VOGONS


Reply 20 of 41, by sdw

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Hello Jan and B24Fox

I have a M577 motherboard. I was having all kinds of issues with my compact flash replacement drive even after flashing the J3 version. I was going down the road of trying to patch things myself when I found this thread. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

You might want to consider uploading your J4 version to theretroweb. As a semi newbie that is where I started and only recently ventured out looking for info other places. This thread did not popup easily from a search.

Adding tags help others find this thread easily.
PCChips M577
Amptron PM-9900
M577+ITE8661-2A5LEH0AC-00
PM9900+ITE866-2A5LEH0AC-00

Scotty

Reply 21 of 41, by B24Fox

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sdw wrote on 2025-04-13, 14:44:
Hello Jan and B24Fox […]
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Hello Jan and B24Fox

I have a M577 motherboard. I was having all kinds of issues with my compact flash replacement drive even after flashing the J3 version. I was going down the road of trying to patch things myself when I found this thread. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

You might want to consider uploading your J4 version to theretroweb. As a semi newbie that is where I started and only recently ventured out looking for info other places. This thread did not popup easily from a search.

Adding tags help others find this thread easily.
PCChips M577
Amptron PM-9900
M577+ITE8661-2A5LEH0AC-00
PM9900+ITE866-2A5LEH0AC-00

Scotty

I'm very glad that our little discussion here, also helped you out 😀

Did you by any chance also read my more recent posts on this thread, about the slowdown issue with my 2nd PCChips M577 Mobo?
(starting from this post: Re: Problem with UDMA, need BIOS fix for Taken TX3 (LGS Prime 3C))
I'm just curious if you also tested/benchamarked your mobo, before and after reflashing... and if it exhibits the slowdown issue.

Reply 22 of 41, by sdw

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B24Fox wrote on 2025-04-13, 20:59:

I'm very glad that our little discussion here, also helped you out 😀

Did you by any chance also read my more recent posts on this thread, about the slowdown issue with my 2nd PCChips M577 Mobo?
(starting from this post: Re: Problem with UDMA, need BIOS fix for Taken TX3 (LGS Prime 3C))
I'm just curious if you also tested/benchamarked your mobo, before and after reflashing... and if it exhibits the slowdown issue.
[/quote]

Yes, I read about the slow down with your second board. I have had no issues at all. Faster now than ever before with udma working properly. I have the rev 3 board with 374mb of PC100 ram. Have you validated the sdram voltage settings and run memtest86 to make sure your ram is good? You could also switch out the ram with the board you gave your cousin to see how it works in that machine and vice versa. Here is a pic of my speedsys 4.78 from philscomputerlab dosbench. I am over clocking a amd k6-2 450 cpu at the moment. I have several CPUs available to me. If I can change my set up and help you test as a comparison please let me know. Hope you figure out what's wrong with your machine. I know it's frustrating, I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out why my machine didn't like compact flash.

The attachment 20250414_083952.jpg is no longer available

Reply 23 of 41, by B24Fox

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sdw wrote on 2025-04-14, 12:42:
I'm very glad that our little discussion here, also helped you out :) […]
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B24Fox wrote on 2025-04-13, 20:59:

I'm very glad that our little discussion here, also helped you out 😀

Did you by any chance also read my more recent posts on this thread, about the slowdown issue with my 2nd PCChips M577 Mobo?
(starting from this post: Re: Problem with UDMA, need BIOS fix for Taken TX3 (LGS Prime 3C))
I'm just curious if you also tested/benchamarked your mobo, before and after reflashing... and if it exhibits the slowdown issue.

Yes, I read about the slow down with your second board. I have had no issues at all. Faster now than ever before with udma working properly. I have the rev 3 board with 374mb of PC100 ram. Have you validated the sdram voltage settings and run memtest86 to make sure your ram is good? You could also switch out the ram with the board you gave your cousin to see how it works in that machine and vice versa. Here is a pic of my speedsys 4.78 from philscomputerlab dosbench. I am over clocking a amd k6-2 450 cpu at the moment. I have several CPUs available to me. If I can change my set up and help you test as a comparison please let me know. Hope you figure out what's wrong with your machine. I know it's frustrating, I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out why my machine didn't like compact flash.

