Tomato 4DPS
 

Popping cases looking for a working floppy drive in my mountain of dead stuff, I found this very funky little PCI Socket 3 board by Tomato/Zida, a 4DPS -- 220 mm by 170 mm. It is too fabulously quirky to toss. Call me sick, but I have a soft spot for weird old hardware.

I am now wondering what I can do with it, though.

It has an AMD 5x86-P75 133 MHz processor in it, about the same processing power as a Pentium 75, but not the same functionality (see, AMD was doing it even back then).

I am wondering if this board equipped with 64 Mb of RAM would make an adequate MP3 player. The board is small enough that I could mod the case from some thrift shop stereo equipment for it.

Thoughts?

Well here is the manual for it It will take 64mb (2x32mb simms) If it's not running a whole os, I don't see why not....

It would harldy handle MP3's... Maybe only if you run Win95, have nothing else installed and don't touch it. Some long time ago I tried using one for this stuff, but no luck (was skipping from time to time). But then it was Winamp 1.xx, maybe newer decoding engines are faster.

maybe throw 98lite on there (not sure of the link), and i'd suggest 2.x version of winamp, lite version of course.

64 megs of ram, eh? should be kosher, i think.

i have a p100, 24 megs of ram sitting around here, but as it has EDO... i'm not sure what it can do :p

Sorry to be here with my late responce ;) , but...

This MB/CPU combo will be not enough for Quality MP3 player... some of AMD-5X-133 could be overclocked up to 160Mhz (with ADZ index, not ADW)...
for 112-128 Kb/sec playback - O'K but no more... we were having some complains from some customers about that problem few years ago and we did check that problem...
Pentium 166 and up is preferrable for 160-192 Kb/sec with no background soft running...

Besides, this MB has 8Gig max HDD size limiation (which can be fixed, though).

I haven't gotten around to doing anything with this board anyways....

Too bad though.


Maybe, I will make it into a telphone answering machine.

I've got a AMD 486DX4 100Mhz (OCed to 120Mhz) 32MB RAM with a cheapo CMI 8738 PCI 6-channel sound card playing my MP3s without missing a beat. So a 133Mhz 486 should be fine. I'm using CMIs DOS MP3 Player and just Win95b DOS mode no GUI.



Knoppix Linux also worked, but it took too long to boot up.

Rats!

This board won't post with most tin contact SIMMs.

My few remaining big EDO SIMMs are all tin.

Tin contacts are not the problem - this MB does not support EDO memory at all... it is limitation of the SIS496/497 chipset - only few revisions of that chipset were supporting EDO, and Zida (Tomato) boards weren't among those boards...

Hi, Ruslan

I found this:

http://nipsala.altervista.org/5x86.html#Istruzioni

"My optimum settings for 4DPS Tomato (256 kb L2 cache) board

Which CPU exactly ?

The identification label on the upper side of the CPU case shows the CPU version. You should read either A80486 DX4-120 SV8B or AMD-x5-133 ADW. The former is the Am486-120 CPU. The latter is the Am5x86 CPU. If the label shows a Am486-120 NV8T instead of SV8B, don't bother with "write back" cause this CPU cannot do it - , just use the regular AMD DX settings and push JP19 CPU frequency select to 40 Mhz...or get a Am5x86.Your Am5x86 CPU should preferably be ADW. The ADZ version may not be so easily overclocked and will typically require a higher input voltage (ie 3.6 V instead of 3.45 V).

Motherboard jumpers settings

Default jumpers settings are for the enhanced AMD 486-100. Configurations for the Enhanced AMD486-120 and Am5x86 CPUs are shown in the documentation that should come with your mainboard.

To overclock the Am5x86, you have to change the JP19 configuration, CPU frequency select, to 40 Mhz. The booklet shows the appropriate configuration for the AMD 5x86 running at 133 Mhz. At this speed, this CPU is no better than the AMD 486-120. You have to overclock it to 160 Mhz. To do so, you must push the JP19 configuration for "CPU frequency select" to 40 Mhz.

