• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Getting back into older PC's with my first 486 Build in almost 30 years

VERAULT said:
Any thoughts on the cache?
Click to expand...
Your on-cache results are fairly in line with an average DX2-66 machine. The main memory speed however is way below par. Something is wrong there. Probably something misconfigured in BIOS or possibly the turbo switch is off?
 
It probably is a conflict. But I just need to work through it. I added the line to config.sys we will see what is happening.

RAM speed. Ok I will experiment with the turbo switch and post more bios configs. Thanks.
 
VERAULT said:
It probably is a conflict. But I just need to work through it. I added the line to config.sys we will see what is happening.
Click to expand...
AFAIK there were no cards other than disk controllers which could be configured to use that port. The rub is the both floppy and hard drive controllers BOTH use port 3F7 but different bits of the register. If you only have one single combination FDC/HDC in the computer a conflict is extremely unlikely.
 
maxtherabbit said:
AFAIK there were no cards other than disk controllers which could be configured to use that port. The rub is the both floppy and hard drive controllers BOTH use port 3F7 but different bits of the register. If you only have one single combination FDC/HDC in the computer a conflict is extremely unlikely.
Click to expand...
unless I set the xtide rom wrong perhaps. And since Im still mucking around with that.. possibly likely.
 
Ok some updates. First off I spent 3 solid days trying to get XTide working and was just stuck in conflict land which I couldnt overcome so I lost alot of steam on this project... lets get back to basics for a minute.

I got the new case badge and added an IDE dvdrw that had the closest color match I could find and the drive works very well.

IMG_20240217_094910.jpg

Also I received the other two sticks of RAM so now that I have four I pulled 4 of the 1MB simms out and we have 4 X 4MB and 4 X 1MB for 20MB ram
IMG_20240223_113105.jpgIMG_20240223_112356.jpg

@maxtherabbit brought up my ram speed was poor so lets run some tests. You saw the postings of the 8 X 1MB simms so lets first try with the 20mb mixed sims
As you can see its running at 66mhz:
RAM!.jpg

Ok so it was also brought up the turbo button could be suspect so here is the same configuration with the turbo button depressed:

RAM2.jpg

So that got me thinking that maybe the issue was the older 1mb simms were a much different speed than the new ram or vice versa. So the next test is with just the 4MB simms which I had to move to the other bank to post. We will do the same tests again and with the turbo switch.

RAM3.jpg

And again with the turbo button depressed:

RAM4.jpg



So what is the consensus? The board is just slow? Slow Cache?


So besides the RAM.. The issues and the complete frustration. So essentially this system was up and rock stable with the original UltraStor ESDI hard drive and controller (which was the floppy controller as well. In tandem with the secondary 8 bit IO card which provided paralle and serial. I was able to get the Etherlink II NIC and Ensoniq sound card working in the machine and it was great. But I wanted modern storage and an optical drive. So I bought the DTK IDE controller from post #33 https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?t...build-in-almost-30-years.1246717/post-1365843

I tried using XTIDECFG.exe to make a rom and burned it to the Etherlink II IMG_20240215_130705.jpg
I could only get it to work on I/O Base 300. And no matter what I got conflicts. I couldnt get the mouse to work with the NIC and the XTIDE together (forget the soundcard I never even got that far so it was out of the system).

I got so frustrated I installed my XTIDE v4 and my Lo-tech ISA ROM card with XTIDE universal bios to try and get it working.. I just couldnt. And thats where I am at.
 
In your system BIOS setup you should set hard drives installed to NONE / Not installed, This will give the XUB full control of the hard drive.

How are you setting up the XUB before burning to ROM ?, I have used the 3COM Etherlink III 3C509B with XUB in the boot ROM with no problems before. But not the Etherlink II, Does your XTIDE V4 / Lo-tech ISA ROM card work in another system ?
 
Malc said:
In your system BIOS setup you should set hard drives installed to NONE / Not installed, This will give the XUB full control of the hard drive.
Click to expand...
Yes thats already been done.
Malc said:
In your system BIOS setup you should set hard drives installed to NONE / Not installed, This will give the XUB full control of the hard drive.

