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Subject:
From:
Tom Turak <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 10 May 2001 14:58:16 -0400
Content-Type:
text/plain
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text/plain (103 lines)
Not having a zif socket, and probably not having 72 pin simm sockets, dates
your board pretty accurately.  If you can figure out the board's jumpers,
you can install a SX2 or DX2 processor.  You should look at the frequency
circuits (the technical name for which has momentarily escaped me) to see if
the jumpers located nearby are present or if the jumper pins are soldered,
cheaper sx25 systems used a single frequency output type circuit, so they
soldered the board for the 25/50 mhz clock.  There is no way to jumper them
for 33/66 mhz.

You probably do not have VESA compliant local bus.  There were a lot of
local bus slots tossed around before the industry settled on VESA and PCI.
I doubt you have EISA because the opti chipset was a low end model and EISA
was in servers.

There may be very little hope of finding the bios at MR BIOS or equivalents.
I have often found the ancient bios I needed listed with vendors like these,
but attempts to order them are not successful.  I assume their web
catalogues are out of date with their fulfillment capabilities.  You can
sometimes find the bios in a long neglected ftp site overseas.  I waded
through a Dutch language site and successfully retrieved everything I needed
for an opti 495 based board, including English documentation.

I recommend you trash it.  Go to Ebay and pick up a pentium socket seven
board with a via vpx-a vpx-b (up to AMD 266 K6) chipset or a super seven
board with a vp3 chipset (up to AMD 500 mhz K6-2).  Very cheap with an AMD
processor installed.  All you will need is EDO ram and your problems will
all be behind you. Plus, BIOS are easy to find for them.
By the way, I trashed my opti 486 when I realized I couldn't live without
plug and play like I had hoped, even for the dedicated unattended no
keyboard no monitor task I had planned for it.
Tom Turak

-----Original Message-----
From: John Sproule [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2001 10:21 AM

Thanks for the replies, Volkard (back channel), and both Marks.  I'm still
letting this puppy sit, for now, as I await hearing from Promise Tech
Support in the slight hopes that they might be able to tell me whether there
is a known incompatibility between the EIDE MAX II and the BIOS on this
motherboard.  My own guess is that this is simply the case, and the posts to
this list would seem to confirm that.

Picking up on some of the suggestions so far, Mark Rode thought that I might
be able to use the EIDE MAX II independently of the onboard BIOS.  I did try
plugging the hard drive directly into the EIDE MAX II card, but I couldn't
get this to work.  I tried several variations on this, based on what port I
had this connector on the EIDE MAX II identified as.

I don't think there is a way to keep the EIDE MAX II from updating the
motherboard's BIOS.  This is basically a jumperless card, so you change the
settings from an onscreen menu.  The only jumper on the card is for
"troubleshooting", and I think it is for resetting the card to default
settings.  The configuration available has to do with what port address and
IRQ each of the EIDE MAX II's IDE channels will use and setting the memory
address for the card's BIOS.  I can set the memory address to none, which
would perhaps be the same as disabling it.  I'm not sure about that.  So
perhaps plugging the hard drive into the EIDE MAX II and setting the card's
BIOS memory range to none would be worth a try.  At least it sounds like
something I haven't done already.  :-)

I pretty much need to keep the original controller card in there, at least
in the final outcome, since I do need the floppy connector on it.

Mark Paulson noted that the odd ISA connector is likely a VESA Local Bus.
I've pulled out my books and gone back and looked at this connector some
more.  I think the difference that I'm seeing between this last connector
and the others is that it is an EISA connector and all the other connectors
are 16-bit ISA connectors.  I overlooked the difference between these two
connectors when I was first trying to identify it.  The fact that it seems
to be marked as a Local Bus Slot is interesting however, since I would
expect this to require a connector like the VESA Local Bus connector that
Mark mentioned, and there is no extra connector, beyond the end of this EISA
connector

I'm not sure if the original IDE connector card will allow me to disable the
Hard Drive connector on it or not.  I have no documentation for it and there
is no identifying information on it for trying to track it down.  It does
have two jumpers on it, both of which are jumpered.  Perhaps removing the
jumper disables the connector.  I'll try this along with Mark Rode's
suggestions above.

The CD-ROM that I'm working with is a Generic brand 32x CD-ROM, the Promise
BIOS was identifying it as BCD E520C, which I think is a BTC drive.  So,
ideally, I'd like to take advantage of the ATAPI that the Promise card
enables.

As far as the processor and its connector goes, it is fitted into slot, not
soldered, though it is not a zero force design.  The slot is marked as
"486DX/486SX/DX2".  There is also another slot for the math coprocessor,
marked "487SX/P23T".
is point to at least see what happens.

The other possibility that I decided to explore is whether I can get a
replacement BIOS chip for this motherboard, such as a MR BIOS chip.  I've
submitted information to the vendor's website and I'm waiting to hear back
from them.  They do mention support for the Opti 82C496 chip, so maybe this
is a possibility.  I'll let you know more, when I do.

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