIO in Windows

Planning to run mine with:
- a GX1 300mhz (die shrunk version of the GXm) with 64 megs of ram minimum (2x double sided 32 meg sticks). Might add a switch so I can toggle between the lowest and highest multi. You'd still have to get into the bios and disable the L1 and decrease the ram settings for really picky games (386 40 mhz speeds according to Phil) but you wouldn't have to open the case!.

-Guillermot Maxi Gamer Voodoo 1

- Soundblaster AWE 64 w/Simconn, ISA Midi board with a Dreamblaster X2

-2 32 gig SSDs (1 for W98se, and 1 for DOS 6.22 + extra storage) with a SATA to IDE bridge (assuming the drivers cooperate)

- A yet to be determined primary GPU: Currently have a STB Riva 128 (with a much better heatsink, one of the larger Raspberry Pi that are about 2x4 inches or so wide), a Chinese FX 5500 with 256 megs of slow desktop DDR 266 ram but the full 128 bit bus, an ATI AIW Rage Pro Turbo w/8 megs of SGRAM (more for lols and playing around with ATICIF), and a Quadro 4 NVS 400 (yes the one with 2 GPUS, apparently it runs with regular Detonator drivers and windows just sees 2 separate GPUS, I plan to disable one in Windows) on the way. I'll probably go with the quadro unless it doesn't fit or there's another hiccup. Barring that it'll be whichever one performs better: FX or Riva (or maybe the ATI if I get lucky and it's more compatible than expected)

This all assumes the SATA to IDE board cooperates and the busmaster drivers cooperate, If they don't I'll wind up using:
- Promise PCI SATA adaptor
- Voodoo 3 1000 with AGP to PCI bridgeboard (won't be able to play with the pickier Voodoo 1 games unfortunately) assuming it fits in my case. If not I'll have to wait for a less than insanely priced PCI Voodoo 3.

It should nicely cover a sizable chunk of time from 386 to early 3D accelerated games if everything pans out right!

Jackal1983 wrote on 2021-03-27, 04:47:

Slap a voodoo 1 in that thing and apparently it's more like having a Pentium 1 system and it's perfect for early accelerated gam […]
Show full quote

jasa1063 wrote on 2021-03-27, 01:52:

I was looking into building a Cyrix 5x86 system, but then decided on a Cyrix MediaGX system since this has a Cyrix 5x86 core. I […]
Show full quote

I was looking into building a Cyrix 5x86 system, but then decided on a Cyrix MediaGX system since this has a Cyrix 5x86 core. I thought this would be a much more interesting build. The biggest obstacle is finding a motherboard. I saw a video on this topic on the CPU Galaxy YouTube channel and he had a link to a seller on eBay. I ordered a motherboard, CPU and accessories. Here are the system specs:

ECS P5GX-M motherboard
Geode GXm-266P CPU @2.9v overclocked to 300MHz (Same as a MediaGX just sold by National Semiconductor after buying Cyrix)
256MB (2x128MB) PC100 SDRAM
3Com Etherlink III network card
TopView ET6000 4MB video card
8GB CompactFlash with a CF to IDE adapter
1.44MB 3.5" floppy drive
16x DVD
Windows 98 SE with Unofficial Service Pack 3

I opted not to use the onboard video as this made overclocking easier and tighter memory timings. I did end up using the onboard SB16 audio. The next issue to resolve was finding a way to tweak the MediaGX register settings. Thanks to this post by feipoa, I was able figure out how to use CTCHIP34 to tweak the MediaGX CPU including enabling Branch Prediciton. I already posted some results in that thread.

Re: Register settings for various CPUs

I have CTCHIP34 in my AUTOEXEC.BAT with the following parameters:

CTCHIP34 cx586 /20:=7
CTCHIP34 cx586 /0e8:=0f8

I have no stability issues except for trying to run DOS Quake at resolutions at 640x480 and above with the tweaks applied. The system just reboots. I got around that problem by using UNIVBE 6.7. There seems to be some issue with the VESA BIOS in the ET6000 card that does not work with the tweaks, but does with UNIVBE. I have no issues in Windows 98 SE and WinQuake runs just fine. Here the results of some DOS benchmarks.

