Considering all the drive caching software and other stuff, i'm happy with my set:
386DX40 - 32MB ram
486DX100 - 128MB ram
PMMX233 - 256MB ram (as chipset only caches 64MB, i've used the top 192MB as ramdisk)

I would say, that this now is "enough" to do some stuff. 😀

And as was said before - if those memory slots were not meant to be filled, why did they add them?

GigAHerZ wrote on 2021-05-25, 09:43:

Considering all the drive caching software and other stuff, i'm happy with my set: 386DX40 - 32MB ram 486DX100 - 128MB ram PMMX2 […]
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Considering all the drive caching software and other stuff, i'm happy with my set:
386DX40 - 32MB ram
486DX100 - 128MB ram
PMMX233 - 256MB ram (as chipset only caches 64MB, i've used the top 192MB as ramdisk)

I would say, that this now is "enough" to do some stuff. 😀

And as was said before - if those memory slots were not meant to be filled, why did they add them?

How can your 486 cache that 128MB? 1024KB L2 Cache board? Also, what do you do with that much RAM on a 486? Running NT4 or something? 😁

appiah4 wrote on 2021-05-25, 10:08:

GigAHerZ wrote on 2021-05-25, 09:43:

Considering all the drive caching software and other stuff, i'm happy with my set: 386DX40 - 32MB ram 486DX100 - 128MB ram PMMX2 […]
Show full quote

Considering all the drive caching software and other stuff, i'm happy with my set:
386DX40 - 32MB ram
486DX100 - 128MB ram
PMMX233 - 256MB ram (as chipset only caches 64MB, i've used the top 192MB as ramdisk)

I would say, that this now is "enough" to do some stuff. 😀

And as was said before - if those memory slots were not meant to be filled, why did they add them?

How can your 486 cache that 128MB? 1024KB L2 Cache board? Also, what do you do with that much RAM on a 486? Running NT4 or something? 😁

Isn't cacheable range more a question of TAG size?

appiah4 wrote on 2021-05-25, 10:08:

GigAHerZ wrote on 2021-05-25, 09:43:

Considering all the drive caching software and other stuff, i'm happy with my set: 386DX40 - 32MB ram 486DX100 - 128MB ram PMMX2 […]
Show full quote

Considering all the drive caching software and other stuff, i'm happy with my set:
386DX40 - 32MB ram
486DX100 - 128MB ram
PMMX233 - 256MB ram (as chipset only caches 64MB, i've used the top 192MB as ramdisk)

I would say, that this now is "enough" to do some stuff. 😀

And as was said before - if those memory slots were not meant to be filled, why did they add them?

How can your 486 cache that 128MB? 1024KB L2 Cache board? Also, what do you do with that much RAM on a 486? Running NT4 or something? 😁

To be honest, that's a bit of work in progress yet. I need to exactly validate, how much really is cached and if it's less than 128MB, the rest will be ramdisk again. 😜
There are many different things to consider, which i haven't fully dug through yet. One is cache size, other is tag size, third is additional dirty bit logic for write-back feature, and probably there are some "uknown uknowns" still lingering around. (Maybe banking and interleaving becomes somehow important in this scope as well?)

H3nrik V! wrote on 2021-05-25, 10:25:

appiah4 wrote on 2021-05-25, 10:08:

GigAHerZ wrote on 2021-05-25, 09:43:

Considering all the drive caching software and other stuff, i'm happy with my set: 386DX40 - 32MB ram 486DX100 - 128MB ram PMMX2 […]
Show full quote

Considering all the drive caching software and other stuff, i'm happy with my set:
386DX40 - 32MB ram
486DX100 - 128MB ram
PMMX233 - 256MB ram (as chipset only caches 64MB, i've used the top 192MB as ramdisk)

I would say, that this now is "enough" to do some stuff. 😀

And as was said before - if those memory slots were not meant to be filled, why did they add them?

How can your 486 cache that 128MB? 1024KB L2 Cache board? Also, what do you do with that much RAM on a 486? Running NT4 or something? 😁

Isn't cacheable range more a question of TAG size?

No? TAG size is more a question of max cache you can have?

appiah4 wrote on 2021-05-25, 11:54:

H3nrik V! wrote on 2021-05-25, 10:25:

appiah4 wrote on 2021-05-25, 10:08:

How can your 486 cache that 128MB? 1024KB L2 Cache board? Also, what do you do with that much RAM on a 486? Running NT4 or something? 😁

Isn't cacheable range more a question of TAG size?

No? TAG size is more a question of max cache you can have?

But isn't the idea of the tag, to keep track of, what memory area is cached and what is not? For the Pentium-II, all with 512KiB of L2 cache, some can "only" cache 512 MiB where as others can cache 4 GiB, dependent on "T6" or "TP6-e" tag chip.