How are you setting up the XUB before burning to ROM ?, I have used the 3COM Etherlink III 3C509B with XUB in the boot ROM with no problems before. But not the Etherlink II, Does your XTIDE V4 / Lo-tech ISA ROM card work in another system ?
Click to expand...
Sure those cards work fine in other systems. My early model 64kb 5150 for instance.. I actually have two of these card kits I bought from Glitch. They work fine. And I can use the lotech rom card in my 486 tower although I am getting conflicts on that machine but yes it works: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?posts/1368335/
 
Have you tried 'Bare bones' ?, Remove all cards except for Video / Floppy / XTIDE
 
VERAULT said:
Ok some updates. First off I spent 3 solid days trying to get XTide working and was just stuck in conflict land which I couldnt overcome so I lost alot of steam on this project... lets get back to basics for a minute.

I got the new case badge and added an IDE dvdrw that had the closest color match I could find and the drive works very well.

View attachment 1274107

Also I received the other two sticks of RAM so now that I have four I pulled 4 of the 1MB simms out and we have 4 X 4MB and 4 X 1MB for 20MB ram
View attachment 1274108View attachment 1274109

@maxtherabbit brought up my ram speed was poor so lets run some tests. You saw the postings of the 8 X 1MB simms so lets first try with the 20mb mixed sims
As you can see its running at 66mhz:
View attachment 1274110

Ok so it was also brought up the turbo button could be suspect so here is the same configuration with the turbo button depressed:

View attachment 1274111

So that got me thinking that maybe the issue was the older 1mb simms were a much different speed than the new ram or vice versa. So the next test is with just the 4MB simms which I had to move to the other bank to post. We will do the same tests again and with the turbo switch.

View attachment 1274112

And again with the turbo button depressed:

View attachment 1274113



So what is the consensus? The board is just slow? Slow Cache?


So besides the RAM.. The issues and the complete frustration. So essentially this system was up and rock stable with the original UltraStor ESDI hard drive and controller (which was the floppy controller as well. In tandem with the secondary 8 bit IO card which provided paralle and serial. I was able to get the Etherlink II NIC and Ensoniq sound card working in the machine and it was great. But I wanted modern storage and an optical drive. So I bought the DTK IDE controller from post #33 https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?t...build-in-almost-30-years.1246717/post-1365843

I tried using XTIDECFG.exe to make a rom and burned it to the Etherlink II View attachment 1274114
I could only get it to work on I/O Base 300. And no matter what I got conflicts. I couldnt get the mouse to work with the NIC and the XTIDE together (forget the soundcard I never even got that far so it was out of the system).

I got so frustrated I installed my XTIDE v4 and my Lo-tech ISA ROM card with XTIDE universal bios to try and get it working.. I just couldnt. And thats where I am at.
Click to expand...
Sweet looking case - almost like brand new.
 
I never said anything about removing yellowing. I just cleaned a dirty case. All the yellowing is still there.


So any thoughts on those ram timing photos I posted?
 
Last edited:
VERAULT said:
I never said anything about removing yellowing. I just cleaned a dirty case. All the yellowing is still there.


So any thoughts on those ram timing photos I posted?
Click to expand...
1. pushing the turbo button makes things worse, so you obviously had it on the "fast" setting to begin with
2. the system has no ability to detect the speed of the memory you install, the speed is the same regardless of what you shove in there so you might as well keep all 20MB
3. cache speed doesn't directly affect main memory speed
4. probably just a slow board, but there may be a BIOS setting

how about some pics of the "advanced" BIOS setup screens?
 
maxtherabbit said:
1. pushing the turbo button makes things worse, so you obviously had it on the "fast" setting to begin with
2. the system has no ability to detect the speed of the memory you install, the speed is the same regardless of what you shove in there so you might as well keep all 20MB
3. cache speed doesn't directly affect main memory speed
4. probably just a slow board, but there may be a BIOS setting

how about some pics of the "advanced" BIOS setup screens?
Click to expand...
Sure I posted photos of the advanced menus back on post #9, here take a look: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?t...build-in-almost-30-years.1246717/post-1365599
 
VERAULT said:
Ok some updates. First off I spent 3 solid days trying to get XTide working and was just stuck in conflict land which I couldnt overcome so I lost alot of steam on this project... lets get back to basics for a minute.

I got the new case badge and added an IDE dvdrw that had the closest color match I could find and the drive works very well.

View attachment 1274107

Also I received the other two sticks of RAM so now that I have four I pulled 4 of the 1MB simms out and we have 4 X 4MB and 4 X 1MB for 20MB ram
View attachment 1274108View attachment 1274109

@maxtherabbit brought up my ram speed was poor so lets run some tests. You saw the postings of the 8 X 1MB simms so lets first try with the 20mb mixed sims
As you can see its running at 66mhz:
View attachment 1274110

Ok so it was also brought up the turbo button could be suspect so here is the same configuration with the turbo button depressed:

View attachment 1274111

So that got me thinking that maybe the issue was the older 1mb simms were a much different speed than the new ram or vice versa. So the next test is with just the 4MB simms which I had to move to the other bank to post. We will do the same tests again and with the turbo switch.