No tweaks applied:

3DBench 1.0c - 156.6 FPS
Chris's 3D Benchmark - 320x200 - 124.3 FPS
Chris's 3D Benchmark - 640x480 - 35.7 FPS
PC Player - 320x200 - 48.7 FPS
PC Player - 640x480 - 19.1 FPS
Doom - Max Details - 86.54 FPS
Quake - 320x200 - 35.2 FPS
Quake - 640x480 - 13.7 FPS
Norton SI 8.0 = 793.9
Topbench 40a - 686
SpeedSys 4.78 CPU Performance Index - 151.09

Tweaks applied:

3DBench 1.0c - 162.3 FPS
Chris's 3D Benchmark - 320x200 - 128.9 FPS
Chris's 3D Benchmark - 640x480 - 35.7 FPS
PC Player - 320x200 - 50.2 FPS
PC Player - 640x480 - 19.7 FPS
Doom - Max Details - 89.02 FPS
Quake - 320x200 - 39.8 FPS
Quake - 640x480 - 15.6 FPS
Norton SI 8.0 - 1020.6
Topbench 40a - 690
SpeedSys 4.78 CPU Peformance Index - 179.82

Overall this has been a fun build. It's basically like having a 486 system on steroids:)

Slap a voodoo 1 in that thing and apparently it's more like having a Pentium 1 system and it's perfect for early accelerated games

I'm working on one of these myself. a few questions:

• So you got it to run stable at 300mhz with the full 256 megs of ram. What are your settings? (Cas latency and divider)

• What kind of sticks were they?

• Did you manage to get the IDE drivers to work in Windows 98 or are you using PIO in Windows

Planning to run mine with:
- a GX1 300mhz (die shrunk version of the GXm) with 64 megs of ram minimum (2x double sided 32 meg sticks). Might add a switch so I can toggle between the lowest and highest multi. You'd still have to get into the bios and disable the L1 and decrease the ram settings for really picky games (386 40 mhz speeds according to Phil) but you wouldn't have to open the case!.

-Guillermot Maxi Gamer Voodoo 1

- Soundblaster AWE 64 w/Simconn, ISA Midi board with a Dreamblaster X2

-2 32 gig SSDs (1 for W98se, and 1 for DOS 6.22 + extra storage) with a SATA to IDE bridge (assuming the drivers cooperate)

- A yet to be determined primary GPU: Currently have a STB Riva 128 (with a much better heatsink, one of the larger Raspberry Pi that are about 2x4 inches or so wide), a Chinese FX 5500 with 256 megs of slow desktop DDR 266 ram but the full 128 bit bus, an ATI AIW Rage Pro Turbo w/8 megs of SGRAM (more for lols and playing around with ATICIF), and a Quadro 4 NVS 400 (yes the one with 2 GPUS, apparently it runs with regular Detonator drivers and windows just sees 2 separate GPUS, I plan to disable one in Windows) on the way. I'll probably go with the quadro unless it doesn't fit or there's another hiccup. Barring that it'll be whichever one performs better: FX or Riva (or maybe the ATI if I get lucky and it's more compatible than expected)

This all assumes the SATA to IDE board cooperates and the busmaster drivers cooperate, If they don't I'll wind up using:
- Promise PCI SATA adaptor
- Voodoo 3 1000 with AGP to PCI bridgeboard (won't be able to play with the pickier Voodoo 1 games unfortunately) assuming it fits in my case. If not I'll have to wait for a less than insanely priced PCI Voodoo 3.

It should nicely cover a sizable chunk of time from 386 to early 3D accelerated games if everything pans out right!

