Conference noted::ibmpc-95

    I recently bought a US Tech P120 system from OfficeMax.  The system was
    a great deal but really lacked in the area of documentation.  
    
    I contacted US Tech on two occasions requesting documentation on the
    motherboard.  Both times they said they would ship me these docs but
    I have not rec'd anything.  I will followup with them again but feel I
    should start pursuing a different source.
    
    The motherboard has a lot of Intel chips on it but I am not sure how to
    "identify the motherboard".  I am under the impression that it is an
    Intel motherboard.  Anyways can anyone advise how to ID the motherboard
    and chipset and then give me a pointer on how to find the specs for
    it.
    
    Thanks, Mark

    Just got off the phone with US Tech tech support person.
    
    She tells me they have yet to rec'v the MB doc set themselves.  She
    also tells me the MB is a "Chain Tech 5VGM" with an Intel 82430VX
    chipset.  Does that make any sense or sound right?  I did not get the
    impression she really knew what she was talking about.
    
    Thanks, Mark

    re: .-1
    
    The Intel 430VX PCIset is its lower-end set targetted at home and small
    business applications. See http://developer.intel.com/design/pcisets/
    The Chain Tech 5VGM motherboard is described at
    http://chaintech.com.tw/producti/5vgm.htm (agonizingly slow to load).
    
    -Tom

    Tom,
    
    Thanks for the pointers and speedy response!  Mark

    I got a quote from White Mountain the other day for a 486 and a Pentium
    motherboard.  Unfortunately, they could tell me very little about them.
    
    Has anyone gotten a motherboard from White Mountain that would care to
    share some details about it?
    
    jeb
    

I don't believe they consistently use any particular brand.  Just whatever they
have had the best experience with at the moment.  When I bought a 286 system
many years ago it was a "Magitronics" motherboard with a clone higher-clocked
286 chip.

Burns

    I recently bought a system from them and it uses the Asus MB.
    
    There is lots of info about the Asus on   http://www.asus.com/
    
    I was under the impression that they do use a variety of boards though,
    depending on the customer needs.  
    
    Cheers,
    jeff
    

    Hi
    
    I'd like to upgrade my two PCS (a Compudyne and a Digital VenturisFP
    450s2) with Pentium motherboards.  I looked into upgrading a previous
    generation Digital PC, and found that, since it used a non-standard
    motherboard and case, I couldn't buy a motherboard from just anyone.
    
    Given this, any suggestions on how I should proceed?
    
    Thanks!
    tl

    Re. the Venturis FP450s2:
    
    If memory serves this same case was used for the Celebris Pentium FP
    which was shipped at least up to 100MHz Pentiums.  Perhaps you could
    work a deal with a Digital MCS ServiceCenter near you to do an
    upgrade...
    
    Regards,
    David.
    

     A cousin got a pentium system made by Stellar Computers, which can't 
be found with AltaVista.  He wants to add a CDROM to the system but 
doesn't know where to plug it in.  There is a set of pins labelled 
"secondary HD" on the motherboard and the number of pins matches the 
connector on the ribbon cable attached to the CDROM.  Is this the right 
place to connect a CDROM to the motherboard?

     The pins on the motherboard don't have any indication of where pin 1 
is.  Can it be assumed that it is near the "s" of the label rather than 
the "HD" ?

Two things:

Get the name of the motherboard off the board.
Tell us what type of interface is required for the CD (IDE, SONY, 
PANASONIC, SCSI ...)

    
    re: >The pins on the motherboard don't have any indication of where pin
        >1 is.  Can it be assumed that it is near the "s" of the label rather
        > than the "HD" 
    
        There are a few things to look for to determine pin 1. A small arrow
        or "V" pointing to the pin. Obviously a 1 is often used too. Some
        times a dot or other mark will be located adjacent to pin 1. The
        solder pad (etch) for pin 1 is often a different shape then the rest
        of the plated holes on that connector (ie. square while others are
        round). Sometimes the pin headers have plastic shrouds which are keyed
        for cables. I don't think I've ever seen a motherboard that didn't use
        at least one of these methods. (If all else fails, check the other IDE
        channel and look for the striped edge of the ribbon cable.) 
    
        I'm assuming this is an IDE CDROM/ interface. If the IDE CDROM is
        the only device on this IDE channel, I believe you'll want the jumper
        on the CD drive set to Master (vs. slave)
    
    
        /Charlie
                                         

    JDR Microdevices does INDEED have USB dual-connector cables in their
    latest catalog for $19.95 (SKU #BKT-USB). They are in San Jose (408).
    
    Thes are the cables used with motherboards that have USB connectors but
    do not come with the actual case-slot bracket and USB connectors.
    
    Regards,
    
    Mark
    

    I just saw a GIGA-BYTE board with SIS5571 chip set. I wonder if anyone
    know of the quality of GIGA-BYTE and the performance adv/disadv of the
    SIS5571 chip set.
    
    Mike

    I have a (different) Gigabyte board - and I'm quite happy with it. One
    of the more popular boards here in germany (after ASUS maybe).
    

	Rather than go thru all 592 replies to this, and with the
	ever changing pace of motherboard technology, I'm asking this.

