386SX-25 with 64K of L2 Cache!

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Turns out they do exist! Pretty decent performance increase but, of course, this is just the beginning.
As said in the outro, the first person to guess the hardware swap and the necessary mod needed to get it working will get one of my soon-to-be surplus 386SX boards!
Thanks for watching!
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
04:08 - Pre-boot and BIOS
07:32 - Benchmarks
09:47 - Outro

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Опубликовано:

8 июн 2024

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Комментарии : 47

@pc-sound-legacy 5 месяцев назад

I really like such comparisons, very interesting. Thanks

@DKJones96 5 месяцев назад

Thanks! I hope to get more benchmarks and games for the next video. DOOM is a bit sad on the plain, non-cache SX.

@pvc988 5 месяцев назад

If there is no cache in the CPU, shouldn't be cache on the motherboard called L1 cache?

@DKJones96 5 месяцев назад

Yes, the on-board motherboard cache is L1 for the 386SX, however, it's much more difficult to try and get across the differences between them and talk about them that way. Defaulting the motherboard cache as L2 makes it easier to convey that there is a difference without having to denote external and internal cache. Just saying 64K L1 still losing vs 1K L1 can get confusing while just calling the 64K L2 almost automatically conveys an external cache. On the DX platform, where most have cache, it's easier to just always call the motherboard cache L2 instead of renaming it between having a 386DX installed vs a 486DLC. Of course, this is all my opinion but it's why I do refer to it as L2. Especially since this is going to open us up to DX platform comparisons.

@wishusknight3009 11 дней назад

in this case it was referred to and called external cache back in the day.

@RetroPeKar 5 месяцев назад

Hi there and happy holidays! I really enjoy your videos about 386SX boards, as they're kinda my passion also. Your SX25 w/64k is an absolute monster and a great find! I do have a 'newer' 386SX with cache -- a DataExpert based on OPTi 291 chipset from ~1993, and it's the size of a typical late 386 board, actually. I tested it on my channel against the 486SLC2-50 and I found out it's ridiculously quick -- actually a lot faster than my SLC board in many cases. P.S. Will you swap the CPU and the clocker for the 40MHz and see what it does then? I doubt this relic will ever work with the 486SLC/SXLC... P.P.S. Such an unusual BIOS shell! Then again, I've never really played with

@DKJones96 5 месяцев назад

I did find one with that chipset but haven't pulled the trigger on it yet. Not sure if I want to spend the moolah yet!

@RetroPeKar 5 месяцев назад

@@DKJones96 Aha, I see! I know how it goes hehe.. Will be looking forward to your next video anyway!

@atheatos 5 месяцев назад

Nice speedup there. I need to check my cached 386sx M/B now.

@theALFEST 5 месяцев назад

I had a 20 mhz 286 with 1 meg of slow (300ns) ram onboard (32 chips), but there was 64k cache and this MB performed better then 'normal' 20 mhz 286s in benchmarks.

@christopherdecorte1599 5 месяцев назад

Hmmm I can see you swapping the sx 25 with the sx 40 and the crystals. I'd like to see if l2 will boost the sx40

@helldog3105 5 месяцев назад

I'm going to guess that you are going to try and replace the 25MHz processor with a 40MHz one. That will require you to update the clock oscillator chip as well. Then I would also guess that you will had a math-coprocessor to it. Interestingly I have a baby AT 386DX-40 motherboard that has cache on it as well. It has 64KB installed, but the manual says it supports up to 128KB. I have it set up as my 'needs to be slower than a 486, but faster than an 8086' machine. It works quite the treat. I have a Sound Blaster Pro 1.0 in it and a MPU-401 IPC-T card. Video is a simple Cirrus Logic CL-GD5429 with 1MB of ram. Still waiting to get my hands on a Tseng Labs ET4000 card...

@pipschannel1222 5 месяцев назад

The Tseng is of course a good card but I think it tends to be a bit on the expensive side because of the "lore" ;-) There are other ISA cards out there that are on par if not better than the ET-4000.. This surprised me a lot but a Trident TVGA 8900D is actually faster in 0WS mode and also features memory interleaving! The Western Digital Paradise WD90C31, like you find on the Diamond Speedstar 24x is also marginally faster than the Tseng as is of course the Cirrus 5434 like you would find on the Diamond Speedstar 64 but those cards are insanely expensive. I'd say the Trident TVGA8900D is the best bang for your buck as a lot of people tend to hate the brand, making them relatively cheap while this particular card is actually blazing fast for an ISA card ;-) This surprised me as well but I have them all and the Trident is surprisingly good. Of course the Speedstar 64 (CL-GD5434) with its 64-bit memory bus and 2 megs of VRAM is the pinnacle card because of its speed, display quality and special features, but prices are pretty insane...

@rootbeer666 5 месяцев назад

Sx40 and clock generator mod. May need faster SRAM cache chips. Maybe shoot for 50, even.

@atheatos 5 месяцев назад

You can upgrade directly to 486slc. The ultimate upgrade for this M/B is to put an 486sxlc2. This is for sure and 3.6v chip so you need an adapter or to lift the VDD pins and connect with wire to a voltage regulator. In either case you have to check if the flush pin is connected, if not you have to add extra circuit there for that. Finally for clock generator the best is to replace the oscillator with my any_clk device.

