M919 Fake Cache and Reproduction L2 COASt Modules 

Looks like I got the CMOS battery issue sorted! Turns out a battery selection jumper (J4) was missing on the motherboard that meant the CR2032 wasn't being recognized. Sweet 👍

Love this video Clint. Any chance you could give us a "History of Shady Hardware" type video(s) on the main channel?

"I hope this video wasn't boring...", he says. Lol. Clint! We're your subscribers! We're your Patreon backers, man! We love this stuff. 🍻 Always keep it going. Cheers.

This whole arrangement seems like it was cooked up by the kid in school that'd put more effort into not doing homework that it'd have been easier to just do it in the first place. On a completely unrelated note, I love Speedsys' UI, there's something so cool about that style.

So basically they sell you cache twice, clever. I did have a motherboard with fake chips too, I remember how plasticky they were, like a real cheap plastic instead of what chips are made of.

This charity buy has turned into a content factory! Proof of karma if I've ever seen one!

This was INSANELY common back in the late 486 and early Pentium days. I have three different mobos with fake cache chips. ALL look like that with traces that just join the two chips. Sad part was, this was normally done on boards that were actually otherwise high end. My best and fastest 486 board with PCI and VLB also has fake cache. The fix was to just use a COAST module (all mine came second hand with one already). Most of these boards also used a graphical BIOS.

I was told about this ‘fake cache’ situation with PC Chips mobos and found your video. Amazing! How that’s even possible really escapes me! I have a socket 7 motherboard with cache issues, my chips are also suspicious (can’t find any mention online and they’re labelled ‘PB CACHE’) but they intermittently get very hot so something’s happening inside. I’ll check the traces but they seem legit. Nice video!

I'm more surprised that someone designed a clone of the cache chip for this board

10:05 Seeing high-framerate DOS-era 3D graphics is such a trip.

I so badly want to add 0 kB of cache to my PS/2 after seeing this.

The "Write Back" labeling on the dummy chips seems to imply that you're expected to write back to PC Chips. 🤩

Those chips really are hollow, they are nothing but a plastic shell, you can pull the top off of them with your fingertips and inside are 4 metal strips with the legs stamped into them. Where I live (Tasmania) you could not get the COAST module you are showing off, lord knows I tried at the time. I had this horrendous motherboard back in the day when I bought my first PC (instead of building one myself) and this crap is what I got saddled with. Was almost enough to make me give up on PC's and go back to just using my orphaned Amiga's. The one bright spot was it made me determined to never get ripped off like this again and I learnt how to build my own PC's and use quality components when doing so (never gave hardware much consideration prior to this since you didn't have to worry on the Amiga).

These PCChips boards are so strange. Honestly, I don’t understand why they went through the effort of putting together a really solid board-decent chipset, decent VRM, and VLB/ISA/PCI compatibility-all to just add fake L2 cache. The M912 v1.7 is also somewhat similarly-afflicted, but what’s really weird is that not all of them have this issue. Some have fake “Write Back” DIP-28 modules soldered directly to the board, and others, like one I own, actually are equipped with DIP-28 sockets for cache chips! The best part is the shady chipsets, which claim to be UMC8498Fs, but some of which have a UMC sticker, rather than a silkscreen. I think PCCHips wasn’t the only company to pull this stuff, as I’ve got an MTech R407e, which was sold as having previously had 256kb of fake cache, whereby half of of the cache was real, half was fake, and the BIOS reported 256kb. Sure, I get that the manufacturer is saving money, but why? The board worked great with 256kb of real cache installed too-that’s the real kicker. As for the M919, it’s a real good board. I know CPUGalaxy had success with his in overclocking, and it’s unofficially capable of a 60MHz FSB. They’re fast, too, but the fake cache mars their reputation; it seems like they’d be heralded as really good boards if it weren’t for the shadiness that surrounded their marketing. One other thing: the PCI bus has an automatic divider such that-at 40MHz FSB-the PCI bus runs at 20MHz! As much as the M919 is legendary and infamous, it sure is one weird board. Don’t know if it helps, but I saw you found the manual and, for quick reference, Ultimate Hardware 2019 has a good jumper manual: www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboard/show/582. RedHill has some info on this board too, and it was apparently not well received by the shop, due in part to PCChips’ shady business practices: redhill.net.au/b/b-96.html.

I got duped by this as a poor paper boy saving my quarters for that motherboard!

Jee-ZUS! I feel like it's a good thing you're the person who took this system home: I'm pretty sure almost anyone else woulda trashed it on running into all the issues you've had with this thing!

Cyrix processor and EDO ram. You really lucked out there.

Hey, I was born the day that bios was built!

