stolk@swi.psy.uva.nl (Stolk Bram) (02/12/91)
L.S.
Last month I replaced my 8088/8 motherboard with the
80386 motherbpoard from Soyo(taiwan) running at 33MHz, 64KB cache.
I moved all my peripherals to the new board: EGA/ADLIB/MODEM/MULTI-IO/
SCANNER/HD-CONTR/FLOPPY DRIVES.
The performance gain was incredible: my new machine even left
the Compaq 386-33 in the dust. (norton SI). And that for a Taiwanese
clone... it outperformed an USA name-brand. I am a third year cs student,
with considerable knowledge of the IBM PC family, so I thought upgrading
would be to be a piece of cake. But nevertheless I had some problems:
-1- My Harddisk was a lot slower (3 times) on the 386.
this was because in my XT the controller could run at
interleave 1:3, now in my AT it requires 1:6. How come?
I thought interleave was effected by controller only.
-2- This one is real weird: I had 2 drives: A & B. Drive B
only worked when the baydoor of A was closed! And mind:
I did not give the drives the same designation! A's LED
went on at 'A:' and B's on 'B:'. Maybe this was caused
by the fact that I could not find a terminating resistor
on my Toshiba 3.5' drive.
-3- The RAM-check at start up counts upto 640K, while I have 1MB.
Norton SI reports: 0K extended. Although I do have a fine
working BIOS-shadow. Even if I disable shadow: still no extended
memory.
-4- My Modem refuses to work, I tried all IORQ's and COM's.
Although my scanner/adlib/....etc all worked fine
-5- My EGA had difficulty keeping up the pace, when in graphicmode.
It distortes some pixels when running at 33MHz. Is this because
my wait states are chosen to operate my 80ns main memory? Or
is the speed for my EGA-memory independed from mainboard?
Any help would be highly appreciated. Although I had some problems,
I do recommend a motherboard upgrade to everyone, I had this board
with 1MB, 64K SRAM for appr. $1000 (A real low price in Europe).
F19 Stealth Fighter is a real knock-out when played on 33MHz.
Yours sincerely,
Bram Stolkcirian@einstein.eds.com (Steve Cirian) (02/16/91)
In article <5772@swi.swi.psy.uva.nl>, stolk@swi.psy.uva.nl (Stolk Bram) writes: / / -1- My Harddisk was a lot slower (3 times) on the 386. / this was because in my XT the controller could run at / interleave 1:3, now in my AT it requires 1:6. How come? / I thought interleave was effected by controller only. The interleave works like this: with an interleave of 1:3, the processor gets a piece of information, and then requires 3 more spins of the disk to process it. With a faster processor, it can process the piece of info in only the time it takes for one spin of the drive (1:1 interleave). With the move to a faster processor (386), you should be able to bump up the interleave to 1:1 (or whatever the HD controller supports). A question for you: what made it necessary to drop the interleave down to 1:6? Was it a failure at the better interleave rate? / / -2- This one is real weird: I had 2 drives: A & B. Drive B / only worked when the baydoor of A was closed! And mind: / I did not give the drives the same designation! A's LED / went on at 'A:' and B's on 'B:'. Maybe this was caused / by the fact that I could not find a terminating resistor / on my Toshiba 3.5' drive. It's possible, I'm not sure about this one. There might possibly be a problem with your drive controller, if your hard drive and floppies are both acting flakey. What type of controller is it, and does it support both the HD and FD's? Was this setup working before you installed the new motherboard? Doublecheck the BIOS setup, and see if the floppies are properly defined. / / -3- The RAM-check at start up counts upto 640K, while I have 1MB. / Norton SI reports: 0K extended. Although I do have a fine / working BIOS-shadow. Even if I disable shadow: still no extended / memory. The BIOS checks the memory as follows: a max of 640K conventional, and then from 1MB on up as extended/expanded. The extra 360K in between is called high memory, and does not usually show up during the memory check. It can not be defined as extended/expanded (at least without special drivers). The high memory can be used for shadow BIOS, etc, even though it is not defined as extended. In fact, I think if you were able to define it as extended, that having the video and/or system BIOS mapped to this area would not be a good idea (i.e.- what happens when a program writes over this area in memory? The high memory is normally not accessable by programs, unless a special driver is used to define this as extended memory, in which case you would want to disable shadow RAM). / / -4- My Modem refuses to work, I tried all IORQ's and COM's. / Although my scanner/adlib/....etc all worked fine I need more info on this one. What type of modem, what comm software are you using, does Norton (you mentioned it above) show any conflicts in IRQs, what lights come on when you turn the modem on, what happens when you try to dial using your comm 'ware, what is your initialization string? / / -5- My EGA had difficulty keeping up the pace, when in graphicmode. / It distortes some pixels when running at 33MHz. Is this because / my wait states are chosen to operate my 80ns main memory? Or / is the speed for my EGA-memory independed from mainboard? / With 80ns memory, you should probably be running 0 wait states, but this should not have much to do with the video board. What brand of board is it? I would check the doco that came with it to see what the maximum bus speed the card will operate at is. The 386/33 probably runs its bus at 10MHz or higher. Older EGA cards may not support this speed. I think it is possible to change the bus speed, as well as the processor speed, on this type of motherboard, but I am not sure how. Consult the doco that came with the motherboard. Good luck, Steve Cirian -- ___ ___ ___ > Electronic Data Systems > Steve Cirian, Systems Engineer /___ / | /__ > 750 Tower Drive > cirian@einstein.eds.com /___ /__/ ___/ > Troy, Michigan 48007 > ...uunet!edsews!einstein!cirian >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
cirian@einstein.eds.com (Steve Cirian) (02/16/91)
In article <5772@swi.swi.psy.uva.nl>, stolk@swi.psy.uva.nl (Stolk Bram) writes: > > Last month I replaced my 8088/8 motherboard with the > 80386 motherbpoard from Soyo(taiwan) running at 33MHz, 64KB cache. Oops, my last post got away before I meant it to. One more thing: 286 and above motherboards require a power supply to send it an initializing pulse of some sort. If chassis you are using does not have one of these power supplies, you will experience weird errors (I am not sure what they would be), but this may be a contributing factor to your problems. I am not even sure if the power cables and connectors would be the same for the two different types of power supplies. To verify this, consult a book on the subject of "upgrading your PC". I read about this potential power problem in one of those books. Steve Cirian -- ___ ___ ___ > Electronic Data Systems > Steve Cirian, Systems Engineer /___ / | /__ > 750 Tower Drive > cirian@einstein.eds.com /___ /__/ ___/ > Troy, Michigan 48007 > ...uunet!edsews!einstein!cirian >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>