@primus711 5 месяцев назад

Ultimate is to put a blue lightning or 486blc

@atheatos 5 месяцев назад

To my understanding blue lighting is (aside of rare) not 100% pin compatible + missing datasheet.

@primus711 5 месяцев назад

@atheatos nope and nope Just fyi there are 2 16/32 bit 16 bit is the BLC/2-3 and the 32bit BLX which goes to 4 100mhz all are easy to get if you know how to look I'll give you a hint JAPAN

@atheatos 5 месяцев назад

I have a few already. For sure quite hard to find get out of Japan. I have never seen someone successfully 100% molding one on a 386sx PC M/B. Nor I have seen a datasheet with the pinout of the chips. If you have DOCs like that please send me :). I want to try modding.

@primus711 5 месяцев назад

@atheatos check vogons then it is pin compatible just need to lower voltage if you wanna be safe but in reality they will run at 5

@Pickle136 5 месяцев назад

thanks for sharing, i only have dx systems with caches. Maybe you can add more cache, reminds me of a 486 board that could be increased with an additional address line soldered to the extra pin.

@DKJones96 5 месяцев назад

The manual I have for the chipset says up to 256K cache supported so this is a distinct possibility if we are shooting for the fastest possible SX platform!

@theALFEST 5 месяцев назад

I guess you`re gonna swap cpu to sx40 or 486slc and clock oscillator

@DKJones96 5 месяцев назад

It's a warm answer but not quite there. I'll post what it is if someone gets it though!

@jarnailbrar6732 4 месяца назад

1st pc, 386sx-16, maybe had 4mb and win3.11 with mono vga

@charlesdorval394 5 месяцев назад

Oh please put a 486SLC on there, change the crystal and speed it up a bit, maybe the cache chips will need to be replaced for faster one, hard to tell. Not in for the giveaway, I just want to see what happens with 8K L1 and 64K L2 hehehehe

@AshtonCoolman 5 месяцев назад

I was thinking the same thing. I'd solder one on right away!

@NiTye357 5 месяцев назад

Those barrel cmos batteries making me nervous 😅

@DKJones96 5 месяцев назад

They are all new NiMh! First thing I do is cut them off. Been debating doing button cell instead.

@GigAHerZ64 5 месяцев назад

While not perfect, those newer nimh batteries are behaving a lot better than the old nicd batteries. ;)

@sebastian19745 5 месяцев назад

Maybe overclocking to 33MHz and change the cache chips with faster ones? Or, even better, swap the CPU with a fastest one and also try to overclock it. I wonder what is the max speed of those OPTi chipset ICs. However, is nice to see this odd motherboard and the benchmarks. Is amazing how the L2 cache makes for a speed increase of 60% in that time when the aim was the fastest CPU speed.

@DKJones96 5 месяцев назад

Good guess but not what I have in mind. I will post what it is after someone guesses it. I think the only way to find out what the OPTi chips can do is to swap out some crystals. The datasheet only mentions up to 25MHz but since the fastest SX at the time of print was a 20MHz and 25MHz was an overclock recommendation for getting that speed it's possible it might run faster. I don't think 33MHz is out of the question for sure.

@sebastian19745 5 месяцев назад

@@DKJones96 Well, I can`t wait to see the next update on this. That is why I subscribed after all... Happy Hollydays!

@GigAHerZ64 5 месяцев назад

You can potentially go both ways with this board, both would be very interesting. You could push it up to 40+MHz on cpu/bus. Maybe even go with some 486slc. I have a 386dx40@45 myself. But because 386sx boards are basically 286 boards with 386 CPUs, it would be very interesting to see a 286 with external cache! It might just be possible... NB! Don't care about the giveaway, but the topic is interesting!

@DKJones96 5 месяцев назад

Hmm, A 286 with cache is an interesting prospect! Another user has said they did have a 286 board with cache. I feel I have enough platforms and boards to mess with so I don't think I'll be shopping for that but yeah, they did apparently exist!

@GigAHerZ64 5 месяцев назад

@@DKJones96 clock-for-clock, 286 should be faster than 386... It would be really interesting to see how well a cached 286 would perform.

@Dxceor2486 5 месяцев назад

Hi, would you like to share this motherboard to theretroweb ? We don't have it properly documented yet :) I have an interesting VLSI based 386SX motherboard which runs a 386SX25 as well, but mine allows to put the waitstates down to zero, which makes my 386SX "insanely fast" (for what it is). I have an old benchmark I made over 6 years ago that says it scored 8.2FPS at the superscape benchmark, and I didn't even had a tseng labs video card. I think I can get an extra FPS with a tseng labs ET4000 card, but this will need more testing. Also I now have much better hardware to make footage (both to record live footage and also capture VGA), so I guess it should be a much cleaner video :D By the way it's a DataExpert VLSI SCAMP if you want to find what it looks like

@DKJones96 5 месяцев назад

I will have to look at how to upload to theretroweb. I found some data on stason under the Dash DC-386SX. It isn't perfect but it's really close. For the 9.9FPS result I had the ISA bus clocked to 12.5MHz and 0 wait states. I also played with disabling and enabling the cache on the fly but it doesn't work quite right when re-enabling it.