does the software "turbo switch" work? (ctrl alt +)

Unfortunately, pressing CTRL and ALT and (Num Lock ON) + did not seem to speed up the machine. Also, the light inside the Turbo LED attached to the Turbo LED mobo pins did not toggle between on and off. The light just remained on all the time.

In my original post above, I mentioned my old thread about this mboo. And in that thread, Vogons user 386DX40 recommended running a utility called CTCM.exe, in order to understand a bit more about what is happening with the mobo's memory etc. I just ran it, and the results are included below as an attachment.

I've just remembered something a bit odd about this board. Please look at the diagram below. It's taken from the stason link I mentioned above in my original post. Please look at the area marked (A). It points to a "jumper block" called RNI. This is something on the mobo that you can adjust, depending on what CPU you are installing. The odd thing is, it has 10 pins. Reading the online manual for the CPU type selection, for this jumper block called RNI, it only mentions 8 pins!

When I originally tested this board, an 8 only pin "jumper filling block" for jumper RNI wasn't set to fill pin holes 1-8, but instead it only filled pin holes 3-10! (The red arrow in the diagram points to pin hole number 10.) So, the first 2 pin holes inside this RNI jumper block were not filled. I removed this 8 pin "jumper filling block", and put it in to pin holes 1-8, leaving the pin holes 9 and 10 unfilled. Unfortunately, that didn't speed up the machine.

But I've had a thought. Why don't I get a piece of bent metal, like a typical office staple, and fill RNI's pin holes 9 and 10? (The 8 pin jumper block can remain in place, filling pin holes 1-8.) That way, all 10 pins inside this RNI block will be filled. Good idea? bad idea?

Why not just use 5 regular jumpers? You can even pick 5 different colors!! 😁

The 8 pin jumper block that I am referring to in my posts above looks like the one seen in the photo below. This photo shows one of these items, accidentally broken in to 2 pieces. The red lines drawn on to the photo show where the connections are. Regular/typical jumpers found all over a 486 mobo will not work for the RNI jumper block that I am talking about in my posts above.

Bloody hell, the 486-PIO3 mobo successfully fired up the P75 @ 200 MHz, with just 4 volts going through it. And the BIOS timings are maxed out. Speedsys still shows unusually poor memory bandwidth and throughput though. BTW, what are these values exactly? Bandwidth? Throughput?

I ran cachechk7, and its output can be read in the .txt attachment found at the end of this post. Also, using a simple Virge 325 PCI VGA card, I get these frustratingly poor scores. I'm sure it's because of this memory bandwidth / throughput / turbo? problem.

Quake 1 shareware 1.06 Fullscreen = 12.5 FPS (Other 200 MHz system = 18.3 with a V330 card)
3DBench 1.0 = 83.3 (Very ordinary)
PcpBench mode 100 (not LFB) = 6.5 (Bad score!)

I remember that I experienced some speed issues with the bios version you are using. There is a more recent one dated 04/01/96...
The chipset generally seems not to perform well at bus speeds higher than 33 MHz though.

retro games 100 wrote:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_Dop-eDMechk/TXivJkoS4SI/AAAAAAAABBI/Kry3_0siU1A/s800/jumper.jpg […]
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That's a resistor network. Get a replacement at radio shack or similar. Those are commonly used as terminator.

Thanks a lot for the info people. I went to this FIC FTP site:

ftp://ftp.fic.com.tw/motherboard/bios/486/486-pio-3/

and downloaded 3 BIOS files. I downloaded both of the BIOS files seen in the 486-pio-3 folder, and also the 1175G705.BIN beta bios found inside the Year 2000 beta folder. I used Uniflash version 1.40, and tried to flash the mobo's BIOS with all 3 of these files. Unfortunately, none of them succeeded. The error message for all 3 flash attempts was: "Flash data verification error". Luckily, before trying these 3 flash attempts, I made a back up of my existing BIOS. I then used Uniflash to reflash the BIOS chip with my back up. That worked.

It looks like I can't use Uniflash, so please can someone recommend a suitable Awdflash utility version, for this 486 mobo? I tried the awdflash.exe found inside the Year 2000 beta folder, but it was poor, because it rebooted my machine and searched for the floppy drive. I don't like this, because IMO it's too error prone. Thanks a lot for any more advice on this issue! 😀

retro games 100 wrote:

Thanks a lot for the info people. I went to this FIC FTP site: […]
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Thanks a lot for the info people. I went to this FIC FTP site:

ftp://ftp.fic.com.tw/motherboard/bios/486/486-pio-3/

and downloaded 3 BIOS files. I downloaded both of the BIOS files seen in the 486-pio-3 folder, and also the 1175G705.BIN beta bios found inside the Year 2000 beta folder. I used Uniflash version 1.40, and tried to flash the mobo's BIOS with all 3 of these files. Unfortunately, none of them succeeded. The error message for all 3 flash attempts was: "Flash data verification error". Luckily, before trying these 3 flash attempts, I made a back up of my existing BIOS. I then used Uniflash to reflash the BIOS chip with my back up. That worked.

