Uncreative Labs

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

If you have 10ns chips, I suggest you hang onto them....because they do exist, but they're VERY rare.

Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 12:53 am

They aren't that rare, but they normally are surface mount, If your willing to spend an extra $6.50 a chip you can get adapters and still get 10ns cache, problem is its usually too high of density to be of any use on an old board. But worth looking into if you really want decent speed cache.

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

Do you have web addresses to any places that sells such hardware? I've done some pretty extensive searching, and I've never seen anything like that.

Guest

as you where talking about using the windows-dos... :)
there was once a site http://newdos.yginfo.net/msdos71/ which offered a hacked version of the dos of windows 98 as a bootable install cd and disk set. unfortunaly the site is offline but you can find it in google's cache. luckily a little search on google found the install files, too :)
the iso at http://www.ddvip.net/OS/dos/index2/img/dos71cd.zip
and the disks at http://www.ddvip.net/OS/dos/index2/img/dos71_1.zip & http://www.ddvip.net/OS/dos/index2/img/dos71_2.zip

i only tested it with bochs and never used it on a real machine and did not check if these files are identical to the ones i once found at newdos.yginfo.net but i think and hope so :)
they also seem to have some other usefull tools on www.ddvip.net but my japanese speaking friend is currently sleeping since he has a strong urge to actually attend the university ;)

have fun,
pavel

Joined: 04 Oct 2004 Posts: 114 Location: ~/

Or better yet, use FreeDOS! Smile

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

I have not reported on the EISA 486 situation for a long time. That is because I ran into some serious trouble. One day while I was playing around with the system, the keyboard went dead on me. I measured the 5V line with a multi-meter, and sure enough there was no power. Being the silly person that I am I did some stupid things. First I tried some other keyboards to be sure. Then I tried replacing the KB bios. Neither of those worked. This board uses a RAMified Dallas clockchip to store EISA information. Whenever anything goes wrong, it's the first thing to get the blame. On this particular occasion I was in the EISA setup program when the troubles began. I had assigned the wrong CFG file to my graphics card. I thought perhaps somehow the configuration file was conflicting with my keyboard port. I wanted to reset the EISA BIOS.
Unfortunately, the only way to do this without the setup program is to rip out the lithium ion batter from the DALLAS chip. I must have carved at it for three days before I managed to disconnect the battery. I broke off two pins in the process which I had to solder back on. The DALLAS chip looks terrible right now, and I don't think I'd want to use it except for testing purposes.
Resetting the DALLAS battery did not work. I went on the internet and studied for a while, and I learned that there is actually a fuse for the keyboard port! I have located the fuse, and I intend to have it replaced sometime next week. Hopefully that will do the trick. These EISA boards are expensive. This summer I tried to purchase a similar board on Ebay. I bid $100 and I LOST!!! Some crazy son of a bitch ended up paying $106 for it. It was a nice board though. A Tyan, almost identical to my NICE board. Except, it uses standard tag RAMs. Something I have yet to purchase.
Anyway, I am going to be ordering some parts from an electronics company fairly soon. I need

-A DALLAS DS1488 RTC
-(3) CY7C194-12PC 12ns tag RAMs
-( Cool

128kx8 15ns cache RAMs

I am just about finished with the other components in the system. But, I still require:

-A better (and quieter) WIDE SCSI harddrive
-An additional 128mb RAM
-Gateway 2000 Anykey keyboard

That's about it for now I guess. I've spent quite a lot of $$$ on this system, and I'm not about to give up until it's finished!

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

The CY7C194-12PC ICs are obsolete and almost impossible to find. Instead I am thinking of building a simple circuit to use modern cache memories as my tag piece. I am thinking of going with a single 64kx16 10ns SOJ SRAM to replace the three 64kx4 DIPs. I have access to facilities that can produce the circuit board free of charge.

Guest

I decided to design my board around some CY7C195-12 chips. If I don't use 64kx4 chips, then I have to add some additional circuitry to map the memory correctly. It's just too much of a pain in the ass. Today on ebay I picked up some ISA videocards. The lot contains an S3 board with the 864 chipset. I heard these get pretty decent DOS performance. I'll have to see how it compares to my W32P board. I want a W32P board for the ISA bus, but so far I haven't had much luck in that department.

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

I have some good news and some bad news.

Good News:

I replaced the fuse on my EISA board, and the keyboard is up and running again. I have also started building a prototype board for my TAG ram piggyback design. I want to make sure it works before I have the real thing fabricated. I made a schematic already, so once I confirm the prototype works I'll be ready to go.

Bad News:

That lot of cards I bought is a dissappointment. I thought i was getting an S3 864 when I am actually getting some Cirrus Logic CL5453 boards. Oh well. I'm sure they'll be fun to playwith. It will give me some more cards to benchmark. Does anybody have an S3 864 board that they would be willing to part with?

Guest

Anonymous Coward,
I have a nice eisa scsi card cannot use it

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

It's been a while since I last played with my EISA machine. There were a couple of minor setbacks preventing me from getting things done. You see, I broke my DS1488 RTC chip. I did a half assed job soldering it back together, but it proved unreliable. I've finally found a guy who has some, and I have two coming in the mail. I've also been trying to locate some other chips that I wanted...namely 12ns cache and TAG RAMs. I some nice 128k x 8 12ns chips on the way. Though, I have not been able to find the TAGs. I can find 15ns, but the 12ns parts are really difficult to locate. I'm in Shanghai right now contacting the distributors directly.

That's all for now.

I'll be back in a month to report more news.

...and, it's okay, I don't really need another EISA SCSI card right now.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

still don't want the eisa controller?
still here for postage costs .. or swap..

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

I'd better not. The shit in my basement is already stacked up to the ceiling. I already have three EISA SCSI controllers, so I think somebody else should take it. But, thanks for offering.

Do you have any EISA TIGA graphics adapters?

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

>>>The shit in my basement is already stacked up to the ceiling. <<<

Boy, can I relate...

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/fordbd/album?.dir=c0b3&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done

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

Your wife must really hate your guts. The fake wood panels really bring the room together.