	I've come across a Pentium 100 CPU. I have a 486/66 DECpc XL with
	16MB/memory

	Now I know I can't put an AT motherboard in that, but I can
	use some of the stuff from it.

	To get away cheaply, I'm planning to purchase the following:

	. A relatively inexpensive minitower case
	. a standard motherboard. (must be able to handle my current 16MB
		from the XL, have at least 256k cache. I'll add 16MB more)
	. a SCSI controller, probably a cheap NCR C810 card


	I have:

	. A PCI video card.
	. SCSI disks and CD
	. 16MB memory (72-pin, Non-EDO)

	Any reccomendations on motherboards and where in Nashua you
	would buy all this from? CompUSA has 16MB/mem for $69 this
	week.

	thanks... It'll be nice to upgrade from a 486/66 to at least
	a P100.

							mike

    ASUS P55T2P4, and an ASUS SC-200 (Symbios 810) card. Excellent quality, 
    lots of Digits have them, and the pair ought to cost around $200 total.
    
    Somebody on Rt 3 in Nashua should be able to get these for you...

    I've got an ASUS P55T2P4; got it at a KGP show for $125 last november.
    
    It's ok.  Like the P55TP4XE it replaced, it has far too few slots (only
    six usable).  Like the TP4XE, it is incredibly finicky about memory and
    cache.  I think the reason that the board performs so well is that it
    has hairier timing than most.
    
    Woulda rather had a Tyan Tomcat -- lots more slots.

    Re .593:
    
    Look at the Tyan Tomcat IIIs or Titan Turbo - both good boards,
    the former has 4 ISA/3 PCI/1 shared, the latter is 3/4/1.  The
    Tomcat uses the Intel HX chipset, the Titan uses the TX chipset
    (more recent).  The Tomcat IIIs was $179 at the Salem NCS Show
    on Saturday from CTS Computer in Newton, MA.

    Be aware that the Intel 430TX chipset - like its predecessor 430VX
    - can only cache 64MB of memory...

	Thanks.. I've decided to hold off for the time being. I'd
	like the Tyan for the extra ISA slots but $$ are getting in the
	way at the moment. Maybe next month.

	thanks for all your help,

							mike

I'm planning a motherboard upgrade for my antiquated PC (486 DX33). 

I'm currently running the original, 210mb, drive as the boot drive, with a
second 1gb slave drive.  I'm using the disk manager software supplied with the
Western Digital drive to allow the full 1gb to be seen (I know, bad move...). 

What's the best way to move up to the new motherboard, whilst making the 1gb
drive the boot drive, without the need for the disk manager TSR software ? 

I'm assuming this means the 1 gb drive needs to be backed up, reformatted
on the new motherboard in the slave drive position, files copied, and
changing it the the master (boot) drive ?  Any better ways of doing this?

Will the original 210mb drive boot ok on the new motherboard, in the meantime,
while I reformat the 1gb drive, copy files to it, etc ?
(I'd heard of some issues with older drives as the boot device).

Has anyone performed a similar upgrade with this disk configuration and
got any hints or gotchyas I should look out for ?

Thanks,
Martin

The disk manager software is devilishly difficult to get rid of!  It's like a
virus (literally)...it inserts itself in all the places that might overwrite
the MBR.  That means that your scheme above is in danger of "infecting" the
new drive with the disk manager again.

I did not have exactly the same situation, but it was similar.  What I did was
to set up my new disk as the master immediately and install Windows95 on it
fresh.  Then I plugged in my old disk as a slave and copied data files and
such.  In the end I just re-installed all the software products on it that I
wanted.  It's time-consuming, but it saves you a lot of pain in the end (oh,
the .ini file for MumbleWoofer Deluxe V1.2 things it knows the drive letter
that it was on, and it is not anymore?) and it also gets rid of years of
detritus that has built up in \windows\system and other places.

Burns

Install the 1G drive on the new mainboard, and set the bios to 
autodetect the logical parameters for the drive. Once that's done, 
you can just re-write the boot block (FDISK/MBR) on the old drive 
using the FDISK from a diskette (the Win95 startup diskette for new 
installations comes to mind)...

Had to do just this when upgrading a friend's 486 to a Pentium and we 
were getting complaints from Device Manager about the drive running 
in less-than-optimum mode. I kept asking if he had used a disk 
manager, he kept saying no. Finally he remembered that, indeed, he
*had*. I fdisked the boot block from the FDISK provided by Win95, et 
voila! All fixed...

/dave

 Hi Burns, when I did what you wrote in .600, I found I needed an extra
 step than you wrote down.  If the disk with DrivePro was not the 
 master (boot) disk, the system could not correctly access that drive.
 I found it necessary to boot the old drive and push the data off it,
 booting the new drive and trying to pull the data from the old drive
 just provided corrupted data.

 Bruce

    
    re: last few, comments on it
    
    I went through something similar but was getting rid of disk manager
    (OnTrack) and found that I had to re-run the utility and disable and
    remove it from the utility over and above using fdisk. But I was using
    DOS 6.22 fdisk since I loaded that onto the disk first. The motherboard
    did handle the bigger drive(s) so I should have done this in the first
    place (enable LBA and block mode in BIOS) when I got the board but was
    unaware at the time about it handling bigger disks.
    
