[SunRescue] Re: Rescue digest, Vol 1 #799 - 11 msgs

[Eric Ozrelic]

I have a first gen. SunPCi card, it was the original one that came with a
300MHz CPU. It is named Penguin on the back. It supports bus speeds 55 - 83,
this is typical of standard socket 7 boards using the Intel TX chipset.

I believe that 2nd gen. SunPCi cards, one with a 400 MHz CPU, use a
different chipset, or
are capable of higher bus speeds. AMD doesn't make a 400MHz CPU that runs on
a
66MHz bus (I think), and I'm pretty sure that Sun wouldn't overclock there
stuff, or run it at non-rated speeds.

SO, these settings I'm giving you guys are for the 1st gen. SunPCi card,
they may or may
not work on your 400MHz model...

I used a brand spakin' new 500MHz cpu, I heard that the 550's were unstable,
not to
mention the wholesaler in town didn't have one. Mine does not appear to be
multiplier
locked, I don't know about yours though. You can use the heatsink and fan
off
your old cpu, you might need to pry it free with a little screwdriver, and
apply
some heatsink compound to it when re-attaching it to your new CPU.

OK, I would draw out a diagram, but I'm too lazy. Lets say you have the card
out on your
desk, and the bracket is on your left side, and the cpu is on your right
side. There are a set
of three rows of three pins on the very top, middle part of the card. They
are JK1, 2, and 3.

To set the card to an 83MHz bus (which is what you would want with this 1st
gen card), just
take all the jumpers and short the top set of pins. (so JK1 (2-3), JK2
(2-3), and JK3 (2-3)

This is pretty easy because it comes from the factory shorted on all the
bottom pins, enabling
a 66MHz bus.

I am unaware of how to set the 100+ MHz bus speed that may or may not be
supported by
the second gen. card.

The jumpers that control the multiplier settings are a set of 3 rows of 2
pins directly above, and slightly to the left of the cpu. The default
setting for my card is all of them
shorted, providing a multiplier of 4.5. I do not know the circuit board
names for these, I couldn't see any.

Next, we want to set the multiplier as high as possible. I believe you can
set this to anywhere
from 2.5X to 6X. You can set it to 6 by removing the top two jumpers,
leaving only the one
closest to the CPU shorted.

You can adjust the vcore, and I/O core (not sure on these ones), but moving
jumpers around
on the set of 4 rows of 2 pins in the very lower right bottom part of the
card.

I left these at they're defaults. On the back of my card there is a strange
list of jumpers that
I believe correspond to this set of 4 jumpers, but I don't know how to
interperate it.

Ok, time to boot up your SunPCi card. When it comes up it should say it's a
400MHz CPU,
but don't worry! For some reason, Sun set the highest MHz the bios could
display at 400,
even though it's running much faster.

When you get into windows, download and install this handy utility called
WCPUID. It will
tell you the speed of the CPU in MHz, the bus speed, the multiplier, etc...

You should be running at around 498MHz (83MHz X 6) if you've used a 500MHz
cpu.

Let me know if anything is incorrect. I would be very curios to know what
the big fat
triple set of connectors is on the top left side of the board. I also notice
there are a few
jumpers here and there that I don't know what they do. It also looks as
though a 40pin
IDE connector was removed in the shipping release of this card. I can see
the pin holes for
one.

Regards,

Eric Ozrelic

p.s Stability for the most part is excellent. Only once every few days W2K
seems to
completely lock up, and I think it's when I do a certain thing too, I had
this problem
before I upgraded too so I'm pretty sure it's not CPU related.


----- Original Message -----
From: "brian" <bphinz at home.com>
To: <rescue at sunhelp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2000 4:52 AM
Subject: [SunRescue] Re: Rescue digest, Vol 1 #799 - 11 msgs


> hmmm, I tried putting a k6-3 400 in my sunpci once - it wouldn't even
> consider booting...  because of the low core voltage they use, I
> suspect.  There are silk screenings on the back of the board for jumper
> settings for the voltage, but as far as I could tell, the jumper
> referred to does not exist!  Correct me if I'm wrong, but out of the box
> they run the 400 at 66x6 right?  So to get 500 you had to bump up to
> 83x6?  No stability problems? I figured that part of the reason they
> could get away with 2.1v was the low bus speed...
>
> -brian