Uncreative Labs

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

The NICE board has arrived...however, I think the battery in the DS1488 clockchip has died, because the system is no-longer booting. It was pretty nice while it was working though. The BIOS has all sorts of nice timings, and the board supports writeback level 2 cache. Also, I am pretty sure I need to invest in a larger casing. Although this board is AT formfactor, it tightly hugs the wall of the power supply, and the extra eight RAM slots are blocked by the drive cage.

Guest

i have a eisa caching hard floppy scsi controller.
it is new and unused. i took it out to look at it. mylex dce 376
here's tjhe " pinch " it is part of a pile of things donated to acgnj ( www.acgnj.org )
the oldest continual meeting computer group.

this is not bs, my wife edit's their newsletter, dr al katz ( remember him from the seti group? ) contacted bill farrell , a former acgnj president, and he contacted me and the man, with all the stuff drove it out here. some will be useful inhelping to produce the newletter, like a scanner that will replace our dead scanner ( we now use a $3.00 salvation army special scanner) so this is why i need to get a donation.
perfect for your project. btw, I HAVE A COMPAQ 496-66 SYSTEM eisa
AND THE EXPANSION MEMORY BOARD FOR IT. AND MEMORY. ( PARITY)
RIGHT NOIW IT IS BURIED - REALLY IN THE GARAGE.
i HAVE THE MANUALS DISKS ETC AND IT HAS BUILT-IN SOUND VIA A 3 WIRE JACK AND ADAPTER. THIS IS not PART OF THE DONATION. COULD BE HAD FOR SHIPPING. LATER WHEN I DIG IT OUT.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

That sounds like a pretty interesting offer, but considering all the money I have sunk into my current hardware, I think it would be good for me to stick with my platform. Perhaps another forum member might be interested though. It's pretty damn hard to find EISA systems these days. If I didn't already have all of this stuff I'd go for it. The Mylex controller sounds interesting, but unless it uses a WIDE interface, I wouldn't have much use for it.

I've been looking into the problem I've been having with my current motherboard again, and I am fairly certain that the DS1488 is at fault. I do believe that ten beeps indicate a CMOS checksum error for the AMI BIOS. I also discovered that the leads on the keyboard port have cracked from age, so I guess I'm going to have to solder on a new connector. It really doesn't make sense to try to find another EISA board, because the Nice SuperEISA is really as good as it gets. I haven't yet decided if I am going to find a new DS1488 chip, or if I should crack this sucker open and replace the lithium ION battery inside.

In the meantime I have located a nice CD-ROM drive for this system. It's a plextor 32X SCSI drive that takes caddies. The pinnacle of caddy technology.

Guest

wide scsi? isn't that a bit like saying where is the 286 with pci slots?
or an 8088 that takes dimms?
didn't scsi wide come after isa cards?

or a color dumont tv?

all this was dropped in my lap. just thought either / or might be useful for your project
nothing is happening before warmer weather anyway .

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

I think wide SCSI came out in the early 90s. You're probably thinking about the ISA bus. As far as I know, there are no WIDE SCSI adapters available for ISA, since ISA only does maximum transfer rates of 8MB/sec. However, EISA allows up to 33MB/sec. I currently own two Adaptec 2742W WIDE SCSI host adapters, and I am quite certain products were also availabe from DPT and Mylex.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

I am feeling quite foolish. It seems that I totally mis-diagnosed my machines problem. It's too bad I nearly destroyed my DS1488 and sliced my thumbs open in the process. Oh well. The DS1488 was salvagable and my thumbs will heal. In order to get a reading on the Dallas chip I had to dig into the plastic casing to expose the leads from the battery. It tested properly at just over 3.0V. The reason I suspected the Dallas battery is because the PC speaker was emitting 10 beeps, which indicates a CMOS checksum error. It turns out that error is being generated by my Boca Research IOAT55 card. No matter what settings I configure it for, the system fails to boot. It's too bad, becuase 16550 UART cards don't exactly grow on trees (at least not around here). I also determined that my DRAM timings were set incorrectly and my cache TAG chips are of the incorrect speed. I am currently running without any L2 cache, because the 20ns tags make my system unstable at 50MHz. I wanted to steal the 12ns tags from my other EISA board, but they are slightly larger (physically) and do not fit on the NICE board. I think finding new tags is going to be a real pain in the ass. Thankfully the performance of my system is still quite high without the cache. However, I do not plan to run like this forever.

Joined: 03 Oct 2004 Posts: 24 Location: Finland

Here's something I stumbled upon while I was surfing around:

http://www.vfxweb.com/index.php?maincateg=12&subcateg=80&productid=1016

I thought it might be of interest to you. I may be wrong, however Wink

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

It looks like a pretty nice card. I currently own a 3COM 3c597TX, which is top of the line 3com for EISA. I haven't gotten around to playing with the networking much, since I'm still working out some quirks with the cache memory. But, I'll consider it once I get Windows 2000 installed. Thanks for being so thoughtful.