    I recently went to a Servex motherboard (3 ISA and 4 PCI) but went
    straight SCSI on it since the EIDE is going with the other motherboard
    to a cousin and so far I like this board. W/P133 and 24Mb mem it seems
    pretty fast (plus 4Mb GXE64 Pro PCI video). I only had one problem that
    I took care of and it has been running great since. Problem was
    internal modem on com4 which I changed to com3 and all is well now with
    dial-up networking and moving the connect window.
    
    

re .602:

Yep.  I forgot that part.  The main reason is because I was not describing all
the gory details...in fact I was moving the old (disk-manage'd) drive to
another machine, so what I *really* did was to set up a small serial port
network between the two machines and copies stuff that way.

Also remember in .601, I think that this technique assumes that the disk
manager on the old disk is laying out stuff on the disk in such a way that the
new BIOS and Win95 can find it.  In my case, they were incompatible.

Burns

OK, I have an SIS471 motherboard (no sniggers please!) in my PC, currently 
with a Cyrix dx2/66 cpu. I would like to upgrade this to an AMD 5x86, but 
have an unresolved question about supply voltage.
The motherboard book in one part says that there are `3 types of SIS471 MB' 
one that autodetects a 3.45v chip, another that requires a jumper to be moved,
and a third that does not support a 3.45v chip. 

Question: How do I tell which variant I have ??

Question: What other info may be of value in resolving this issue ?.

Since the `voltage select' jumper exists, I suspect it is not the autodetect
variant, but both of the other two types are reported to have the same jumper
present.
Visual inspection does not help, I cannot see anything that is obviously 
related to voltage regulation, but modern regulators probably do not resemble 
the T04 tin cans of 20 years ago...!

Question: Is there a newsgroup that is focused of this type of issue that may
be more likely to have an answer ??


	John Travell. 
	[email protected]

    You could try putting "SIS471" into Alta Vista and see what you get.
    (By the way, most regulators are now the TO220 package, not the TO3
    like the LM309K 5Volter from 20 years ago...)
    
    Anyway, if it were me:
    
    	1. If I already had the 5X86 chip purchased, non returnable, I'd
    set the jumper to 3.45V and simply try it. It will probably either
    Autodetect, or work because the jumper is set.
    
    	2. If didn't have the CPU yet, I'd replace the whole shooting match
    with a clone motherboard special. Today, Pentium 120 PCI MB's can be
    found for $150 or so, with 256k cache. I'd just buy the whole thing for
    about the same price as the Kingston/Evergreen/etc 5x86 upgrade. It
    will be more than a RAW AMD 5x86, but still worth it...
    
    IMHO.
    
    Mark

re .1,

Tried Altavista, no luck... All I get are benchmark reports for systems with
this motherboard... 

My concern about your option 1 is that if the M/B does NOT support 3.45v I 
could end up with a fried chip...

I have NOT purchased the CPU yet, but with an investment in a VESA hardware 
MPEG graphics card I am reluctant to junk just yet, I do not see a replacement
motherboard as my first choice yet.

Anyway, in the UK good motherboards with CPU's are rather more than the
equivalent of $150, by at least 50%... 
I am looking at $50 for the CPU or $300 for a M/B, CPU and graphics card. 

I will continue to look for info on the SIS471 for the time being, but thanks
anyway... 

	JT:

    You are right. The RAW AMD 5x86-133 is $50. And the Evergreen-style
    plug-in 5x86-133 is about TWICE that or less. (actually Digital sells it
    through our partners, DT-A0001-SY, $73.00 US Dollars)
    
    Mark

    
    How do you go about getting the $73 price on the 586-133 plug-in?
    
    John
    

    1. If I were doing it OUTSIDE DIGITAL, I'd call 1-800-Digital (Right from
    the cover of the DEC direct catalog) and ask them how to place an order.
    
    2. Employee Purchase folks also may be able to place an order.
    VTX EPP? still works?
    
    3. WYLE or PIONEER may be able to place the order for you. Try them.
    
    4. IEG placed the order for INTERNAL USE without a hitch. I have two on
    order right now.
    

    Looking at purchasing a new motherboard (Shuttle HOT-557 w/512kb cache) 
    and cpu (AMD's new K6-166 w/MMX), and would like your thoughts.  The
    motherboard (which is K6 approved) w/cache is $121; the cpu is $276 
    and the fan will be $15 (I'll be checking on the fan so it may be 
    higher depending on if it is a K6-approved fan).
    
    Specifically, I'd appreciate positive or negative comments on this
    combination.
    
    Thanks!
    
