Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!swi.psy.uva.nl!stolk
From: stolk@swi.psy.uva.nl (Stolk Bram)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: 386 upgrade
Summary: Problems occured during upgrade from 8088/8 to 80386/33
Message-ID: <5772@swi.swi.psy.uva.nl>
Date: 12 Feb 91 13:37:33 GMT
Reply-To: stolk@fwi.uva.nl (Stolk Bram)
Organization: SWI, UvA, Amsterdam
Lines: 49


	L.S.


	Last month I replaced my 8088/8 motherboard with the
80386 motherbpoard from Soyo(taiwan) running at 33MHz, 64KB cache.
I moved all my peripherals to the new board: EGA/ADLIB/MODEM/MULTI-IO/
SCANNER/HD-CONTR/FLOPPY DRIVES.

	The performance gain was incredible: my new machine even left
the Compaq 386-33 in the dust. (norton SI). And that for a Taiwanese
clone... it outperformed an USA name-brand. I am a third year cs student,
with considerable knowledge of the IBM PC family, so I thought upgrading
would be to be a piece of cake.  But nevertheless I had some problems:

	-1- My Harddisk was a lot slower (3 times) on the 386.
	    this was because in my XT the controller could run at
	    interleave 1:3, now in my AT it requires 1:6. How come?
	    I thought interleave was effected by controller only.

        -2- This one is real weird: I had 2 drives: A & B. Drive B 
	    only worked when the baydoor of A was closed! And mind:
	    I did not give the drives the same designation! A's LED
	    went on at 'A:' and B's on 'B:'. Maybe this was caused
	    by the fact that I could not find a terminating resistor
	    on my Toshiba 3.5' drive.

        -3- The RAM-check at start up counts upto 640K, while I have 1MB.
	    Norton SI reports: 0K extended. Although I do have a fine
	    working BIOS-shadow. Even if I disable shadow: still no extended
	    memory.

        -4- My Modem refuses to work, I tried all IORQ's and COM's.
	    Although my scanner/adlib/....etc all worked fine

        -5- My EGA had difficulty keeping up the pace, when in graphicmode.
	    It distortes some pixels when running at 33MHz. Is this because
	    my wait states are chosen to operate my 80ns main memory? Or
	    is the speed for my EGA-memory independed from mainboard?

	Any help would be highly appreciated. Although I had some problems,
I do recommend a motherboard upgrade to everyone, I had this board
with 1MB, 64K SRAM for appr. $1000 (A real low price in Europe).
F19 Stealth Fighter is a real knock-out when played on 33MHz.

		Yours sincerely,


				Bram Stolk