The attachment 20250414_083952.jpg is no longer available

[/quote]

I actually used the same stick(s) of RAM & CPU that I used when I tested the 1st board.
Also, oddly enough; when I did the testing(on the 2nd board), speedsys did NOT show any sign of slowdowns, or anything else wrong with the 2nd board. 😕
Only when booting DOS; MEMtest; and in the games/benchmarks specified in my post here:
Re: Problem with UDMA, need BIOS fix for Taken TX3 (LGS Prime 3C)
(I didn't do any tests in Windows)

P.S. you do seem to have a slightly higher Memory Bandwith (of 263.70MB/s) compared to 252MB/s that I got in the 1st mobo (and also the 2nd IIRC).
But that's probably due to the fact that you installed two RAM sticks (256MB+128MB), and I only used one 128MB stick.

Reply 24 of 41, by sdw

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I am running 3 sticks each 128mb.

I see your bench marks now in the thread. What cpu are you using? I will run the same dos benchmarks and give you the numbers.

Reply 25 of 41, by B24Fox

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sdw wrote on 2025-04-14, 15:26:

I am running 3 sticks each 128mb.

I see your bench marks now in the thread. What cpu are you using? I will run the same dos benchmarks and give you the numbers.

Thanks 😀
At that time, I was using a K6/2 clocked at 300Mhz , 100Mhz FSB, and 128MB of RAM

P.S.
Fron PHIL's benchmarks i used the following:
For both Chris's 3D Bench & PC Player, I benched the Hi-resolution variants.
For doom, I benched with High details
and for Quake, i benched with that weird high resolution that is lower than 640x480 , but doesn't require a vesa video card (I think it might be 360x480)

Last edited by B24Fox on 2025-04-14, 16:01. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 26 of 41, by sdw

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I have that cpu. I will remove 2 sticks of ram and run dosbench using J3 and J4 on ms-dos 6.22 later.

Reply 27 of 41, by B24Fox

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sdw wrote on 2025-04-14, 16:00:

I have that cpu. I will remove 2 sticks of ram and run dosbench using J3 and J4 on ms-dos 6.22 later.

Don't bother reflashing with the J3 BIOS.
Just use the J4 that you have now.

They both have the same performance 😀

Also, don't bother changing the CPU.
Just underclock yours by jumpers. It's the same thing.

(in case yuu didn't see my previous edit: )
P.S.
Fron PHIL's benchmarks i used the following:
For both Chris's 3D Bench & PC Player, I benched the Hi-resolution variants.
For doom, I benched with High details
and for Quake, i benched with that weird high resolution that is lower than 640x480 , but doesn't require a vesa video card (I think it might be 360x480)

Reply 28 of 41, by sdw

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I have my board setup on a test bench so it is easy to cfg, plus I have the 450AHX that needs 2.4v. The M577 doesnt have a 2.4v setting so I am running it at 2.5v. I dont think the 0.1v will make a difference underclocked, but just want to make sure. I will run it with your attached BIOS against J4 and post the results here.

Reply 29 of 41, by B24Fox

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sdw wrote on 2025-04-14, 16:24:

I have my board setup on a test bench so it is easy to cfg, plus I have the 450AHX that needs 2.4v. The M577 doesnt have a 2.4v setting so I am running it at 2.5v. I dont think the 0.1v will make a difference underclocked, but just want to make sure. I will run it with your attached BIOS against J4 and post the results here.

That is perfect! Thank you VERY much!!

P.S.
On an unrelated note: If you ever need to install a 2.0V CPU, like the K6/2+ on the M577; here's an undocumented Vcore = 2.0V setting, that I discovered & tested stable:
JP6: A=off ; B=off ; C=off ; D=off

Reply 30 of 41, by sdw

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In summary there is not a statistical difference between BIOS versions J4 and B24FOX when default performance values are loaded. There is a difference when you manually tweak the common configurations to both BIOS and the additional unhidden configuration values in the J4 version. See attached PDF for detailed metrics.

These values updated for better performance are:
Bank 0/1 DRAM Timing = Turbo
SDRAM Cycle Length = 2
OnChip USB = Disabled
Everything in the PCI Dynamic Bursting column to enabled
Disable both serial and parallel ports.
Disable the onboard sound chip

Reply 31 of 41, by B24Fox

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sdw wrote on 2025-04-14, 21:02:
In summary there is not a statistical difference between BIOS versions J4 and B24FOX when default performance values are loaded. […]
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In summary there is not a statistical difference between BIOS versions J4 and B24FOX when default performance values are loaded. There is a difference when you manually tweak the common configurations to both BIOS and the additional unhidden configuration values in the J4 version. See attached PDF for detailed metrics.

These values updated for better performance are:
Bank 0/1 DRAM Timing = Turbo
SDRAM Cycle Length = 2
OnChip USB = Disabled
Everything in the PCI Dynamic Bursting column to enabled
Disable both serial and parallel ports.
Disable the onboard sound chip

Thank you very much for this!!!!