    -Andy
    
    
    * Shuttle HOT-557
    
    Processor : Intel ZIF Socket 7 for Intel Pentium 75 MHz to 200 MHz,
      Intel MMX 166 Mhz, AMD PR 75 to 133 and Cyrix 6x86 P120+ to P166+.
    System Frequencies: 50, 55, 60, 66 MHz
    Chipset : Intel 430VX PCI set
    Cache : 256 KB pipelined burst cache on board, upto 512KB with
      optional upgrade module
    Bus : 4xPCI and 3xISA
    System Memory: FPM DRAM, EDO DRAM and Sync. DRAM upto 128MB, support 
      4 x 72pin SIMM and 2 x 168 pin DIMM.
    I/O ports: 1 Floppy, 2 USB port, 1 PS/2 mouse port, 1 IrDA, 2 x Com 
      ports, and 1 Parallel port.
    PCI IDE: 2 x PCI Bus Master IDE ports up to 4 IDE devices, PIO 3
      and 4, DMA 2. 
    
    * AMD-K6 MMX Processor 
    
    Technical Features and Innovations 
    
    . Sixth-generation performance competitive with Pentium Pro 
    . High performance on both the Windows 95 and Windows NT operating
        systems
    . Advanced, six-issue RISC86 superscalar microarchitecture 
    
    . Seven parallel execution units
    . Multiple sophisticated x86-to-RISC86 instruction decoders
    . Advanced two-level branch prediction 
    . Speculative execution
    . Full out-of-order execution
    . Register renaming and data forwarding 
    
    . Large 64-Kbyte on-chip L1 caches
    
    . 32-Kbyte instruction cache plus predecode cache
    . 32-Kbyte writeback dual-ported data cache 
    . MESI protocol for cache coherency
    
    . High-performance IEEE 754-compatible floating-point unit (FPU)
    . High-performance, industry-standard multimedia extensions (MMX)
    . Fully compatible system management mode (SMM)
    . Socket 7 compatibility enabling PC manufacturers and resellers to
        leverage low-cost infrastructure and system designs
    . Available in Ceramic Pin Grid Array (CPGA) package (Socket 7
        compatible) using innovative C4 flip-chip technology 
    . Manufactured using AMD's state-of-the-art 0.35-micron,
        five-layer-metal silicon process at AMD's Fab 25 wafer  
        fabrication facility 

    Via Intel EPP program the 133 is ~$120 while the 166MMX is about $220.
    Check out other notes for employee discounts on Intel chips or wait
    until May after Intel lowers it prices and see if AMD chip prices drop
    also.

    I pulled the information from Intel's faxback and the parts/prices
    listed is for overdrive processors.  Why would I want this?
    
    -Andy

You can't buy the "standard" processors through the "Intel reseller" program.

				Steve

    Overdrive P-166MMX will be identical in operation to the OEM166-MMX
    chips. In fact, you can use them interchangeably in 99% of all
    motherboards.
    
    The INtel program USED TO give hefty discount for CPU's, but
    looking at their list, $289 for the ODP166MMX is no huge bargain.
    OEM166MMX's can be found at mailorder today for $317 and the AMD K6 is
    perhaps $60 less.
    
    Mark

    From Tyan's FAQ posted on Friday:
    
Question:
    Does my motherboard support the AMD K6 CPU?
    
Answer:
    The following  motherboards have been tested with
    the AMD K6-200 CPU.  The testing configuration is as follows:
    
                       Dos 6.2x
                       Windows NT 4.0
                       Windows 95
                       Current Award BIOS
    
    The motherboards which passed are:
                       S1563S
                       S1563D (Single CPU Mode Only)
                       S1570
                       S1572
    
    We are in the process of validating each motherboard
    with current AMI BIOS revisions.  More information will follow.
                        
    
    CPU jumper settings are identical to standard
    Pentium processors.  Contact AMD for voltage requirements.
    

    So does anyone have anything positive or negative to say about the
    Shuttle motherboard?
    
    Thanks!
    
    -Andy

I have nothing bad to say about the Shuttle MB.  But, if you haven't already, 
you may want to check out the comparable MBs from ASUS.  Similar specs, 
great reviews AND they are supporting bus speeds up to 83 MHZ.  This an 
important "futures" feature that most MBs aren't offering.

dave

.re Shuttle Motherboard

Last summer I put together my own machine and went back and forth
between Tyan and ASUS.  From what I could tell different people
had very different and definite opinions (religious) about 
different motherboards.  I spent quite a bit of time reading the
usenet newsgroups and looking at web sites.  At the time Shuttle
rarely came up in the newsgroups and they did not have a web
site (they do now).  To put it another way internet accessable
support information was almost non-existant for Shuttle so I
crossed them off my list for this reason.  You might check to
see if things have changed and compare with both the ASUS and
TYAN web sites.  Tyan and I think ASUS now have the PDF versions
of their manuals online.  ASUS has bios updates and lots of
other technical information.  If I were in your shoes I would
make sure all this was available for Shuttle before I bought
one.

Chris

    I too looked around at support information and Usegroup discussions and
    in a nutshell, did NOT find a consistant trend for ANY given
    motherboard maker or product! Each vendor had product or policy issues.
    Most vendors have a web presence, but that was meaningless, since
    firmware upgrades are rare at best. In many cases, the motherboards
    have revisions and new firmware only support new revisions of the board
    (e.g. Tyan does this all the time, making 2 or 3 revisions of
    motherboard 'xxxx', and then supporting new firmware only for the
    LATEST revision of that particular motherboard, essentially
    end-of-lifing the older 'revisions'). SO buy what works good
    technically today for you.
    
