X-Apparently-From: Message-ID: <00c701c0436f$afef99c0$8b8a1004@dbcooper> From: "Patrick Moran" To: References: <200010290356 DOT XAA22793 AT xellos DOT bignet DOT net> <39FBBB35 DOT C76A6C52 AT internet1 DOT net> <00be01c04204$c99dd380$6f1e0404 AT dbcooper> <010201c0425f$93b03960$11fea8c0 AT dell> Subject: Re: Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 06:48:36 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.3018.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.3018.1300 Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ben A L Jemmett" To: Sent: Monday, October 30, 2000 3:36 AM Subject: Re: > How are they at disk I/O throughput? I had a machine a while back that > would run anything based on iD's engine (DooM, Heretic et al), but a couple > of similar games just curled up around the middle of engine initialisation. > When I retired that hard drive (it's now doing a tour of duty as my Netware > 5 SYS: volume) and replaced it with something that could transfer a few more > Mb/s, everything ran fine. I have an old 345MB Maxtor drive and they run fine. Although at the time I bought the drive, it was not advertised, but it does have LBA mode 1 or 2, I forget which it has. I used a driver for it (Drive Pro, I think) with the 386DX40 but do not need the driver with this board, it recognises it in the BIOS and sets it correctly. My bother has a WD Caviar at 850 MB and his BIOS supports LBA as well. His should be even faster than mine and should have better throughput. I'll check it one of these days and see what the rate is. Of course my SCSI drives are much faster. > There are certainly problems with the 486 architecture - there's a TID > somewhere in Novell's KnowledgeBase detailing a problem with lost and > spurious interrupts on the 486 (NetWare, unlike most OSes, reports > lost/spurious interrupts on the System Console). I think the gist of it was > that the internal handling was changed such that if you ignore one when > processing another interrupt, the thing crashes. NetWare's problem was that > if the keyboard handler was active when the OS caught a lost interrupt, the > Console locked solid. *shrug* Also, I had a nasty abend yesterday in > NetWare 5 (I think I've got a faulty DIMM in that machine, which has really > ticked me off), and the internal debugger reported 'Break to debugger > because of break reason not set (80486 bug).' - on a P133, but never mind. It may be a BIOS thing then, because both of these systems have 5x86-133 which are basically 486 chips which are improved. However, his is a Cyrix and mine is an AMD, so he may have bugs I don't have. But I still think it's that VIP board that is the problem plus the BIOS. Those VIP board did some screwy things for bridging between ISA, PCI and VESA. I think that is his main problem. It's a combination of the chipset and the BIOS. But why certain DOOM WADs work and others do not is a mystery to me. Since they all use the same engine and memory management. Go Figure. > Of course, the Pentia have their own set of bugs - three nasty ones, IIRC. > The classic FDIV, F0 0F (always good for security batch files), and > something else to do with PCI and losing data in some circumstances. There are probably updated BIOS to fix those problems. Also there may be built in problems in the chipset. I know that is one of the problems with my brother's computer. For some reason, the system detects more seraial ports than there really are when he inserts his modem. I found a fix for it. The fix requires removing one of the cip capacitors near one of the slots, I think it's between the VESA and an ISA slot. But I cannot find out which MB he has. It is a 6119 rev 1, but there were a lot of manuafutres that made them and I cannot find the one that matches his MB layout. Not all of the manufactures have pcitures of thier boards on their web sites. The BIOS serial number list several vendors of the board as well. He is now backing up everything he needs to keep and we installed an old 120MB drive out of his old NEC 386DX33 box to put DOS and WINDOZE 3.1 on. Then I will install NT on the 850MB WD drive for him, but because of problems he has had, we cannot now get NT to install with WINDOZE 3.1. So I'll install the WINDOZE 95A that comes on one of his NT CDs and then let autorun install it for him. While I have 95A installed I'll install Sandy, maybe that will find the exact manufacture of his boatd and maybe it will also Identify the vendor of his Trident video card. I cannot get his monitor (NEC 2A) to run in 800x600 mode with this monitor. It will run fine with my system and my monitor will run fine on his system in all modes. Just another flaky setup. I may need to try and change a junper on his video card to get it to work right with his NEC monitor. I have used every other utility I can find to try and identify these components, but none have been satifactory yet. He relly needs an updated BIOS, but that would cost more than getting a much newer MB. I can buy the best K6 MBs for about the cost of a BIOS update and he can even use his old memory in them and later update to DIMM 100MHz. If I can find out who made his MB, they might even send a new BIOS ROM to him for FREE. If I knew for sure which ones would work I could get DREE ones from some of the companies that made these M6119 MBs. A lot of vendoes will send the free of charge. I updated my ZOOM modem and my video card this way. I did not even have to pay postage and Diamond also sent me a set of manuals I lost for free. Not even shipping charges. If and when I get this information and figure out what to do with his problems I can probably help many other people with similar problems. The nice thing about DOS is you can used old MBs and have a good computer. Pat _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com