View attachment 1274112

And again with the turbo button depressed:

View attachment 1274113



So what is the consensus? The board is just slow? Slow Cache?


So besides the RAM.. The issues and the complete frustration. So essentially this system was up and rock stable with the original UltraStor ESDI hard drive and controller (which was the floppy controller as well. In tandem with the secondary 8 bit IO card which provided paralle and serial. I was able to get the Etherlink II NIC and Ensoniq sound card working in the machine and it was great. But I wanted modern storage and an optical drive. So I bought the DTK IDE controller from post #33 https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?t...build-in-almost-30-years.1246717/post-1365843

I tried using XTIDECFG.exe to make a rom and burned it to the Etherlink II View attachment 1274114
I could only get it to work on I/O Base 300. And no matter what I got conflicts. I couldnt get the mouse to work with the NIC and the XTIDE together (forget the soundcard I never even got that far so it was out of the system).

I got so frustrated I installed my XTIDE v4 and my Lo-tech ISA ROM card with XTIDE universal bios to try and get it working.. I just couldnt. And thats where I am at.
Click to expand...
An 8-bit NIC is going to be limiting which IRQ it can use to something in the range of 2-7. The most combatible setting here would be to set the IRQ of the network card to 2. 3/4 will stomp on one of your serial ports and 5 is the preferred IRQ for audio. 6 is the floppy controller, and 7 is the parallel port.

300h is perfectly fine for a base IO address for the NIC if you are using 16-bit IDE. However, it *would* conflict with the 8-bit XTIDE card. Are you positive you configured the ROM on the NIC to use 16 bit IDE (port 170h)?
 
maxtherabbit said:
An 8-bit NIC is going to be limiting which IRQ it can use to something in the range of 2-7. The most combatible setting here would be to set the IRQ of the network card to 2. 3/4 will stomp on one of your serial ports and 5 is the preferred IRQ for audio. 6 is the floppy controller, and 7 is the parallel port.
Click to expand...
Ill keep that in mind for when I try this all again. I have just come across a 3com etherlink III with Rom socket.. Thats a 16 bit card so I have more options now.
 
VERAULT said:
Ill keep that in mind for when I try this all again. I have just come across a 3com etherlink III with Rom socket.. Thats a 16 bit card so I have more options now.
Click to expand...
I'd recommend that. Much better networking performance as well. I usually setup the etherlink III cards with a IRQ of 10 and base port of 280h
 
VERAULT said:
Sure I posted photos of the advanced menus back on post #9, here take a look: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?t...build-in-almost-30-years.1246717/post-1365599
Click to expand...
OK cool I'll go through them 1by1

Hidden Refresh - enabled is faster but it can cause problems with some ISA video cards (notably tseng)
Slow refresh - enabled is faster, almost always works
single ale - don't know
master mode byte swap - don't know
AT wait state - disabled is faster
DRAM read wait state - 0 is faster
DRAM write wait state - 0 is faster
cache write wait state - 0 is faster BUT your cache may not be able to handle it (leave this one alone IMO)
cache memory buffer output - don't know
ignore the rest

the main thing here is you should set both DRAM read and write wait state to 0
 
maxtherabbit said:
OK cool I'll go through them 1by1

Hidden Refresh - enabled is faster but it can cause problems with some ISA video cards (notably tseng)
Slow refresh - enabled is faster, almost always works
single ale - don't know
master mode byte swap - don't know
AT wait state - disabled is faster
DRAM read wait state - 0 is faster
DRAM write wait state - 0 is faster
cache write wait state - 0 is faster BUT your cache may not be able to handle it (leave this one alone IMO)
cache memory buffer output - don't know
ignore the rest

the main thing here is you should set both DRAM read and write wait state to 0
Click to expand...
Ok making the changes.

Cache Write W/S I need clarification. There are two settings for ZERO. 0, 8Kx88 and 0, 32Kx8. Which one should I choose? I just want to test and run diags. If its unstable Ill revert.
IMG_20240226_163836.jpg

Edit!! Below are the results from Cachechk with the new settings. Also going back to the old photos. Why do I seem to have L3 cache only with the turbo button changing the speed to 29mhz?
IMG_20240226_165401.jpg
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top