d88ms@efd.lth.se (Martin Strand) (06/08/91)
Lund , Sweden 91-06-08 Hello ! I'm using a baby AT 386 main board equipped with an Intel 386 microprocessor, AMI BIOS and 4 Meg of 80ns memory. And I've got some question I hope some one can help me with. 1) At start up a memory check is performed. The number of bytes checked are shown as a counter. After a CMOS party error I entered the extended set up and just rewrote the set up and thus got rid of the parity error. (I think this parity error was caused by a nasty program. Is it possible ?) . My problem is that I think the counter counts slower than before. Is it possible ? Can I do something about it ? 2) In the extended CMOS set up you can change the memory wait state. The default setting was 1 wait state but just for fun I changed it to 0 (zero) wait state. To my big surprise it worked. The computer was much (?) faster. The Norton System Info CPU speed index went up from 12.4 to 15.8. My question : Was it a dangerous thing to do ? Why did it work ? Should I or shouldn't I permanently use 0 wait state ? Many thanks ahead of time Martin Strand, student at Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden d88ms@efd.lth.se
tmurphy%peruvian.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Thomas Murphy) (06/10/91)
In article <1991Jun8.151008.15931@lth.se> d88ms@efd.lth.se (Martin Strand) writes: >1) At start up a memory check is performed. The number of bytes checked are shown as a counter. After a CMOS party error I entered the extended set up and just rewrote the set up and thus got rid of the parity error. >(I think this parity error was caused by a nasty program. Is it possible ?) . not probable, you could have an intermittent problem with a memory chip. Watch for it to happen and keep track of the address it happens at. > My problem is that I think the counter counts slower than before. Is it possible ? Can I do something about it ? You have possibley reset the portion of your cmos that tells the computer what speed you want to run at. (funny considering the next section) Anyhow most units nowadays have a "turbo" mode and an 8mhz mode. I would imagine you are set to a different mode than before. > >2) In the extended CMOS set up you can change the memory wait state. The default setting was 1 wait state but just for fun I changed it to 0 (zero) wait state. To my big surprise it worked. The computer was much (?) faster. The Norton System Info CPU speed index went up from 12.4 to 15.8. My question : Was it a dangerous thing to do ? Why did it work ? Should I or shouldn't I permanently use 0 wait state ? > Many machine also have an adjustable wait state setting. This is because of the changing memory price situatuion. In order to cut cost many folks would use memory of the 100ns and slower variety which wouldn't be fast enough for the machine. 80ns should be fine, the only danger is if it isn't the machine could lock up on you some time. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Murph "Government that governs the least