    Having a web site is nice, but support and responsiveness across the
    board is horrible! Once your purchase is made, the RESELLER is your key.
    That means you should find a reseller that you can deal with for a year
    or so, one that has good business policies, knowledgeable staff, etc.
    
    As for the motherboard, I choose an HX-chipset board, with 512k cache
    and 8 (EIGHT) simm sockets. It was the only guy in town that had
    HX-chipset and EIGHT SIMM sockets when I looked. I bought it from a
    knowledgeable place (Carl Industries in Florida).
    I filled it with a AMD K5-100 cpu and drove it away for $200.
    
    Bottom line: Get a motherboard with the features you want TODAY, and
    buy it from a dealer that you can work with for the next year or so.

    >Most vendors have a web presence, but that was meaningless, since
    >firmware upgrades are rare at best. 
    
    Arguable - and in the case of a new chipset, or in parellel with a new
    OS release - simply not correct in my experience. Perhaps in the
    lower-tier of manufacturers this might be the case. Over the course of
    the last two years, ASUS released no fewer than 15 bios upgrades when
    they started manufacturing boards using the 430FX chipset in parallel
    with Win95 maturing. Some changes were to provide fine-tuning of
    memory, cache, and bus timing, some were to accomodate certain PnP
    devices, and others were to accomodate Win95 requirements.
    
    >In many cases, the motherboards have revisions and new firmware only
    >support new revisions of the board.
    
    Again, this apparently depends on the company. Even though some ASUS boards
    using the 430FX chipset are now over 2 years old, they are still keeping 
    the bios up to date as needs arise.
    
    And so far they're providing the same level of attention to their 430HX
    boards. This inspires some higher level of confidence that a board
    won't suddenly hit some compatibility wall due to an OS revision, etc.
    
    As for the greater question, features (perceived or otherwise) are nice, 
    but don't leave quality out of the picture. I read about quality (and
    support) problems with "nameless" mainboards all the time. I rarely see 
    anyone use the quality complaint on ASUS boards.
    
    /dave

    RE: -.1
    
    You are correct. I always assume most folks these days steer clear of
    the ALTRON-type "Generic" motherboards. My comments are limited to the
    main tier-1 folks, ASUS, TYAN, SuperMicro, etc.
    
    ASUS may have a better record for firmware, but the rest of the bunch
    really have proven this 'feature' to be essentially useless. In fact, I
    had a Supermicro motherboard a year or so ago, and even though it had
    flash rom, the image in MY flash rom had the wrong BOOT BLOCK code
    (whatever that is?) so it would not FLASH to the latest version. $15
    and 2 days US MAIL solved my problem with a new CHIP... which was the
    last version of firmware for that motherboard, even though they still
    make motherboards based upon the same chipset...)
    
    We all have had good experiences, but we all have bad ones too! My
    main point was to find a dealer you could work with, much more important
    that choosing between any one of the tier-1 motherboard brands... IMHO.
    
    8>)
    
    Mark

    re .624
    
    I've built two systems with Supermicro motherboards from Motherboard
    Express and have no complaints.  The issue with the flash chip on the
    earlier rev of the boards was documented by Supermicro.  And the
    Motherboard Express technician diagnosed two minor problems I had in
    about 10 seconds.
    
    Tony

    Mark,
    
    You wrote:
    
                           S1563S
                           S1563D (Single CPU Mode Only)
                           S1570
                           S1572
    
    Which (if any) of these is the Tyan Titan III board?
    
    Greg

>>                           S1563S
>>                           S1563D (Single CPU Mode Only)
>>                           S1570
>>                           S1572
    
>>    Which (if any) of these is the Tyan Titan III board?

Did you mean to ask which is the Tomcat III board?  If so, the 1563S/D, if not
well I'm confused again...

bjm

    I see nothing on ASUS' main web page or FAQ about support for K6.  And
    to quote from Tyan's FAQ:  "At present, none of the Tyan motherboards
    support the AMD CPUs officially.  We need to finish testing and 
    qualifying these new CPUs before we can commit a position on AMD 
    support."
    
    -Andy

Check out alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus

    re: .628
    
    Tyan's site now DOES OFFICIALLY talk about support for K6, The reply I
    posted a few back was directly from their web-site. Offically or not,
    they indicate their tests for the K6-200's were successful on the
    motherboards listed.
    
    Mark

    
    Nope, I meant what I typed, Titan III
    
    >> >>    Which (if any) of these is the Tyan Titan III board?
    
    >>Did you mean to ask which is the Tomcat III board?  If so, the 1563S/D,
    >>if not well I'm confused again...
    

