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MCache

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First post, by feipoa

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Does anyone know if MCache by MoSys is Synchronous Burst or Pipeline Burst cache SRAM? I couldn't find the manual for these pieces. It is 512 KB total of L2 cache found on an Intel 430TX motherboard. On the POST screen, the system identifies it only as "Mcache", not "Pipeline Burst" as is found on some other TX boards.

MoSys MCache MC801 64K32Q-75
BC89061ABE

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 2 of 3, by sliderider

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They look like what's on this Tseng video card

22.jpg

Reply 3 of 3, by feipoa

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DrSwizz wrote:

Neither.

Thank you for the article; I have saved it in my personal archives. I had no idea about non-SRAM-based cache for socket 7 boards. Mcache appears to be fast DRAM (7.5 ns for these chips), with performance allegedly equivalent to pipeline-burst SRAM. Apparently, benchmarks cannot detect the difference between the two. The advantage of Mcache is for cost and size reduction. It looks like chipset makers had to build-in a specific refresh function for this new DRAM caching scheme. The reported half percent performance hit from needing to refresh the cache may be idealised?

Efforts to save cost, while not increasing performance, aren't terribly enticing from a retro computing stand-point.

I wonder if the presence of Mcache in one of my 430TX boards is the cause for the need to bypass DMI/PnP related detection in Speedsys (run speedsys.exe /sp)? I cannot run speedsys without the /sp command.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

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