With the overclocked Am5x86, you may have problems with software rebooting, ie you have to push the reset button cause a software reboot gets the machine stuck. The (undocumented) solution is providing some extra voltage. The default voltage is 3.3 V, which is a bit too low for the Am5x86, so push it to 3.45 V by changing the JP27 position to 1-2 instead of 3-4. Check that JP28 are NOT jumpered, otherwise you would input 5 V and would kill you CPU. If you need a little bit more voltage, you can have 3.6 V by jumpering JP30 instead of JP27; JP28 should again be left open.

BIOS setup (chipset features)



The presented settings will provide an 20-30% overall improvement over the default ones. Lower (ie faster) values of some parameters are not workable.

Auto Configuration Disabled

ISA Bus 7.1, preferably 1/4 CCLK (sets ISA bus at 10 MHz when clock at 40 MHz)

LD Sample Point End of T3 (T2 causes not so obvious read/write disk errors)

Cache Write Cycle 3 CCLK

Cache Burst Read Cycle 1 CCLK

L2 Cache - DRAM Cycle WS 2 CCLK

DRAM RAS to CAS Delay 2 CCLK

DRAM Write Cycle 1 WS

DRAM Write CAS 1 CCLK

DRAM CAS Precharge Time 1 CCLK

DRAM CAS to MA Delay 2 CCLK

DRAM Speed Fastest (may depend on your RAM quality)

Slow Refresh Enable

L2 Cache Write Back (write thru provides much lower performance)

L2 Tag Bits 7 bits

IDE HDD Block Mode Enabled

Obviously, both internal and external caches should be enabled in the BIOS Features setup screen.... "

My processor is the ADZ variety. Is it worth overclocking it?

Almost everything is correct in your quoted message.

There are few revisions of that board:
1.0,1.5, 2.0, 2.1,3.1 .
Revisions 1.5, 2.0, 2.1 and 3.1 are almost the same.
Rev. 1.0 is different and does not fully support AMD-5X-133 (have some slitches running that CPU at normal speed).

You can download the manual for your board here:

http://www.vctboard.com/eng/dwnld/usrmnl.htm#usrmnl486

ADZ CPUs are having bit higher max working temperature than ADW CPUs, and thus, can be overclocked. Personally I did it few times with no problems... Just set FSB at 40 Mhz instead of 33Mhz... and voltage at 3,45V...

Good luck!

Well. It is quite stable at 160 MHz, so far.

I pulled an old Quantum Big Foot drive out of my box of hard drives and hooked it up just for a laugh. What a hoot! The footprint of the drive is almost as big as that of the motherboard.

I have had trouble trying to update the bios on the board. Its current version is 1.5. I have found other versions: 1.0, 1.5a, and 2.10. The award flash utilities will perform bios backups but won't flash. And yes the jumper is set to the flash position. I am wondering if it is worth pursuing the matter or not. Does anyone know what enhancements versions 1.5a and 2.10 might offer?

Big Foot were quite reliable drives... not very fast - it's obvious... :)

You couldn't reflash BIOS chip simply because ...it is not a flash chip... ;) Yeah, these boards were using ultra-violet erasable EPROMs instead of flash chips (flash chips were much more expensive at those times)... Take a closer look and you will see transparent window under AWARD logo sticker...

It is possible to replace this chip with 1mbit flash chip, but... ;) you know...

There is nothing significally changed in newer versions - at least I don't remember any useful changes... I've seen somewhere on http://rom.by/english.html
patched version of the BIOS, supporting drives over 32Gig (with original BIOS max. was - 8Gig)... Useful site, by the way... ;)

Hi, Ruslan

The bios version 2.10 might not be an official bios. I downloaded all versions off a Russian reference site.

I note that when I run "bp" on the 2.10 version with the /m switch it does not encounter the 32Gb problem. Instead it finds a 65 Gb problem.

If I have time, maybe I will try to use a flashable chip here.

I'm still having fun with this very minor project, and nobody's lost an eye, yet.

sounds like aload of fun... :D