It looks like I can't use Uniflash, so please can someone recommend a suitable Awdflash utility version, for this 486 mobo? I tried the awdflash.exe found inside the Year 2000 beta folder, but it was poor, because it rebooted my machine and searched for the floppy drive. I don't like this, because IMO it's too error prone. Thanks a lot for any more advice on this issue! 😀

http://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/Archive/Fic/bio … BIOS/index.html

Amigaz wrote:

http://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/Archive/Fic/bio … BIOS/index.html

I'm confident that those files listed on that elhvb webpage are the same files which are listed on FIC's FTP server. If that awdflash utility (listed as aflash3.exe) is the best one to use, then I'll have to put the BIOS file(s) on to a floppy disk, and try the flash operation that way. But I'm not too happy about using such an old awdflash .exe version which reboots the PC and searches for a floppy disk, and also I'm not too sure which BIOS file I should put on to the floppy disk. Thanks for the link anyway! 😀

That's a resistor network. Get a replacement at radio shack or similar. Those are commonly used as terminator.

The one in the picture isn't the usual type used for termination. It functions the same as five jumpers side-by-side... I guess you could call it a resistor network with zero-ohm resistors. (I prodded an identical one with a multimeter, and I'm the one who drew the red lines on the picture based on what I traced out.)

retro games 100 wrote:

Amigaz wrote:

http://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/Archive/Fic/bio … BIOS/index.html

I'm confident that those files listed on that elhvb webpage are the same files which are listed on FIC's FTP server. If that awdflash utility (listed as aflash3.exe) is the best one to use, then I'll have to put the BIOS file(s) on to a floppy disk, and try the flash operation that way. But I'm not too happy about using such an old awdflash .exe version which reboots the PC and searches for a floppy disk, and also I'm not too sure which BIOS file I should put on to the floppy disk. Thanks for the link anyway! 😀

That particular flash utiliy is meant to be used with those BIOS files, I used it a while back when I flashed my PIO-2 mobo

Never experienced a BIOS flash util that reboots the computer except when it's done with the flash operation.

Use this http://ftp.sanguine.net/pub/sahughes/drivers/ … te/drdflash.exe to make a boot floppy to put the files on

OK, thanks a lot. I tried using the old Award flash52c flash utility like this:

A:\flash52c /Pn backup.awd /Sy

I just wanted to get the flash52c.exe utility to save a back up first. I did not want this util to flash the BIOS, because I simply don't trust it yet. So, /Pn = Program? No! /Sy = Save back up? Yes! I am wondering - is this utility so crap, that it can't cope with a request to just save a back up only? Must I flash the BIOS, so that I am also allowed to save a back up? Ugh. 🤣 Or perhaps the BIOS chip on my mobo cannot be flashed, because it is read only? Do you know how I can check to see if it is read only? Thanks.

flash52c - "System was not new AWARD BIOS version!" What are you talking about?

Evaluation - not for sale? Who would be mad enough to pay for it?

Amigaz wrote:

That particular flash utiliy is meant to be used with those BIOS files, I used it a while back when I flashed my PIO-2 mobo

ASUS PVI-486AP4 486 board any good?

* "I got the PIO-2 model but I failed BIOS flash atempt made it useless"

* "I'm going to flash the BIOS in a an eprom program thingie I've bought or hire biosflash.de but I haven't come around doing it yet "

Please explain. Thanks. 😀

I think you have to enter the name of the new bios file .

Is the Jumper set correctly ?

Flash BIOS type select Intel 28F00BX-T1 J1 1 + 2
Flash BIOS type select SST 29EE010 J1 2 + 3

OK, thanks. I will retry this flash operation first thing tomorrow morning. I will try it like this:

A:\flash52c 115G105.AWD /Py backup.awd /Sy

Also, the mobo's BIOS jumper is definitely set correctly. It's on pins 2+3, for SST.

I never used those option switched... I flashed dozens of 486 mainboards and never had any problems. Either the ROM is programmed in the right way or the flash tool isn't doing anything at all.

google is your friend:
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?p=2475308

I never used any switches with awdflash... I just ran it, manually typed in the rom file in the program then followed the questions it asked