I have the CAS latency set to 2 and the divider set to 4 . I tried 2 sticks of 128MB PC133 SDRAM and I was able to boot to DOS using a divider of 3, but booting Windows 98 SE would just hang. I got the memory from Memory Masters on eBay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/128MB-MEMORY-16X64-1 … 872.m2749.l2649

I could not get the IDE drivers to work in Windows 98 SE. The system would blue screen on booting. I also have a 300MHz GX1 on order hoping that will allow a full 333MHz overclock. I am not sure it is compatible with this motherboard. That chip is meant to work with a CX5530A companion chip vs the CX5530 that is on the P5GX-M. I will find out once I have it in a week or two. I have tried a TNT2 M64 32MB video card and that seems to work pretty well. I really prefer the ET6000 and plan on sticking with 2D gaming, but it's nice to know the TNT2 M64 card works. Stay way from the any FX 5200/5500 PCI card. The DOS performance is totally abysmal. I may just stick a Voodoo 2 card in down the road. I have a couple, but those are currently used in two Socket 7 builds I have.

jasa1063 wrote on 2021-03-27, 05:15:

I have the CAS latency set to 2 and the divider set to 4 . I tried 2 sticks of 128MB PC133 SDRAM and I was able to boot to DOS […]
Show full quote

Jackal1983 wrote on 2021-03-27, 04:47:

Slap a voodoo 1 in that thing and apparently it's more like having a Pentium 1 system and it's perfect for early accelerated gam […]
Show full quote

jasa1063 wrote on 2021-03-27, 01:52:

I was looking into building a Cyrix 5x86 system, but then decided on a Cyrix MediaGX system since this has a Cyrix 5x86 core. I […]
Show full quote

I was looking into building a Cyrix 5x86 system, but then decided on a Cyrix MediaGX system since this has a Cyrix 5x86 core. I thought this would be a much more interesting build. The biggest obstacle is finding a motherboard. I saw a video on this topic on the CPU Galaxy YouTube channel and he had a link to a seller on eBay. I ordered a motherboard, CPU and accessories. Here are the system specs:

ECS P5GX-M motherboard
Geode GXm-266P CPU @2.9v overclocked to 300MHz (Same as a MediaGX just sold by National Semiconductor after buying Cyrix)
256MB (2x128MB) PC100 SDRAM
3Com Etherlink III network card
TopView ET6000 4MB video card
8GB CompactFlash with a CF to IDE adapter
1.44MB 3.5" floppy drive
16x DVD
Windows 98 SE with Unofficial Service Pack 3

I opted not to use the onboard video as this made overclocking easier and tighter memory timings. I did end up using the onboard SB16 audio. The next issue to resolve was finding a way to tweak the MediaGX register settings. Thanks to this post by feipoa, I was able figure out how to use CTCHIP34 to tweak the MediaGX CPU including enabling Branch Prediciton. I already posted some results in that thread.

Re: Register settings for various CPUs

I have CTCHIP34 in my AUTOEXEC.BAT with the following parameters:

CTCHIP34 cx586 /20:=7
CTCHIP34 cx586 /0e8:=0f8

I have no stability issues except for trying to run DOS Quake at resolutions at 640x480 and above with the tweaks applied. The system just reboots. I got around that problem by using UNIVBE 6.7. There seems to be some issue with the VESA BIOS in the ET6000 card that does not work with the tweaks, but does with UNIVBE. I have no issues in Windows 98 SE and WinQuake runs just fine. Here the results of some DOS benchmarks.

No tweaks applied:

3DBench 1.0c - 156.6 FPS
Chris's 3D Benchmark - 320x200 - 124.3 FPS
Chris's 3D Benchmark - 640x480 - 35.7 FPS
PC Player - 320x200 - 48.7 FPS
PC Player - 640x480 - 19.1 FPS
Doom - Max Details - 86.54 FPS
Quake - 320x200 - 35.2 FPS
Quake - 640x480 - 13.7 FPS
Norton SI 8.0 = 793.9
Topbench 40a - 686
SpeedSys 4.78 CPU Performance Index - 151.09

Tweaks applied:

3DBench 1.0c - 162.3 FPS
Chris's 3D Benchmark - 320x200 - 128.9 FPS
Chris's 3D Benchmark - 640x480 - 35.7 FPS
PC Player - 320x200 - 50.2 FPS
PC Player - 640x480 - 19.7 FPS
Doom - Max Details - 89.02 FPS
Quake - 320x200 - 39.8 FPS
Quake - 640x480 - 15.6 FPS
Norton SI 8.0 - 1020.6
Topbench 40a - 690
SpeedSys 4.78 CPU Peformance Index - 179.82

Overall this has been a fun build. It's basically like having a 486 system on steroids:)

Slap a voodoo 1 in that thing and apparently it's more like having a Pentium 1 system and it's perfect for early accelerated games

I'm working on one of these myself. a few questions:

• So you got it to run stable at 300mhz with the full 256 megs of ram. What are your settings? (Cas latency and divider)

• What kind of sticks were they?

