Hotherboards with faked Cache Chips - please Help!

A

Arne

Guest
Hi,
i have a motherboard of what i think it might have faked (empty) cache chips. That is because one chip has naerly the same print on it than the one on http://www.redhill.net.au/b-bad.html . In addition, I can't even find a BIOS chip, if there is one, it must be an SMD type. I can upload some photos if required.
In addition, it has a DALLAS "box" on it, "REAL TIME" is written on it (and some numbers). It that helps...

Please help me!

- Arne from Germany
 
Tea

Tea

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
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Messages
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Location
27a No Fixed Address, Oz.
Website
www.redhill.net.au
Hi Arne,

There are several utilities you can use to test your cache RAM. I have one here somewhere, I'll see if I can dig it out for you in a minute or two, and post it.

Pictures of computer parts are always nice. :)

That black Dallas thing is the real time clock module. Terible damn things they were, because if the board manufacturer hasn't installed a jumper, it's damn near impossible to clear the CMOS on them. Maybe one of the other guys will be able to explain them in more detail.
 
A

Arne

Guest
Thanks again, that was exactly what I was looking for!
I'll try if I can get that board working now so I'm not online for a little time.

- Arne
 
Tea

Tea

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Jan 15, 2002
Messages
3,749
Location
27a No Fixed Address, Oz.
Website
www.redhill.net.au
Found it: http://www.sysopt.com/cachk4.html

Nice pictures, Arne. It's hard to tell much by looking at the board. I mean sometimes the whole look and feel of the board says "I'm genuine", other times it screams "fake" at you. This one .... I'm not sure. On the whole, I suppose I'd guess that the cache is genuine, and the reason I say that is that (it seems to me) if you were going to make a board with fake cache, why would you bother with just four fake chips (= 128k, I think) - you could "save" even more by faking a whole 256k.

I suspect that that Alliance tag RAM chip in your picture is actually the "real thing" - i.e., the genuine part that the fake cache chips in the pictures on the Red Hill site were designed to imitate.

But run Cachechk: that will tell you for sure.
 
A

Arne

Guest
The Cachechk reports that the cache is genuine!
But now I have another problem with another board: all cache sockets are empty, I don't know which to fill with what and which to leave empty. I think I can some (4, is that enough?) Cache Chips from an old board (leaking Battery destroyed connections...): "UM61256BK-20".
Photo: http://membres.lycos.fr/elektronik/empty.jpg.
The cache is turned ON in the Bios! The report from CacheChk follows:
Code: 
 CACHECHK v4 2/7/96  Copyright (c) 1995 by Ray Van Tassle. (-h for help)
 CMOS reports: conv_mem= 640K, ext_mem= 7,424K, Total RAM= 8,064K
 Clocked at 486 49.9 MHz
 Reading from memory.  
 MegaByte#:      --------- Memory Access Block sizes (KB)-----
       1    2    4    8   16   32   64  128  256  512 1024 2048 4096 <-- KB
 0:   21   21   21   22   56   56   56   56   56   56   --   --   --    µs/KB
 2:   21   21   21   22   56   56   56   56   56   56   56   56   56    µs/KB
 3  4  5  6  7  <--- same as above.
 8:   50   50   50   50   50   50   50   50   50   --   --   --   --    µs/KB

 Extra tests----
 Wrt  33   33   33   33   33   33   33   33   33   33   33   33   33<-Write mem
 This machine seems to have one cache!? [read]
    !! cache is   8KB --  49.9 MB/s  21.0 ns/byte  (253%)          4.0 clks
   It looks like megabyte #8 isn't being cached!
    Main memory speed --  19.7 MB/s  53.1 ns/byte  (100%) [read]  10.1 clks
    Effective RAM access time (read ) is 212ns (a RAM bank is 4 bytes wide). 
    Effective RAM access time (write) is 127ns (a RAM bank is 4 bytes wide). 
    Clocked at 486 49.9 MHz.  Cache ENABLED.
 Options: -t0 -qq
 
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