    I don't think *ANY* of the titan III revisions accepts K6 or K5 nor do
    they appear to have the desire to test them. I would venture K5 would
    work however. K6 I doubt will ever work. Intel MMX Overdrives are
    probably your best best. Be aware that Tyan has multiple revisions of
    the TITAN III, and only PCB-5 or later will allow new bios firmware
    that correctly identifies the MMX chips. They *should* all work, but
    only PCB-5 will actually identify itself as having an MMX chip
    installed. DO NOT EVEN TRY LOADING THE MMX FIRMWARE FOR TITAN III PCB-5
    INTO AN EARLIER VERSION!!!! It will load just fine, but in the process
    they changed the floppy EI/O chipset, so the Floppy becomes
    non-functional, and the IDE drives have to be re-configured if you are
    lucky enough to be able to do that successfully... and hopefully you
    have the OLD BIOS on the IDE drive so that you can go back to it!
    (Short of that, it's new BIOS chip time!)
    
    Mark

>         <<< Note 518.630 by JULIET::HARRIS_MA "Networks Sales Exec" >>>
>          -< They say K6 works, I think official deals with SUPPORT. >-
    
    Whether they indicate their tests of the K6 on their motherboards work
    or not, SUPPORT (as in, the motherboard manufacturer supports the cpu
    chip I use on it AND the cpu manufacturer supports the motherboard it
    is used on) is of importance to me.  I would not want to have to get
    into a dispute with either manufacturer about support of the other's
    product in the (hopefully unlikely) event a problem arises.
    
    Given the lack of negative feedback on the Shuttle, I will probably go
    with it...
    
    -Andy

    I have an ASUS TX97-X, ASUS ATX case, K6-200 and 32MB of 10ns SDRAM
    ordered from ESC Technologies (www.esc-tech.com).  They, apparently
    like most of the other vendors are having availabilitiy problems with
    the K6-200, but expect to ship the components assembled and tested the
    first of next week.  
    
    As to ASUS support statement for K6, take a look at
    http://www.asus.com.tw/products/techref/cpu/amd/k6support.html
    They list 9 motherboards for the 200mhz and 4 for the 233mhz
    
    Jerry

    Can somebody explain the caching limitation?
    
    >Be aware that the Intel 430TX chipset - like its predecessor 430VX
    > can only cache 64MB of memory...
    
    Doesn't that really imply that you will never be able to add more than
    64MB to your system?
    
    Thanks,
    - Vikas

    It doesn't imply that you can't have more than 64MB. I believe the
    430TX supports at least 128MB and perhaps 256MB (you could look this up
    in the Intel web site if the distinction is important to you).
    
    It just means that there will be "undesirable side-effects" from having
    more than 64MB.
    
    For instance, many operating systems load quite a bit of code into the 
    top of main memory (I believe Win95 fits this model). Accesses to
    OS code residing above the 64MB mark will not have the benefit of the L2 
    cache, so execution time will increase. The more often the code is
    utilized, the greater the hit. Obivously this applies to application
    code as well.
    
    One could postulate that Intel is pushing the Pentium Pro/Pentium-II
    for a broader market span by artificially constraining Pentium
    performance via chipset limitations. If you want to run big (or many) 
    memory intensive programs they'd rather you spend more money than less...
    
    otoh: With the AMD K6 and competitive chipsets offered by other
    companies, things might get a bit more interesting for high-end
    desktops...
    
    /dave

    One would presume that not being able to cache all of physical memory
    is a serious bug.  At Digital, I don't think we would let any of our
    systems go out that way.
    
    - Vikas

    Well, in this case, it's more like a "feature". Intel is quite clear
    on the restrictions of each chipset. 
    
    The HX chipset goes to at least 256M, I think to 512M. It costs a
    little more. You get what you pay for.
    
    Given that the PC manufacturers have often shipped PC's without any
    level 2 cache, a memory caching max of 64 MB seems a minor restriction,
    at least for a Win95 machine, and for most NT boxes.
    
    Chris
     

    The HX set goes to 512MB, but many MBs only ship with tag RAM for the
    first 64MB.  To upgrade beyond that, you gotta upgrade the tag RAM as
    well.

	Which you usually can't do unless someone makes an 11-bit tag RAM
	that fits in an 8-bit socket. Some MBs may have a socket for an
	extra chip, but I haven't seen one.

Larry

    re: last .few 
    
    Exactly right - this isn't a "bug" - it's a "feature" to convince
    people that need more  than 64MB to move up the Intel ladder to the PII
    or PP chips...
    
    Believe me that there are plenty of ways to thrash a system running
    Win95 with 64MB to the point that 128MB makes sense. When I run Adobe
    PhotoPaint 4.0 to capture color photo's off my scanner (at even 300dpi,
    never mind 600dpi), apply filters with undo enabled, then pull them
    into PageMaker 6.51 while contructing a multipage document, I can get
    that swap disk to beat itself senseless. Even with the swap file on a
    wicked fast disk  (7200rpm, 9ms avg access) there are times where I'm
    twiddling my thumbs for many minutes...
    
    As such I'm only one more moonlighting job away from paying for another
    64MB for my server at home...
    
    fwiw: As was noted, if the mainboard provided a base tag ram that
    handled 64MB, you  only need another 3 bits to get to 512MB. And the
    better mainboards either include sufficient tag ram on board to cover
    512MB (ASUS P55T2P4 v3.1 for example), or provide the socket (for a
    16Kx4 part, for instance) for the additional tag ram, or if they
    support COAST modules, will include the signals to use an external tag
    located on the COAST itself. 
    
