AMI BIOS on Cyrix machine and ATI Rage XL 8MB PCI VGA card

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PixelHaze
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Joined: Mon Jan 31, 2011 3:12 pm

Hi,

I am refurbishing an old Cyrix machine as a learning exercise. It has four PCI slots. A Cirrus Logic 5430 based VGA card works just fine on this PC. I am able to run SliTaz Linux on it with only console mode. I am trying to get the "ATI Rage XL 8MB PCI VGA 3D Video Card" working on it but I am not getting to see the AMI BIOS (1997) boot screen which I usually do. The screen is blank with no BIOS or POST messages.

I have tried re-seating the card suspecting an incorrect contact but that did not help.

I have tried the ATi card in every PCI slot but to no avail. I have tried some other PCI cards (a USB card, an ethernet card and a sound card) in these slots and they seem to work pretty well indicating that the slots are functional.

I have tried the ATi card on another PC with success to confirm that it defect-free.

I have also tried toggling the Plug and Play Aware OS option in the BIOS of the Cyrix machine but with no luck.

The boot screen reports
51-0830-001437-00111111-071595-UT801X-001_10_UTRON-F
as the last line when I use the Cirrus Logic card.

The bios chip is a HT M11986 which I suspect is MX28F1000P. (I would like to know if any other EEPROM chip can be used as a drop-in replacement)

The motherboard has a VX Pro II chipset. Kindly help me.

Regards,
PixelHaze
edwin
The Hardware Archivist
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Joined: Wed Mar 20, 2002 7:11 pm
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PC Chips M559.
Hintcorp UT801X chipset
Hintcorp was taken over by PLX technology:
http://www.plxtech.com/

Their website doesn't mention anything at all about the HintCorp devices. Some info here:
http://www.pcidatabase.com/vendor_details.php?id=396
but the VXPro II stuff isn't mentioned on the product pages:
http://www.plxtech.com/products/fastlane/

The most likely problem is it does not support the PCI 2.0 standard so the card doesn't get an IRQ and refuses to work. A long long time ago I have seen something similar...
edwin/evasive

Do not assume anything

System error, strike any user to continue...
PixelHaze
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Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Jan 31, 2011 3:12 pm

Hi Edwin,

Thank you for your reply.
I had suspected that PCI 2.0 was not supported.
However, the proper working of the Ethernet card and the functional USB card made me think otherwise.
The box of the Ethernet card states "Support WOL for PCI Spec 2.2"
and the box of the USB card states "Support 32-bit PCI Bus, PCI Specification 2.1"

Now, I am left with two more questions ...
- How can I find out the PCI spec supported by my motherboard?
- Can the limitation be in the bios ? Or is it restricted by the hardware ?

Kind Regards,
PixelHaze
edwin
The Hardware Archivist
Posts: 6286
Joined: Wed Mar 20, 2002 7:11 pm
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The real problem is this board was made by PC Chips or associates. It is from an era they did not care at all about their customers so info/drivers/updates are hard to find and the quality of their products from the time is questionable at best. This board does not support DMA or ACPI.

Some PCI 2.x cards will work, be it slower, others actually have no fall-back and simply refuse to do anything. There's one other possible culprit: what power supply are you using? (Brand/model/specifications?)
edwin/evasive

Do not assume anything

System error, strike any user to continue...
cp
BIOS Guru
Posts: 1914
Joined: Mon Oct 21, 2002 9:07 pm
Location: Germany

can you please boot into linux and post the output of "lspci -v"
thanks!
If you email me include [WIMSBIOS] in the subject.
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