Yeah i had one of these. i plugged the wrong COAST module into it once, let some smoke out of the module. Those fake chips just have like metal combs in them. I broke the top off of one of them and have a picture here somewhere. I think my M919 went in the trash about 15 years ago.

The PCChips M919 is very much *INFAMOUS* for this! :D With that expansion module it's nowhere near as bad though. I'm glad a reproduction is available!

I had a horrible feeling seeing the title of this one that the charity had scammed you fixing up the thing with fake parts. It just being a scummy board manufacturer is a weird relief.

I remember reading about the fake L2 cache MB's. Part of the reason why PC Chips had such an awful reputation in the mid to late 90's. Even when they rebranded themselves as ECS later on the stigma partially remained. Also, adding L2 to a 486 system doesn't make a huge difference in most DOS based programs & games (with some exceptions of course) but it does make a noticeable difference in Windows, especially Windows 95. I had a 486 DX2 66Mhz based machine from 1992 that I had upgraded to an AMD 5x86 133Mhz CPU (running at 120Mhz due to MB issues) and adding 128KB of L2 to that machine via socketed chips on the board made a nice difference in Windows 95 back then. Hardly noticed a difference in DOS. I had the option of adding 512KB of L2 to the board but it would have cost much more than 4x the cost of 128KB and being a broke teenager at the time I couldn't afford it.

PC Chips: Probably Counterfeit Chips

The AMBIOS date was 10/10/1994, the day I was born, and the launch date of Doom II. Neat.

I really want to know what the unfathomable content is.

1995 was the first year credit cards overtook all other forms of spending. We live in a cacheless society.

I have never cared about anything in my life as much as Clint does his early 90's PC's. I need purpose. Clint, you are amazing!!!

Huh, such a fascinating and oddly dumb thing - I only dealt with prebuilt PCs back when (mainly Compaqs, a few Dells) in 486, Pentium and compatibles times, so I didn't get to scratch the fun (albeit sometimes stupid) sides of components until the Socket A/370 era. Granted, prebuilts with their ginormous amount of proprietary bullcrap wasn't exactly always fun either. Nice video as always, Clint! An AudioDrive (ES1868F is such a lovely chipset) would be a "slight" upgrade for that awful Vibra16! ^^

I like how the BIOS message is technically accurate "write back cache on" - the setting is enabled, there just isn't any to use.

Completely calamitous cache catastrophe, Clint! Criminal!

I think you have finally explained to me an issue that I was having with a computer back in the day - and that I never solved.. man.... I want to say that was 25 years ago.

The fact that that BIOS looks better than modern Dell BIOS is incredible.

I thought I had cash, turns out I didn't. Story of my life.

Blerbs is the real LGR channel, love these videos, keep'em coming!

PC Chips... the BANE of my existence. I had a few machines at the cyber cafe, Pentiums and such. PIA!

I hope the manufacturers that used fake cache got sued for millions of $.

I must of had the same motherboard in around 96/97, got it off a friend who had a dx4/100 from new, then fitted a cyrix 5x86/100 and with the cyrix installed it wouldnt boot at all with the l2 cache enabled, but still gave an improvement over the dx4. I got it because it had vlb and pci, so I could still use my vlb card from my 486 until I upgraded to a 2mb diamond stealth 64 pci.

**BEEP** * **BOOP** * **GRRRRRRRRRRN** 🔺 _American Megatrends_ - is there _anything_ more nostalgic in the world?! 😂

This is unfathomable content.

I had a 486 back in the day with a similar motherboard....with AMAZING 20mb memory (16mb FPM, EDO has some compatibility issues,plus 4mb 30pin simm´s i had laying around...) What a good old times....Learned A LOT with this machine!

I heard about this ages ago back in the days when Red Hill Hardware was a thing. PC Chips were best avoided. In the Pentium MMX era they used shit Chinese knockoff chipsets and called them "VX Pro" or "VX Two" to make you think you were getting a real Intel VX chipset board.

Hey, Clint! That "Write Back Cache On" POST message most likely refers to the internal Cyrix 8 KB cache (which is, in fact, write-back). The guys at PC Chips probably thought that mentioning it on the POST screen would be a "clever" way of deceiving customers without technically 'lying'. :-)

Was not boring at all. I always enjoy all that you do. Very informative. That scam cache is absolutely ROTTEN. lol

How the hell did they get away with that back then, and where were the class action lawsuits? Were these so rare back then that that few people bought them to matter?