    This doesn't apply to most of the cheaper tier boards...
    
    /dave

    My experience with Adobe products is that they thrash the disk no
    matter what machine or how much memory is installed.  I think their
    memory management cancels out the operating system's memory management
    and everything just runs off the disk. ;-)
    K

    My current Tyan Tomcat III has a setup parameter (In BIOS) for "Greater
    than 64MB cache" with values of "Non-OS/2" and "Others" I think.
    It uses the HX chipset, but not sure if these two factors mean it will
    or will not cache above 64MB. I've never noticed any problems with 80M
    installed.
    
    Mark

    I don't know how Windows 95 gets along with this, but in some older
    machines, there were options for caching either the the 1st meg, the
    1st 16 meg, or all memory.  The docs indicated that depending on what
    the O/S was doing, it might increase performance to only cache the
    first 16MB, the assumption being that lots of largely static things
    tend to lay around in high memory, and the O/S kernel and "important
    stuff" tended to get loaded in the first 16MB.  Not caching the top
    memory would prevent the first 16MB from being dropped from the cache
    because of brief travels up to the top of memory.
    
    Of course, the caching algorithm may just have been horrible.  Seems to
    me this was targeted more at Unix than MS O/S'.
    
    jeb
    

    Do 70ns SIMMs work with Tyan Tomcat 3?  

>>    Do 70ns SIMMs work with Tyan Tomcat 3?  

Is there a reason why the wouldn't?  I've got two 16M 70ns in my S1563D
- I've only got a single P133 CPU in it at the moment.

bjm

    With a 60 Mhz bus I would expect 70 ns simms to work.
    
    It's a little dicey at 66 MHz, at least on a Tomcat 1. 60 ns simms give
    a little margin.
    
    Your '70's are probably testing out closer to 60's if it works.
    
    Chris
    

    Remember that DRAMs marked as "70ns" parts are tested to meet all
    timing parameters for 70ns operation at Worst Case conditions (ie: -10%
    VDD, 60~70 degrees C ambient, etc). If your system represents a more
    benign environment than Worst Case, the chips will run better as
    well...

I thought there might be some interest in how my AMD K6 upgrade went.

On Friday I received my ASUS TX97-X motherboard, ASUS ATX case, AMD K6-200 
and 32MB of 10ns SDRAM from ESC Technologies.  ESC had already assembled these
components so several of the preliminary steps were already done.  

I first installed my new Matrox Mystique graphics card and then started on
the disk drives.  The ASUS case has two removable drive bays, the upper one 
holds 3 5�" drives and the lower holds 3 3�" drives.  Both drive bays can
be removed from the case without tools.  I ended up placing my Goldstar 16x
CDrom in the lowest slot in the upper bay so that the IDE cable provided 
with the case would reach to daisy-chain the CDrom to my 2.5gb Quantum
Sirocco  which I placed in the middle slot in the lower bay.  The 3� floppy
drive is intended to be located in the top slot of the lower bay and has a 
pre-formed opening at that position.

On the ATX motherboard the connectors for the 2 IDE controllers and the
floppy controller are located near the drive bays.  The only other cable
connection I had to make was the audio cable from the CDrom to the built-in
Soundblaster 16 on the motherboard.  There are a  couple of connection
choices on the motherboard for this purpose, one was identical to my SB32's
connection, so my existing cable worked fine.

I powered on the system and it went through POST, properly identifying the
CPU as an AMD K6-200.  I had to set the drive type in the BIOS for LBA and
then WIN95 booted just fine.  The PnP drivers for the SB16 were
automatically loaded and I was able to easily install the Matrox drivers. 
Once I was satisfied with the progress so far I moved my Supra PnP modem
and an Intel ethernet NIC into the system.  The system hung on the first
boot and I had to go into the PnP BIOS to reserve IRQ 10 for the ISA 
ethernet adapter (its previous setting).  The system has been rock solid.  
No hangs, crashes or software incompatibilities.

I haven't started to tweak the BIOS settings yet, but I wanted to get a
feel for the system's performance.  I pulled down the Wintune97 utility and
ran an assessment of the system.  In comparison with the systems tested by
Windows Magazine and included in the database my system is faster across
the board than almost every system including the P6-200 and P5-200MMX systems.
(But not the dual P6-200 system :). 
A few of the numbers turned in were: 

CPU type=AMD K6 with MultiMedia Extensions;
Clock rate=201 MHz;
Dhrystone=396 MIPS;
Whetstone=120 MFLOPS;
.[VIDEO]
Resolution=1024x768;
Color depth=8 bpp;
Video speed=57 MP/s;

I intend to tweak the system after I get my hands on the Ziff-Davis
benchmark CDs and I'll try to remember to post an update with the numbers.

I have to say this was a truly novel experience.  I completed a rather
significant system upgrade without setting a single jumper.  The only tool
I used was a phillips screwdriver to secure the drives in the drive bays. I
really like the ATX form factor.  There is nowhere near the amount of
"cable clutter" I'm used to with the AT format.  From start to finish the
process took less than 1.5 hours.  If I were doing it again it would
probably take less than half as long.