It looks as if I have hit yet another roadblock in my quest for the ultimate 486 system. It seems there is some sort of issue concerning system memory over 64MB when using the VL bus and VBE. Apparently some VL cards can't address memory over 64MB, which causes my system to lock up when configured for 128MB....however, this only seems to affect true colour modes. 256 colour resolutions still seem to work fine. Has anyone ever had this problem before? I think it would have been a fairly uncommon problem, since it is unlikely there were too many people running VLB systems with more than 32MB of main memory.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

I got my Plextor UltraPlex 32CSI the other day. This has to be one of the nicest CD-ROM drives I have ever owned. This is the fastest caddy loading CD-ROM drive in existance that I am aware of (32X). For those who have never used caddy drives, you're missing out. It's essentially whisper quiet operation. I currently have this drive installed in my 486. I wonder why I never thought of buying this drive earlier! I wish they made caddy loading DVD drives!!!

Anyway, I have been doing a lot of research into cache chips for my 486. I have managed to located some 12ns 32kx8 chips on the internet, but I have not yet been able to find the tags that go with it. I also think that finding 128kx8 DIP cache memories of any speed is going to be near impossible. I've tried everywhere!!! Oh well. The speed of my system at present is still pretty decent.

Oh, and before I forget, I need a recommendation on a fast SCSI harddrive for the WIDE interface. I'm currently running a Seagate 2.1GB Baracudda and its a little slow for my liking.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

I think I found a work around for my memory problem. I switched my himem.sys from the PCDOS 2000 version to the WFW3.11 version, and I am now able to run GTA in 15/16 bit depths. This is good, because now I can proceed to install an additional 128mb of main memory. However, I will first need a new chassis since the 2nd row of memory slots are blocked by the floppy cage. When I have 256mb of main memory, I will attempt an installation of Windows 2000 Professional. This should prove to be QUITE interesting. I am currently running in the Pentium 90 range and pulling 26MB/sec on the main memory. I think this should be adequate as long as I disable all unecessary services. Keep in mind that this is without any level 2 cache installed!!! Hopefully one of these days I'll be able to find some 12ns 64kx4 tag pieces to enable my L2 cache again. Speak of cache, I also tried to enable the WB L1 cache on the am5x86 CPU. I was pretty disappointed. The system performance actually decreased! WEIRD! That's okay though, because I don't think I need any additional CPU power. (maybe I should try to shoot for 4x50 Smile

)

Anyway, here is my list of things yet to be completed:

-Get new tag RAM pieces (64kx4 12ns, 24pin DIP)
-Get an additional 128MB of 30pin memory
-Get some 128kx8 15ns cache memories (1024KB)
-Get a new chassis (full sized AT Gateway 2000)
-Get a new 16550 UART card (STB looks good)
-Get a new 7200RPM or 10,000RPM wide SCSI drive

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

Not much is happening with the 486 these days. Though I did manage to get a new 16550 UART card. This time it's an STB DSP-550 (or something like that). This card is interesting since it has two nine pin serial ports physically mounted on the PCB, and the parallel port mounted on a separate plate. Though this card uses the same "Startech" chip as my BOCA IOAT55, this one actually seems to work.

I have had absolutely no luck in locating some cache memory. These tag pieces are hard to find. I was going to order some from this online place, but they never returned my call....and I don't have any money at the moment to bother wanting to call back.

Lastly, I had a problem with the keyboard going dead on me. It just won't work, and prevents my system from booting. At first I thought it was the keyboard controller or a short on the keyboard port. However, it seems that somehow both of my keyboards are fried, because I tried them on other computers with the same result. However, it's not my 486 that is frying keyboards, because one of them had never even been attached to the 486 before. I blame it on my main system which has a defective keyboard port...forcing me to use my keyboard on the USB controller.

Anyway...I finally see there is another Gateway 2000 chassis available on ebay. Hopefully some bastard won't outbid me again like the other three times.

Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 9:55 pm

3x60Mhz works if your board will do it, a couple of antique PCChips boards would go that high.

As far as I know 50mhzx4 is a no go with a 5x86 the fastest they will move is 180mhz. 40mhzx4 or 50mhzx3 is a better bet

Cheers

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

No, my board only appears to do up to 50MHz...and actually, running any higher would be pretty much useless. To run at 50MHz, 12ns tag pieces and 15ns cache chips are required. Running at 60MHz would not be possible on my board since IC memory was not manufactured over 12ns (and 12ns is damn hard to find at that). Running without L2 cache would negate any performance enhancements achieved by the increase in frequency. I wasn't aware that PCChips boards could run at 60MHz. They usually can't even run properly at their rated speeds. I know that the last UMC 486 chipset produced can do 60MHz no problem....it uses the COAST cache modules which are rated around 8ns. They even allow you to divide the PCI bus by 2. How cool is that? I wouldn't mind one of these boards, but I'm not really interested at the moment. I think PCI ruins the whole 486 experience anyway.

Well. My Gateway 2000 chassis should be here anyday now. I'm excited! I've been waiting a while for this one. But...the day I find my cache chips, I'm going to crap my pants!

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 9:50 pm

10ns was made circa 95, how do you think the old P1 90 got its cache on the old Triton II?

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 9:51 pm

and yes it was IC, COAST was just starting to rear its ugly head, Oh and many boards have a wait state for cache of 1, slows performance but works