So nice that you got it all sorted out so quickly, I also was scratching my head 3 years ago when one of these boards landed in my hands, I was like cool a PCI + VLB 486 motherboard I have to have it! Everyone in my FB retro group was like "ohh you got one of these fake cache motherboard"! I end up purchasing a pair of 8MB FPM modules for this board (and a pair for a DELL 486 VLB one) as all but a pair of 16MB EDO RAM modules worked with the L2 cache enabled but the memory performance was slower than with FPM LOL, apparently is a fast board so your overdrive should work great on it, my board runs nice both with the AMD-x5-133 "p75" 486 and the 100MHz Cyrix 5x86. Ohh I catched a glimpse at that small box and it's so nice to see that Startech make a screw kit that include these old nylon AT standoffs!!! Thanks

Wow, what a mindf**k. Of course it has cache. There's two chips on the board that say 'WRITE BACK". They even have part numbers,.

I can feel the love. This video was awesome. It wasn't boring at all. Amazing work. New sub here. Can't wait to follow-up!!! Thanks.

Fascinating. This was genuinely useful. I have one of these boards, but without the fake cache and with the original COAST module. I bought it in the 90s and ran a standard 486 I think. I occasionally use it when I need real DOS for some old engineering software that I have. Currently I have an Intel DX4-100 along with 64MB EDO RAM on two modules, but I am honestly not sure that I have all of the CPU links set correctly. CPU voltage is set to 3.3V, but I shall have a play with the others to see if the cache performance is affected. The user manual was limited in detail and clarity of information. I need to find those benchmarking programs that you showed.

This video wasn't boring, you earned a new subscriber in me! Now to be fair I already follow the main LGR channel and youtube just recommended this to me, so I was pretty much guaranteed to subscribe regardless lol. Still, its interesting that they make those entirely fake chips, did people not notice immediately? I guess before the internet mass scamming was easier

You almost have to give it to the manufacturers for the sheer contempt they have for their end users. Not only faking the chips but also rigging it so it looks like you can enable it? The cable company wishes they could stoop so low.

Don't rely on cpu benchmarks for cache performance testing. Cache makes memory access faster, but an old test software may only do some simple calculations in a loop that only uses a few bytes from the memory.

That floppy is actually a backup of the PC Chips R&D. Yes. It fits

I'm happy to see more info on these after reading about it on that Red Hill guide. It's so dang interesting seeing some of the old scams!

Reminds me of those fake USB thumb drives that report as having 2TB capacity but are really just a 16GB module inside.

great video huge fan of the m919 also great to see the reproduction modules finally came to fruition saw ppl on vogons talking about this years ago. Looking forward to video with the POD83 the m919 is not the best board for it but also not a bad one and you can do some pretty neat on the fly overclocking with the board, though few POD83 will oc w/o modification to the vrm. Also its not keeping cmos cause looks like the jumper is missing on the 2 center pins where external battery goes

I'm more excited about this series then any other story arc on youtube.

I've been searching forever for that cache module, I've been handicapped by the lack of it in the #486QuakeRace. Thanks for another video, Clint.

Always love that pretty GUI BIOS

I'm so glad you put a clip the "doom version" of Jill of the Jungle!! Ahh.. still makes me laugh!! Do you have an idea why that sound card did that?.. and have you ever come across anything like that before?..

I remember in the early 200s when case modding was a thing you could get rounded IDE cables to better cable managed the case. That could be fun. Because that 486 needs all the airflow it can get!

call them up, is it still under warranty?

An tech tales on these fake chips would be amazing!!

This was awesome - I, too had heard often of these fake caches but never seen one.. in the flesh... thankya kindly for yet another epic vid.

Any other situation this would be rage inducing. Here it is an amazing show case piece and hilarity.

This might very well be a newer version of the board I had back in the mid-late 90's, for the first PC ("It's ST" 486 DX2/50 with 4mb ram) I ever built myself. I'm fairly certain mine didn't have VESA slots (not 100% on that though, maybe it did and i'm not remembering) and that it had fake Write Back cache chips but through hole versions (which I didn't know were fake until quite a long time after i'd bought it)! I assume it has a rigged bios. I'd still like to find one just for the sake of it! I found a webpage/blog that some one made a while ago where they had a PcChips board with fake Write Back through hole chips, so they removed them and sliced them in half to find they were pretty much just solid plastic with chip legs and no core whatsoever, so they replaced them with proper cache ram chips and it actually worked fine and detected them (and in fact performed really well), so those ones at least had all the correct traces running to and from them!

My first video card oddly enough had the same memory chips that were on a 286 motherboard I was given. On the video card and the motherboard the chips were socketed, so I pulled the chips from the board and added it to the video card. It bumped the video up to a whole 1M. Used on a 486 DX2 66 system. Quickly upgraded to a Pentium 2, and an All in Wonder, with a sound blaster live platinum. Kinda made big jumps.

Georg Schnurer, Ponytail legend!