Jerry
    

re .1

There's a couple of tweak programs I've noticed that are meant to 
further improve performance. 

I saw this at http://www.tyan.com/html/amd_faq.html





0.1� Does my motherboard support the AMD K5 CPU?
0.2� Does my motherboard support the AMD K6 CPU?
0.3� Speed up your AMD Processor

---------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------- --------

0.1 Does my motherboard support the AMD K5 CPU?
It may or may not.� Listed below are the motherboards which have been 
tested to run with the AMD K5 CPU:

Titan VX Series with Award Bios Ver 3.01

Titan III Series with Award BIOS Ver 4.00 Eval Bios

Tomcat Series (PCB-04) with Award Bios Ver 4.00.e0 Eval Bios

Tomcat Series (PCB-04) with AMI Bios Ver 2.12
For single Tomcat's only.

�

0.2 Does my motherboard support the AMD K6 CPU?
The following� motherboards have been tested with the AMD K6-200 
CPU.� The testing configuration is as follows:

Dos 6.2x
Windows NT 4.0
Windows 95
Current Award BIOS

The motherboards which passed are:
S1563S
S1563D (Single CPU Mode Only)
S1570
S1572

We are in the process of validating each motherboard with current AMI 
BIOS revisions.� More information will follow.� Unlisted boards have 
not yet been tested.

CPU jumper settings are identical to standard Pentium processors.� 
Contact AMD for voltage requirements.

�

0.3 Speed up your AMD Processor!
The following drivers are provided by AMD.� Tyan does not produce nor 
support these drivers.� These drivers are made available for 
experimental purposes only.� Use at your own risk!� Tyan BIOSs will 
have this option enabled very soon which will eliminate the need for 
AMD Drivers.� Check back here for updates. 

�enwa.exe
This little program will enable 'write allocate' in systems that 
don't already enable it in their BIOS.�� It only works under DOS, 
Win3.1, Win95. Run it automaitcally from your autoexec.bat and it 
will change the specific registers of the K6 to the correct values. 
This program is completely harmless and doesn't interact with 
anything.
� �msr.zip
If you need to change the MSR's of the K6 for 'write allocate' 
under�� Windows NT, you'll have to use this utility. Unfortunately 
it's fairly inconvenient. Please refer to the 'readme' and 
'install.doc' for further instructions.

Other performance enhancing information and utilities can be found on 
Tom�s Hardware Page at http://sysdoc.pair.com/performance.html

Note 518.645

>>    Do 70ns SIMMs work with Tyan Tomcat 3?  

My response was:

>>Is there a reason why the wouldn't?  I've got two 16M 70ns in my S1563D
>>- I've only got a single P133 CPU in it at the moment.

I think I may understand what the question was asking.  The BIOS allows you to
set the memory speed to 60 or 70ns.  

My first piece of "real software" was installed last week (Ulead PhotoImage
(waiting for Photoshop to show up)).  Anyway, this really sucked down the 
performance of the system so just for fun I reset this to 60ns during a reboot
to see if:

1) the 70ns chips would work at 60ns
2) and if so, would Photoimage perform better

Since number 1 failed (it took a network dial-up and an attempt to bring up
PhotoImage before I got a crash in the explorer) I didn't get to see if 
upgrading to 60ns would better the performance of the system.

So, I'll change my response to the question to be:  If you have your
BIOS setup correctly, 70ns memory SIMMS work fine.

Brian J.

I ran the test on my Tomcat, my memory did not crash at 60ns, but the
performance suites showed no change, but that might be due to the 
512kB cache.  I reran the test with the memory configuration set for
auto, there was no significent difference with that either.

    Another question on the Tomcat 3;  Does it have NCR810 SCSI BIOS
    onboard?

I believe the answer is no.

A friend just upgraded to a Tomcat from an ASUS board, and had a rather fun
time replacing her SCSI controllers with those that had onboard BIOS (to
compensate for the Tyan's lack of SCSI BIOS).

    Re: .653
    
    The Tyan motherboards do not have NCR810 SCSI BIOS on board.  I just
    researched this question and only ASUS, SOYO, certain FreeTech boards,
    and certain unidentified boards offered by Vircom have this support
    built-in.  Being a stubborn sort of guy I kept going and found that
    MRBIOS has a scheme where you can add this support to any boards that
    they support.  I would really like to know this works before buying
    a motherboard without the support and expecting MRBIOS to pick up the
    slack.  MRBIOS costs from about $30 to $70 depending upon specific
    board.  http://www.mrbios.com  - no TX chipset boards listed yet.
    
    The (well, *my*) rundown on the boards with built-in support:
    
    ASUS - well-known, widely available, very good reliable boards, but
      they cost a little more, use Intel chipsets
    
    SOYO - not well-known, I only found one source in California, but
      they do use the Intel chipsets, average price
    
    FreeTech - not first tier boards, only certain models have the support
    
    noname - seem to be the same as ASUS but cheaper, support the faster
      75Mhz bus speed