• Did you manage to get the IDE drivers to work in Windows 98 or are you using PIO in Windows

Planning to run mine with:
- a GX1 300mhz (die shrunk version of the GXm) with 64 megs of ram minimum (2x double sided 32 meg sticks). Might add a switch so I can toggle between the lowest and highest multi. You'd still have to get into the bios and disable the L1 and decrease the ram settings for really picky games (386 40 mhz speeds according to Phil) but you wouldn't have to open the case!.

-Guillermot Maxi Gamer Voodoo 1

- Soundblaster AWE 64 w/Simconn, ISA Midi board with a Dreamblaster X2

-2 32 gig SSDs (1 for W98se, and 1 for DOS 6.22 + extra storage) with a SATA to IDE bridge (assuming the drivers cooperate)

- A yet to be determined primary GPU: Currently have a STB Riva 128 (with a much better heatsink, one of the larger Raspberry Pi that are about 2x4 inches or so wide), a Chinese FX 5500 with 256 megs of slow desktop DDR 266 ram but the full 128 bit bus, an ATI AIW Rage Pro Turbo w/8 megs of SGRAM (more for lols and playing around with ATICIF), and a Quadro 4 NVS 400 (yes the one with 2 GPUS, apparently it runs with regular Detonator drivers and windows just sees 2 separate GPUS, I plan to disable one in Windows) on the way. I'll probably go with the quadro unless it doesn't fit or there's another hiccup. Barring that it'll be whichever one performs better: FX or Riva (or maybe the ATI if I get lucky and it's more compatible than expected)

This all assumes the SATA to IDE board cooperates and the busmaster drivers cooperate, If they don't I'll wind up using:
- Promise PCI SATA adaptor
- Voodoo 3 1000 with AGP to PCI bridgeboard (won't be able to play with the pickier Voodoo 1 games unfortunately) assuming it fits in my case. If not I'll have to wait for a less than insanely priced PCI Voodoo 3.

It should nicely cover a sizable chunk of time from 386 to early 3D accelerated games if everything pans out right!

I have the CAS latency set to 2 and the divider set to 4 . I tried 2 sticks of 128MB PC133 SDRAM and I was able to boot to DOS using a divider of 3, but booting Windows 98 SE would just hang. I got the memory from Memory Masters on eBay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/128MB-MEMORY-16X64-1 … 872.m2749.l2649

I could not get the IDE drivers to work in Windows 98 SE. The system would blue screen on booting. I also have a 300MHz GX1 on order hoping that will allow a full 333MHz overclock. I am not sure it is compatible with this motherboard. That chip is meant to work with a CX5530A companion chip vs the CX5530 that is on the P5GX-M. I will find out once I have it in a week or two. I have tried a TNT2 M64 32MB video card and that seems to work pretty well. I really prefer the ET6000 and plan on sticking with 2D gaming, but it's nice to know the TNT2 M64 card works. Stay way from the any FX 5200/5500 PCI card. The DOS performance is totally abysmal. I may just stick a Voodoo 2 card in down the road. I have a couple, but those are currently used in two Socket 7 builds I have.

Ah, so I'll probably stick with 64 megs then. Should be just enough for my purposes. These things are so bandwidth starved that I'd rather have the option of running the memory faster . I might hunt down a couple of 64 mb sticks and see if that works at full speed. I might try a single 128 meg stick too. I plan to try 333 mhz too, but I'm not exactly optimistic: I suspect those chips were generally on boards optimized for those speeds (shorter traces, fewer modules to drive, etc.). About the FX5500: that's news to me, thanks, guess it goes back into mothballs then!