I will try and redo my testing next week, and post back results 😀

Reply 33 of 41, by B24Fox

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sdw wrote on 2025-05-04, 16:00:
B24Fox Not sure you are aware of the the keyboard turbo switching features. […]
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B24Fox
Not sure you are aware of the the keyboard turbo switching features.

Turbo Switching and BIOS Speed Pin Option

SDW

I may be wrong, but I faintly remember that the "ctrl+alt+plus/minus" Turbo switching shortcut, is universal.
I never used it, as I am planing to use a K6/2+ CPU, and adjust the speed through "setmul" & "k6spd".
But I made sure that in the "BIOS FEATURE SETUP" menu, the "Boot Up System Speed" was always set to "High".
I will test this out though; to make sure there isn't some turbo-function glitch.

P.S.
Sorry for not replying with benchmark results yet. Having some IRL troubles..
Hopefully I will redo the tests, by the end of this month.

Thanks! ☺️

Reply 34 of 41, by B24Fox

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Yyyeah... sooo... about this post I wrote back in March, with this hunch I had...

B24Fox wrote on 2025-03-05, 22:27:
I don't know if this matters or not; but on the 1st board, i'm 90% certain that I never loaded any DEFAULT SETTINGS.. ever. And […]
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I don't know if this matters or not; but on the 1st board, i'm 90% certain that I never loaded any DEFAULT SETTINGS.. ever.
And what I've noticed now, after all the reflashes; is that the settings are still kept after a reflash.

So.. this is just a theory (maybe a dumb one), but:
...what if when I loaded "DEFAULTS" on your BIOS, it switched ON something in the background that is accessible only by your bios... and the "switch"itself is only taken into consideration when that bios is present.
So when I revert back to the stock bios, it makes that "switch" be ignored... but also inaccessible by the "DEFAULTS" command of the stock bios. (As i did try flashing back the original bios; set the DEFAULTS there; and then flashed back your bios. Obviously with no results.)

I just now reflashed again the J4 BIOS with AWDFLASH 6.28 (like usual), but this time I found out there are some switches I can use for clearing the:
- PnP (ESCD) Data (/cp)
- DMI Data (/cd)
- CMOS Data (/cc).
I used all three switches while reflashing, and this time I did NOT load any BIOS DEFAULTS after reboot.
Needless to say, now everything works perfectly fine with the 990309J4 bios as well, with no more slowdown 😁

Last edited by B24Fox on 2025-05-18, 19:41. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 35 of 41, by B24Fox

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sdw wrote on 2025-04-14, 21:02:
In summary there is not a statistical difference between BIOS versions J4 and B24FOX when default performance values are loaded. […]
Show full quote

In summary there is not a statistical difference between BIOS versions J4 and B24FOX when default performance values are loaded. There is a difference when you manually tweak the common configurations to both BIOS and the additional unhidden configuration values in the J4 version. See attached PDF for detailed metrics.

These values updated for better performance are:
Bank 0/1 DRAM Timing = Turbo
SDRAM Cycle Length = 2
OnChip USB = Disabled
Everything in the PCI Dynamic Bursting column to enabled
Disable both serial and parallel ports.
Disable the onboard sound chip

So, using the 300Mhz k6/2 (2.2V variant) that I have,
S3 Virge/DX 4MB in PCI slot#1,
1x 128MB SDRAM in slot#1(tried one single sided; and then anotherone dual-sided, both with exact same results)
Dos 6.22 from CF card & also tried with WinME System Disk (as an alternative, but with same results)
...here are my scores for both bioses (as they perform IDENTICAL):
***only on the J4, I also tried Enabling PCI Dynamic Bursting, which yielded better performance in some tests***

Speedsys Mem Bandwidth
216.76 MB/s

Speedsys CPU Benchmark
341.04

Speedsys L1 Cache - 32k
1382.82 MB/s

Speedsys L2 Cache - 1024k
256.64 MB/s

Speedsys Memory Throughput
143.49 MB/s

3DBench 1.0c
232.1 ***256.9***

Chris 3D 640x480
Score 77.9 ***85.5***
Frames 46.7 ***51.3***

PC Player 640x480
25.3 ***28.9***

Doom (max)
FPS 78.54 ***88.71***

Quake 360x480
Seconds 41.6
Frames 23.3

Except for PCI Dynamic Bursting, which I usually keep disabled, because the Voodoo2 cards don't like it; I tried setting every performance setting as you described.
But somehow, in SpeedSys, your system scores significantly higher Mem Bandwidth and Motherboard Cache speed..
My onboard cache chips are rated at 5ns; maybe yours are faster... Or maybe your CPU or RAM is more special 😀

Reply 36 of 41, by Chkcpu

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B24Fox wrote on 2025-05-18, 19:01:
Yyyeah... sooo... about this post I wrote back in March, with this hunch I had... […]
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Yyyeah... sooo... about this post I wrote back in March, with this hunch I had...

