Digital Prioris XL 5200 memory issue

[Bubba]

Greetings,

I have great problems with this machine. It is Digital Prioris XL 5200
with dual P200 P54C (Socket 5) and archaic Intel Neptune (NX) chipset. The
problem is - machine sees 256MB of RAM during post, but:

Linux, FreeBSD and all the programs from Hiren's boot CD (Astra, Aida and
even simple "mem" form DOS) see only 64 MB
Windows 2000 Server sees 96MB

There's 256kb L2 cache, and if I recall correctly, it is suppose to have
11 bit tag, that is, machine should be able to cache 512MB of RAM in write
back mode! Thus, it puzzles me why can't I access more than 96MB in W2k
and 64MB in all other OS.

Google didn't provide any quality troubleshoot. Any thoughts or
experiences?

 

[philo]

Greetings,

I have great problems with this machine. It is Digital Prioris XL 5200
with dual P200 P54C (Socket 5) and archaic Intel Neptune (NX) chipset. The
problem is - machine sees 256MB of RAM during post, but:

Linux, FreeBSD and all the programs from Hiren's boot CD (Astra, Aida and
even simple "mem" form DOS) see only 64 MB
Windows 2000 Server sees 96MB

There's 256kb L2 cache, and if I recall correctly, it is suppose to have
11 bit tag, that is, machine should be able to cache 512MB of RAM in write
back mode! Thus, it puzzles me why can't I access more than 96MB in W2k
and 64MB in all other OS.

Google didn't provide any quality troubleshoot. Any thoughts or
experiences?

I actually owned a Prioris until recently
Mine had dual pentium pro cpu's.

Anyway I don't have it now so I can't check...
but look in the bios options and see if *maybe* it's set to OS/2 as the
operating system
as OS/2 usually has it's own special settings if RAM is over 64 megs.

As a matter of fact I'd check all bios settings regarding RAM.

If nothing turns up there...run a RAM test, just as a precaution

 

[Bubba]

philo's log on stardate 17 ožu 2008

I actually owned a Prioris until recently
Mine had dual pentium pro cpu's.

My condolences. God damit, I'm so pissed off I could find Ken Olsen
and roundhouse kick him 'till he drops dead!

Anyway I don't have it now so I can't check...
but look in the bios options and see if *maybe* it's set to OS/2 as
the operating system as OS/2 usually has it's own special settings if
RAM is over 64 megs.
As a matter of fact I'd check all bios settings regarding RAM.
If nothing turns up there...run a RAM test, just as a precaution

Ok, I managed to solve it, and here's the thing. This Prioris is EISA
machine, and those machines *generally* have ECU and SCU disks, and *all*
configuration is done via those (IME). However, this particular Prioris
has very capable "local" (so, without need of the disk) configuration
utility, that seems to work, since changing options such as caching,
enabling SCSI controller and such work flawlessly and stay remembered.
Heh, but now's "funny" thing - when you add or tamper with memory in any
way, you *MUST* run SCU disk and merely *save* the configuration.
Afterwards, it works perfectly.

Well, that's about it. I hope this helps someone... someday... maybe.

 

[Ben Myers]

Careful with Ken Olsen there. He's very long in the tooth now. Anyway, it's
not Ken's fault that you need to run the EISA configuration utility, a
half-baked idea matched only by the IBM MicroChannel Utility, from which the ECU
was copied. Blame the 3-humped camel of the EISA committee: Compaq, HP (when
they were separate companies), and whatever were the other major PC
manufacturers of the time. I mean WHY run a diskette configuration utility
when the configuration coule be handled by the BIOS setup or by
autoconfiguration of the memory?

The Neptune chipset was very interesting with its early support of 512MB of
memory. Intel's Triton chipset backed down to 128MB max, so that the Pentium
Pro server systems would look better at 512MB with the early 440 chipset,
whatever it was called... Ben Myers

 

[Bubba]

Ben Myers's log on stardate 17 ožu 2008

Careful with Ken Olsen there. He's very long in the tooth now.

Yeah, he's lucky enough Chuck Noriss didn't try to configure this
machine...

Blame the 3-humped camel of the EISA committee: Compaq, HP (when
they were separate companies), and whatever were the other major PC
manufacturers of the time. I mean WHY run a diskette configuration
utility when the configuration coule be handled by the BIOS setup or
by autoconfiguration of the memory?

Running a floppy is not so awkward - EEPROM's were smaller than today's
and many configurations for EISA cards could fit on a floppy, not to
mention that these configuration utilities are usually well documented, so
although I despise floppy drives, I wouldn't have been surprised if i had
*only* needed to run SCU.

However, this one is for the books! If you run that embedded configuration
utility, you can handle configurations up to 64MB RAM. Obviously, higher
amounts require SCU. Incredible...

 

[philo]

philo's log on stardate 17 ozu 2008


My condolences. God damit, I'm so pissed off I could find Ken Olsen
and roundhouse kick him 'till he drops dead!


Ok, I managed to solve it, and here's the thing. This Prioris is EISA
machine, and those machines *generally* have ECU and SCU disks, and *all*
configuration is done via those (IME). However, this particular Prioris
has very capable "local" (so, without need of the disk) configuration
utility, that seems to work, since changing options such as caching,
enabling SCSI controller and such work flawlessly and stay remembered.
Heh, but now's "funny" thing - when you add or tamper with memory in any
way, you *MUST* run SCU disk and merely *save* the configuration.
Afterwards, it works perfectly.

Well, that's about it. I hope this helps someone... someday... maybe.

Yes , setting up those EISA configurations are a lot of fun.
I still have an IBM PS/2 that's MCA and it also requires those setup
floppies
to configure the bios...but I've kept my PS/2 because at least I can carry
the darn thing.

I don't know how I got that Priorus into my house without any help...
but when I found someone who was willing to haul it away...I figured it was
time to get that boat anchor out of here!!!!