From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Feb 18 10:13:20 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id KAA29680 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 10:13:20 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from ifi.uio.no (0@ifi.uio.no [129.240.64.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA29593 for ; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 10:12:56 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dag-erli@ifi.uio.no) Received: from hrotti.ifi.uio.no (2602@hrotti.ifi.uio.no [129.240.64.15]) by ifi.uio.no (8.8.8/8.8.7/ifi0.2) with ESMTP id TAA04081; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 19:03:26 +0100 (MET) Received: (from dag-erli@localhost) by hrotti.ifi.uio.no ; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 19:03:26 +0100 (MET) To: Fred Gilham Cc: FreeBSD hackers list Subject: Re: opinions requested on new mainboard purchase References: <199802172259.OAA11624@snapdragon.csl.sri.com> Organization: Gutteklubben Terrasse X-url: http://www.ifi.uio.no/~dag-erli/ Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit From: dag-erli@ifi.uio.no (Dag-Erling Coidan Smørgrav) Date: 18 Feb 1998 19:03:24 +0100 In-Reply-To: Fred Gilham's message of "Tue, 17 Feb 1998 14:59:22 -0800" Message-ID: Lines: 35 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 19.34 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Fred Gilham writes: > With the ASUS T2P4 you have to make sure you buy a tag ram chip that > the board doesn't come with. This chip is necessary to allow the > board to cache more than 64meg. Bzzzt, wrong. This hasn't been necessary since at least mid-1996, when COAST 3.0 became widespread. ASUSTek T2P4 motherboards requires an extra tag chip *or* a cache module newer than mid-1996 (ASUS CMU 3.0 or newer, or any module compliant with COAST 3.0 or newer). When I bought my T2P4 (a P/I-XP55T2P4 rev. 1.3) in December 1996, i bought a 256 kB ASUS CMU 3.1 cache module to go with it, bringing the amount of L2 cache to a total of 512 kB. Of course, if you *don't* want to add cache to the motherboard, you *will* need a tag chip. But i honestly can't see why you'd want to do that, since an original 256 kB ASUSTek COAST module costs somewhere around $50, and makes a significant difference in performance in >64M systems. But all this is really academic since, to the best of my knowledge, ASUSTek stopped producing T2P4 boards at least half a year ago. If you *do* find a T2P4 floating around somewhere, then by all means, go for it. It's one of the best Pentium motherboards ever made. But make sure it's a rev. 3.0 or newer, since older boards don't have split voltage (i.e. don't support MMX processors) and classic Pentium processors are getting hard to find. I am definitely *not* going to buy a new motherboard / processor until the Slot II Deschutes hits the market and high-end LX motherboards become affordable and reliable. -- "I have a closed mind. It helps keeping the rain out." (Michael Press on a.s.r) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message