Interesting system and swell Doom score.

I did a bit more research on using a Geode GX1 in conjunction with a Cx5530 companion chip vs a Cx5530A. There are combinations of those that are used so I am pretty confident the I have on order will work with my current motherboard. Here is a link to one such example:

http://www.bwi.com/document/1202

jasa1063 wrote on 2021-03-28, 20:09:

I did a bit more research on using a Geode GX1 in conjunction with a Cx5530 companion chip vs a Cx5530A. There are combinations of those that are used so I am pretty confident the I have on order will work with my current motherboard. Here is a link to one such example:

http://www.bwi.com/document/1202

Oh, I know for a fact it works, Feipoa's (I think) been doing it for awhile. According to Wiki (I think) the only thing that the 5503A brings to the table is allowing the usage of the GX1's more capable GPU. It's getting to 330 mhz I'm not optimistic about. Take a good look at that mobo layout you posted and note how close the CPU is to the ram and the companion chip and compare it to our mobo. With internal memory controllers (what I suspect is the real limiting factor here) things like trace distance (less interference) and dimm size (fewer chips do drive) become as important as density (data per chip) when you start pushing things to the limit. I do plan to try things like a single (double side) 64 meg stick and one of the 32 meg sticks I have and maybe a modest voltage bump from stock (because the memory controller voltage might scale with the set core voltage) before writing that possibility off. Silicon (i.e memory controller) quality might also be a factor but who knows how one would be able to tell without just trying random chips, perhaps higher temp ratings (85P versus 75P chips where the numbers are the temp ratings in degrees C) are indicative.

I got the 300MHz 2.0 volt Geode CPU today and while it posts it immediately locks up. My motherboard supports 2.1 volts as the lowest voltage. The CPU is supposed to be 2.2 volt tolerant. I've tried both 2.1 and 2.2 volts with no luck. At this point I am just going to use my 266MHz Geode CPU overclocked to 300MHz and leave it at that. I am more than satisfied with my current configuration, but wanted to see if I could push it a little further.

I tracked down the DOS/Quake issue at higher 256 color resolutions were the computer would just reboot. It turned out that I was using HIMEMX.EXE from FreeDOS that caused the problem. Since switching to HIMEM.SYS under my DOS only boot configuration, I have had no further instability issues. I also decided to try my AOpen TNT2 M64 32MB PCI video card for running some 3D games in Windows 98 SE. The best I can get is 19.2 FPS at 640x480 in both GLQuake and Quake 2. Quake 3 comes in at 16.3 FPS. At those frame rates it is just not worth trying use a system like this for Windows 9x 3D gaming. I am just someone who prefers 30+ FPS in my Windows 9x 3D games. I put my ET6000 4MB PCI card back in and just going continue to use the computer as a 2D only gaming system for both DOS and Windows 9x.

Sorry in advance for necro'ing an old thread.

Is there any chance someone could post a copy of the ECS P5GX-M BIOS?

Mine became corrupted during my build.

TigerBill wrote on 2021-06-24, 19:26:

Sorry in advance for necro'ing an old thread.

Is there any chance someone could post a copy of the ECS P5GX-M BIOS?

Mine became corrupted during my build.

Attached is a ZIP file containing UNIFLASH and dump of my P5GX-M BIOS.

Cheers:)

Jasa1063, I appreciate the help; I will let you know if it fixes my issues.
Thank you.

TigerBill wrote on 2021-06-26, 22:23:

Jasa1063, I appreciate the help; I will let you know if it fixes my issues.
Thank you.

Good luck!

A quick update; the BIOS that jasa1063 provided worked great and my motherboard is operational again.
Thanks again jasa1063.

Excellent news! I love when hardware gets saved and can continue to be used

TigerBill wrote on 2021-06-29, 14:31:

A quick update; the BIOS that jasa1063 provided worked great and my motherboard is operational again.
Thanks again jasa1063.

A great piece of computing history get's to live on. Always glad to help make that happen:)