So I did find some time to test the ECS 848P-A motherboard more extensively. I disabled many of the peripherals in BIOS includin […]
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So I did find some time to test the ECS 848P-A motherboard more extensively. I disabled many of the peripherals in BIOS including the built-in sound, USB and LAN to keep variables at a minimum. It helps that I can assign in BIOS specific IRQs to specific PCI slots. So I chose a PCI slot that isn't shared with anything else, assigned it IRQ5, and proceeded from there. I manually edited ds.ini to assign correct IO addresses and IRQs to the sound card and its various functions. Using the patches setupds for ICH5 I verified that it appears to assign all addresses and IRQs correctly.
I also used pci.exe from http://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/PCI.EX … niffing_utility to check the PCI IDs of the devices present and confirmed that they were what I expected (and what the patched setupds expected), and that the correct IRQs are assigned to the various devices. The Yamaha card has assigned IRQ5 and INTA#.
I then proceeded to solder the 3x2 header to the pads. I had some trouble because 2 of the pads appeared covered with some alloy that my soldering station was unable to melt even on max temperature setting. The other 4 were no problem. I had to bring out a rotary tool with a thin drill bit (0.4mm) and actually drill through those 2 pads (FWIW the reluctant pads were in positions 2 and 6 on the grid). I soldered the header, and connected the card to it using the same cable as before.
Short story: failure.
All appears to be correct in setupds, but when I test the sound it fails with "cannot detect DMA" which tells me that the header I soldered does not in fact carry the PC/PCI signals. I tried the cable in reverse too, same result. It is the same error that I get if I leave the cable disconnected altogether.
I think this motherboard does not practically support PC/PCI, and that the 3x2 header is something else. In all honesty it is in fact not labeled PC/PCI but SIRQ, which I thought it would be another name for the same thing, but now I think it's not.
I did test in setupds the "SerIRQ" option for INTA# (instead of PC/PCI) again with the cable connected in both possible positions. It doesn't work.
So much for that test. 🙁
So, at this point I have no other candidates for testing. It appears based on my research that the last generation of motherboards to support PC/PCI was i845, and only a handful of boards from a single manufacturer (QDI) at that.
(one more weird thing about the 848P-A motherboard: EMM386 does not work unless I disable USB ports in BIOS. Otherwise it reports it can't find a base address for the EMS frame and refuses to install)