In my HOT-433 (486 motherboard) I use 256 MB RAM and 1024 kB Cache. It is fully cached when operating in write-through mode. Tag mode here is 8 bits.
In write back mode tag mode is 7+1 bits. Due to 1 bit less the cacheable area is reduced to 128 MB which is half the size.
Re: My 486 UMC8886/8881 Project

Bought a bunch of stuff from ewaste today ($5 each for cards and the floppy drive, $10 for the P2B). My source doesn't remove brackets but unfortunately the person that they got these batch of cards from does 🙁 Very happy about the Powerleap, it's beat up but repairable.

Also bought a bunch of things last week from the same place including a Voodoo4 PCI and Voodoo3 1000 agp, 2 TEAC FD55-GFR 5.25 drives, FIC 486-PIO2 and another 486 board (more pics of those to come) for $5 per card and $10 per mobo.

Nice, I see a RealMagic Rave card there (Trident + RealMagic MPEG decoder VLB). Rare to see a photo of it!

H3nrik V! wrote on 2021-05-25, 10:25:

appiah4 wrote on 2021-05-25, 10:08:

Isn't cacheable range more a question of TAG size?

No? TAG size is more a question of max cache you can have?

You are both right. Cacheability limit can have different causes. Cache tag line width (not necessarily the capacity of TAG SRAM chip itself) is the most common (along various limits of chipsets).

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-05-24, 22:39:

PC@LIVE wrote on 2021-05-24, 21:46:

Yes ok thanks. You're right, it's two banks of four each, if everything goes well and works, I can put in another 4MB, so I woul […]
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Yes ok thanks.
You're right, it's two banks of four each, if everything goes well and works, I can put in another 4MB, so I would get a total of 8MB of RAM.
Probably this card supports RAM of higher capacity, for example those of 4MB each, unfortunately I have never had any and wanting to find them they cost a lot.
The cost was quite low, less than $ 15 (including shipping), but it remains unknown whether it is still working after years of inactivity.

IMO there's barely anything worth running on the slower half of 486 or any 386s that needs more than 8MB, and even some things that say they want 8 run on 6. (Once you get to 95-96 era software though, 9x better on 16MB and X window on linux distros of the time) Keep your eyes open for "bag/box of old RAM" deals though on local used markets, can get a surprising variety for cheap.

Yes, most programs work with only 4MB, but some need 8MB if I remember correctly.
If I wanted I would also have 256KB RAM, but in that PC it is almost the same to have 4MB or 5MB (4 + 1).
The last 30PIN RAM I bought was a batch, around twenty or thirty pieces, some go at 100ns but I don't use them in 386 or 486 PCs.
Unfortunately I have been looking for 4MB each for years, they are rare and difficult to find, many years ago they were still there.

4MB SIMMs are plenty around... you just need to look at the right place of course...

Even 16MB 30-pin Simms can be had new for a good price.

Not sure what shipping from the USA would be though.

I'm not much for skt 7 stuff, but saw this at the weekend as bulk NOS...a Lucky Star 5MVP3 v2.1. Anyone know the latest BIOS for this version - I updated it to au6-3 which seems to be the latest for v2.x boards listed by LS on archive.org, but there are later versions for v4.x boards. Do they work too (seen comments online that there may be issues using these)?

Some ram's I've just received in the mail.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-05-25, 20:22:

Even 16MB 30-pin Simms can be had new for a good price.

Not sure what shipping from the USA would be though.

They are damn rare where I live. I actually managed to find 2 16MB 30-pin SIMMs two years ago, from a guy who got them custom produced for himself many many years ago and they are on an AWE32 currently. I would be OK with having just 8MB on that card, but I till don't have any 4MB ones.

pan069 wrote on 2021-05-25, 09:30:

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-05-25, 08:06:

If you have extra RAM, you can always use it for something like SMARTDRV.

Ahh, SMARTDRV. The solid state drive of the 80's and 90's 😀

I'd like to know what were the actual usage scenarios for that, to be honest 😀 Sure it's fast, but don't you have to keep in mind whether or not you have your files stored in RAM (so as to not to lose them after a shutdown/reset)?

You probably mean RAMDRIVE as SMARTDRV is just HDD caching done in software. Every OS uses it today. With RAMDRIVE you should be careful when turning off the computer and not copying the data to real HDD.

kixs wrote on 2021-05-26, 11:30:

You probably mean RAMDRIVE as SMARTDRV is just HDD caching done in software. Every OS uses it today. With RAMDRIVE you should be careful when turning off the computer and not copying the data to real HDD.

Right, thanks!

I think I've seen quite a few mentions of different tools that existed for RAM drives (some even used the sample RAM of GUS/AWE32 cards for that purpose), so it doesn't seem too exotic. The question is why 😀

If you frequently work with large or many small files the loading times would decrease dramatically. But it's a specific thing. I've only used it for testing/benchmarking.