SY-7VBA133U+Tualatin PIII-S low transfer rate in DOS mode

[barnabas]

good morning @all

as I have written at headline the problem is a low transfer rate about 70 MB /min in DOS mode with Drive Magic 6.0

with snapshot image software the transferrate is about 750 MB / min, running in WIN XP

it doesn´t matter starting Drive Magic with two Floppys or with temp coming from Windows XP Pro

Mainboard: SY-7VBA133U Bios 2BA2
CPU: Tualatin PIII-S 1400/512/133
RAM: Kingston PC 133 - 3x 256 = 768 MB
Disk: Seagate ST3200820A 200 GB only Disk Primary IDE Master without any device, 80 pol ATA 100 Cable

one very old Asus P2B running as well with one upgradeware SLOT T adapter and one Celeron 1200/256/100 Tualatin 512 MB RAM PC100 Infineon is running with transferrate of 350 MB / min in DOS mode

as well one old ACER ALTOS 500 with one CuMine 550, 256 MB RAM PC100 Infineon, Seagate 4GB SCSI /W2K SP4) on Adaptec SCSI Controller PCI and very old Fujitsu Siemens IDE Disk 9 GB 5400 rpm is running with closely 200 MB /min

regarding the lower supported UDMA on this boards the transferrate is accaptable according the time (10 min)

so in my opinion the Soyo Board BIOS is switching to PIO mode instead of UDMA

anyone has an idea to modify that Bios or anyone knows about one BUG causing that low performance

anything still is running well with Linux and Windows, happens only in DOS mode

greetings @all

[Denniss]

Many, if not all, boards with older Award Bios use only PIO in DOS mode. Several Board with AMI Bios have an option to use Busmater tranfers in DOS.

You may need to use a DOS-driver to improve performance. I have drivers for Intel and VIA chipsets if you can't find a driver. But I don'tknow whether your board/chipset is supported or not.

[barnabas]

hy Denniss

quick response !

tricky will be, to compile any third party driver into Drive Magic 3.5" floppy software

main reason for my post is acceptable time to craete images of HDDs especially if partition is sized and covered more than usual

as well I will not give up my Tualatin despite that topic, is working very well, consumes less energy and does not cause any noise

that Soyo is working with 320 GB HDD, so system partition is about 60 GB

but thanks a lot spending some time on that topic

greetings

[barnabas]

@denniss

so both SY-7VBA133U I have - still have the same performance unless different peripherials

if I do the same with Asus P2B or P3B-F the performance in DOS mode is much better, as well with Siemens D1184 /Intel 815 running with Celeron 1400 Tualatin and 512 PC133

but, both, P2B and P3B-F having Award Bios

sure, BX440 in my opinion is something different to VIA694T

[edwin]

All non-Intel chipsets have cr*ppy performance in DOS in my personal experience. If someone knows of one that does work decent let me know and how they got it to work properly...

[Denniss]

All non-Intel chipsets have cr*ppy performance in DOS in my personal experience. If someone knows of one that does work decent let me know and how they got it to work properly...

That's only true if there's no option to enable busmaster transfer in DOS mode via Bios. Ran perfectly fine on my SIS-based K7S5A and K7S8X-E.
Without Bios support but with DOS-drivers my P5VX-Be (i430VX) ran fine,too.

[cp]

i agree with Denniss: some mainboards (mostly so called value boards) use bioses that don't really care about setting any registers in the southbridge which leaves them with pio modes (Windows maybe, Linux for sure) until some driver comes along that fixes that.
Have a look at Rainbow's site and seach for M726 then you'll know what i mean. If they would have written a clean bios in the first place..but hey, that's value ;)

[notinthisworld]

i have the same m726 board right now, after reading all the problems, i then assume that having a "hacked" or "modified" bios for this board is really impossible?

[barnabas]

morning @all

I added to config.sys of first floppy of Drive Magic the following files

DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS
REM DEVICE=EMM386.EXE
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=UDMA2.SYS
DEVICE=UDMA2S.SYS
DEVICE=UDMA.SYS
DEVICE=UDMAJR.SYS
LASTDRIVE=Z


REM -------------------------------------------------------
REM -- Codeseitencodes (yyy) hier ablegen --
REM -------------------------------------------------------

REM DEVICEHIGH=DISPLAY.SYS CON=(EGA,yyy,)


REM -------------------------------------------------------
REM -- Netzwerk- oder CD-ROM-Treiber hier ablegen. --
REM -------------------------------------------------------

REM DEVICE=CDROM.SYS /D=driver_name


copied that 4 drivers of Jack Ellis onto first floppy

@startup

that driver switched my harddrive to udma100

the image is running now with around 550 MB / min average on VIA 694T and VIA693A based boards

INTEL based I haven´t done up to now

both, are having old award bios

[cp]

nothing is impossible..load a decent OS (like linux) that takes care of the settings or write a driver for whatever OS you want to use. you can even set the register values hard e.g. just write them, but i guess you will run into problems if you connect a non-UDMA capable drive to a port that's configured to run UDMA.

[notinthisworld]

got it thanks a lot.

[edwin]

XDMA is a DOS driver for UltraDMA hard-disks. It supports normal "end
user" PC mainboards having an Intel, VIA, SiS, ALi, or similar UltraDMA
controller set by the BIOS in "Legacy IDE mode". XDMA does NOT handle
Serial-ATA, "Native PCI mode" servers or "add-on" adapter cards made by
Promise, SiiG, etc. XDMA runs normal mainboard IDE chips and AVOIDS a
need for an "add-on" card!

There's one problem though, development of this thing has stopped due to the owner having a row with certain members of the FreeDOS team for which it was being developed. I have seen a newer version that will work fine in any version but FreeDOS, now trying and hunting it down...