HowToFixComputers.com

Guest

Hi there,

I hope you are able to help me or give me some pointers.
I am one of those diehards who refuse to upgrade their systems every two
years to the latest GHz CPUs or flashy mother boards just to make
manufacturers happy. I am very happy with my usually fast enough, 6 year old
system with:

- Genuine Intel Pentium 54C 200MHz (still rocks after seven years of use)
- 128MB PC133 - 7.5ns Extended memory.
- SiS6326 (PC Chips) M570 chipset-motherboard [HSING TECH ENTERPRISE CO.,
LTD] - 4 years old.
- AMI BIOS version 8.14 - 1995 [it displays at first boot screen: updated
08/14/1998S which is kinda confusing]
- My board identity is: 51-0814-001437-00101111-071595-570.
- PC100 compatible for bus speeds 33.3 up to 100MHz

But to get the best out of it I need to increase the bus speed (now running
very stable on 66.6 x 3) for I am turning this system into a LAN-server with
4x 20GB IBM hard drives -- but without increasing the bus speed it kanda
slows down pretty fast.

I am having trouble to set the bus speed to 100MHz x 2 or anything above 75
x 2. (it generally crashes before any of my Win95/98/98SE/ME has even come
through it's startup procedure and plenty writefailures/systemhangs under
any version of DOS too. And SuSeLinux 6.0 won't pass much further then the
lilo choice).

According to the motherboard manual, the PC100 feature, which allows these
bus speeds, require SDRAM memory timings of 8ns and even recommends less. My
128MB is 7.5ns, yet I cannot set the SDRAM speed (either in "Automatic" or
"Manual" configuration) in the BIOS Setup any lower than 10ns. On "Automatic
it even defaults to 12ns (and is grayed out) without the option to change it
to a lower value. I think this high SDRAM timing prevents my system to use
the 100MHz Bus speed properly (or better: at all).
It's NOT my little classical Pentium, I over clocked this baby on other
systems boards to a nifty 300MHz -- though that required a LOT of cooling.
Besides on it's default clock speed with the 100MHz bus speed I am convinced
that all my slowing down problems are pretty much solved.

Updates of the BIOS for my BIOS ROM at the manufacturer's site (Web site:
http://www.pcchips.com.tw/BIOS.html) only gave me
a 8.07 version (which I take to be an even older version then what I am
currently using) and the flasher would't update this ROM-file anyway.

Is there a way to alter the settings to enable the PC100 feature without
flashing to a new BIOS version, i.e. change the SDRAM timing setting?
If no, is there another BIOS update available for my board which could work
for the faster bus speed?

I tried these web/ftp sites already, but with no real results:

Website: http://www.pcchips.nl/ (got referred to:
http://www.pcchips.com.tw/BIOS.html)
Website: http://www.pcchips.com/product.html
Website: http://www.pcchips.com.tw/BIOS.html
Website: http://www.minstaple.com.tw/sub7.htm (dead?)
Website: http://www.pcware.com/
Website: http://www.picame.com/ServiceandSupport/BiosMB/ (dead?)
Website: http://www.bns-computer.de/Support/BIOS/index.html
FTP Site: ftp://ftp.pcchips.com/
FTP Site: ftp://ftp.pcchips.com.tw/
FTP Site: ftp://210.176.91.36/pub/pcchips/bios/
FTP Site: ftp://202.82.156.83/pub/pcchips/bios/
Website: http://www.syspro3000.com/service/bios.htm (dead?)
Website: http://www.sybercom.com/download.html
Website: http://www.sprintcomputer.com/motherb/m507.htm
Website: http://www.pcwave.com/bios.html

Please advise.

Many thanks in advance for your efforts,

A non-power user

Pen · Guest

I found a manual here, but the version I read didn't
offer a 100MHz option only 83 MHz. Anyway my point is
I'm afraid that the PCI Buss is being overclocked, along
with all the cards thereon from what little the manual
tells me. So while the memory might be ok there's a
very real probability that the PCI, AGP and ISA busses
are all overclocked. I would try 83 times 2.5 and/or 75x3
and see if that helps.
http://www.peteweb.com/ftp/webhq/manuals/pcchips/

<abuse@supernews.com> wrote in message
news:mobmfvc3mn0dib7sp33uadmfgu3aua9ec4@4ax.com...

John Anon · Guest

abuse@supernews.com wrote:

David Maynard · Guest

abuse@supernews.com wrote:

Dave · Guest

Your board may not be able to handle that brand of RAM. I've had problem
with a couple of socket 7 boards that worked great with PC100 RAM but worked
with only one particular brand of PC133 RAM when they were at 100 FSB. At
66 FSB they were less fussy. My Jetway 530BF did not work with 2 brands of
PC133 ram and after that I installed PC100 RAM.

You could play with slower RAM timings with the faster FSB, eg if the ram
was 3,2,2 drop it to 3,3,3 or even 4,3,3.