I mean, I feel as though I've learned something. The nerve! To sell you a board with fake cache and then offer an upgrade lol

this was a triumph, I'm making a note here "Huge success"

Unfathomable Content!

is the COST chip still available anywhere? the ebay link is dead. I have the same board V3.4 looking for the M919 cash cost chip for it.

FWIW I have the 3.2 version of the M919 (with the same reproduction 256k cache module and AMD DX4-100/16k write back cache) and the 3.4B/F (with original 256k cache module and Am5x86-133) and both are rock solid with 60ns EDO RAM. Both CPUs run at stock speeds with the memory timing in BIOS as fast as they'll allow which make them surprisingly quick (relatively, of course). With as much flack as these boards get they're surprisingly solid!

This was pretty in depth for a blurb! LOVE IT! Keep em coming ;^) !

Truly outrageous.

De-solder those "chips" and see if they really do have any kind of function... See if the motherboard works without them once and for all. LOL

"Victim of fake cash." That's a very clever pun.

I totally forgot about the fake cache years! That is for the reminder!

Is this an example that business executives can market computers as having a feature when in reality people are being sold a bunch of nonsense?

I've never heard of "Fake-Cache" before i bought my M912 PCChips Mobo (which is actually quite fast /w real l2 ;)). Mine got real L2 socketed onboard though (And oooh yes, i've tested it thouroughly ;)) - but i find this topic of fake cache (or chips in general) very interesting. Thanks for this blerby blerb! :-)

I can't fathom what you got on that floppy.

I was thinking "man, that's a hot rod". After watching the video I realized it's a hot dog.

Fake cache soldered onto the board? That's wild, man.

So bizarre. My dad and I were just talking about our first gaming PC today. The Quantex! He custom ordered it from a PC mag. Strange world.

Wish you had made this video a couple days ago. Just sold an m919 cache module on ebay... woulda sent it to you for free. If I come across another, I'll keep you in mind.

Is this the pc you got from the big event a few videos back? Seems like they built it to give you problems... which works out for me as I get more content. Although I guess pc's in the 90's did have all kinds of little issues... I remember spending many nights sleeping on the coach in the back room of my local pc shop while my dad waited for them to repair his pc... and it always seemed like pc's back then had a mind of their own and always tons of compatibility issues... But isn't that the fun of these old machines? Thanks Clint!

ha. the guy that cloned the cache module sold me the original cache module on ebay. I later bought one of the reproduction ones from him. Nice guy

COAST - Cache on a stick, for when CREAM - cache rules everything around me.

This PC is so similar to the first machine I built myself. Cyrix CPU, PC Chips "VIP" M919 mobo, Opti Viper sound card (although mine worked just fine). I also had a Trident VGA card (pulled from my old 386) and a Quantum Bigfoot hard drive for all the slows... I think an entire generation of tight-fisted PC builders ended up with a machine like this. It was inevitable in 1995 when you bought the cheapest of everything. Those motherboards could be really unstable as well... I went through a phase of being convinced that Cyrix/ST CPUs were flaky in Windows due to these things. Wrong culprit.

Over a quarter of a century ago they were still doing the same type of thing they do today. That restores my faith.

“An empty slot, is an unhappy slot.”

Yeah, these old power supplies don't generate a lot of heat. I picked up a Pentium 1 pc from work that had been in continuous use for years. The CPU fan was barely turning over and the PSU fan suffered a catastrophic failure. The power supply still was in fine condition and the caps weren't that bad, either. Lubed the CPU fan, replaced the PSU fan amongst other things... made it functional and easier to replace the Dallas clock IC (those where a thing back in the day!) by placing it in a socket.

It's more fun when it's a project, right? Keep tinkering ;) Super-weird with the fake chips. What in the world...

OMG You have legitimately blown my mind lol I didnt know about this problem.... I had a couple PCChips mobos back in the day as a teen buying at the computer fairs that came around. Buying pcs on a mall job salary in 1996 lol as a highschooler... couldnt be picky lol, but I still feel cheated lol.

Bart Simpson: "I boost my frame rates with a cache on a stick."

The fake cache chips remind me of the pipes labeled GNDN in the original Star Trek series. Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing.

I know this is odd to say online but i like sitting and smoking a joint while watching this guys videos, i love your videos man!

I learned about these fake mem cache boards from viejuner, anyways cool review as always Clint 👍🏻

I got my brother 'scribed to this channel. We both played with all of this stuff in the theater back in the day. As always thank you and...dude you have some Blerbs on your shirt...crap me too? Dammit I love this shirt!

Been there done that many, many, many times. Back in the day, when memory was very expensive, 72 pin simms required a parity chip, but since memory was so expensive they put emulation chips to trick the MB that the memory had parity chip on them. They did the same thing with cache to keep costs down.

@3:30 - "...PC Chips and these other mother..." I was expecting something other than "motherboard manufacturers".