B24Fox wrote on 2025-03-05, 22:27:
I don't know if this matters or not; but on the 1st board, i'm 90% certain that I never loaded any DEFAULT SETTINGS.. ever. And […]
Show full quote

I don't know if this matters or not; but on the 1st board, i'm 90% certain that I never loaded any DEFAULT SETTINGS.. ever.
And what I've noticed now, after all the reflashes; is that the settings are still kept after a reflash.

So.. this is just a theory (maybe a dumb one), but:
...what if when I loaded "DEFAULTS" on your BIOS, it switched ON something in the background that is accessible only by your bios... and the "switch"itself is only taken into consideration when that bios is present.
So when I revert back to the stock bios, it makes that "switch" be ignored... but also inaccessible by the "DEFAULTS" command of the stock bios. (As i did try flashing back the original bios; set the DEFAULTS there; and then flashed back your bios. Obviously with no results.)

I just now reflashed again the J4 BIOS with AWDFLASH 6.28 (like usual), but this time I found out there are some switches I can use for clearing the:
- PnP (ESCD) Data (/cp)
- DMI Data (/cd)
- CMOS Data (/cc).
I used all three switches while reflashing, and this time I did NOT load any BIOS DEFAULTS after reboot.
Needless to say, now everything works perfectly fine with the 990309J4 bios as well, with no more slowdown 😁

Hi B24Fox,

Great that you fixed the slowdown on the 2nd M577 board now! 😀
But it’s still a mystery what caused it.

Clearing the CMOS when flashing a BIOS is aways a good thing, so the old BIOS settings don’t interfere with those of the new BIOS.
But when booting with an empty CMOS or CMOS checksum error, the BIOS always loads the SETUP DEFAULTS.
You did try loading both BEST PERFORMANCE DEFAULTS and SETUP DEFAULTS earlier, and that didn’t help. So I think the problem was not in the CMOS Settings.

Clearing the ESCD Block however may have solved your BIOS issue. I have no explanation on how this can be of influence, but I have once fixed a BIOS hang by clearing this PnP data block.
Note that the ESCD Block can also be cleared on a running system by setting the “Reset Configuration Data” option in the BIOS’s PNP/PCI CONFIGURATION menu to Enabled. This option acts only once, and is automatically Disabled again at the next boot-up.

Cheers, Jan

CPU Identification utility
The Unofficial K6-2+ / K6-III+ page

Reply 37 of 41, by B24Fox

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Hi Jan!

When I first discovered the slowdown issue, I'm certain I cleared the CMOS by removing the battery and shorting the +/- with a screwdriver for 10 seconds.
So I completely agree that the CMOS wasn't the culprit 😁

Thing is, I'm also 90% sure I tried “Reset Configuration Data” ... But I'm not 100% though 🤡

Reply 38 of 41, by sdw

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Hello B24Fox
I am glad you are running very similar numbers to mine. Your game numbers are better, but you are running a DX and I was using the older non-DX Virge. I still have my motherboard on my desk so I popped in my K6-2 300mhz cpu to double check my ram and L1 cache numbers. The L1 cache actually went from 1387.63 MB/s to 1402.64 MB/s today. The L2 and cache throughput remained exactly the same. I am not sure how L1 could improve and throughput remain the same. Maybe it is an estimate verses a true calculation.

I am running one sided Micron PC100 CL2 memory. Below is the sticker on the ram if it helps.

The attachment ram.JPG is no longer available

I included my bios setup just so you could double check.

The attachment bios settings.JPG is no longer available

Have fun on your system,
sdw

Reply 39 of 41, by B24Fox

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@sdw
Yes, those are the exact same settings that I also used : )

In an attempt to reproduce your SpeedSys results from here: Re: Problem with UDMA, need BIOS fix for Taken TX3 (LGS Prime 3C) I installed a 500Mhz K6/2 , 3 sticks of 128MB, and an AGP GeForce2.
And I got almost your exact same numbers, except for the CPU, where I got a slightly lower 567.37, instead of your 571.34.

Then I removed 2 sticks of ram, and underclocked the CPU to 300Mhz, and got the exact same SpeedSys numbers as your 300Mhz benchmark. 😀
So I recon it just comes down to some small difference in the CPU editions or something.

Thank you very much for taking your time to help me out!🥂 😁