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I recently picked up this gem:





I installed this into my PC-98, which is a simple as snapping it onto the 33MHz 486SX, but I am not noticing any speed difference.

This is supposed to upgrade the CPU from 33 MHz to 133 MHz.

CHKCPU gives me an ID string of "AuthenticAMD", so I know the new CPU is being used as the original was Intel. However, I do not get any speed rating.

Any ideas? 

DIP settings:

4連dip SW
　出荷時設定=ON_OFF_ON_ON
・SW1：クロック倍比選択
　ON=4倍
　OFF=3倍
・SW2，3：000C0000-001FFFFF領域のキャッシング選択
　ON_OFF=000C0000-001FFFFF領域のキャッシング無効(WB動作時選択)
　OFF_ON=同領域キャッシング有効(WT動作時選択)
　ON_ONは設定禁止
・SW4：WB/WT選択
　ON=WT
　OFF=WB
　WB動作に設定した場合，バスマスタ転送のSCSI_I/Fとの併用不可，
　またSCSI機器や本体の動作が不安定となる場合があるのでWT動作推奨
　L2と併用する場合は出荷時設定

BIOS settings:

Any software drivers needed?

I guess it's possible. This was purchased as a loose item and tested working.

Any good CPU speed reporting utilities for DOS?

HWiNFO
NSSI

You should burn off a copy of UBCD, these are probably the same tools on that disc.

Ahh, good old Ultimate Boot Disc!

The great (and frustrating) thing about the PC-98, is that it's *just* different enough from a PC to be annoying.

I doubt UBCD will boot on this computer. It's going to have to be a standalone program, and even then it may not work.

I tried the old DOS "speedsys" program, and the system crashes and reboots!

Quote from: RobIvy64 on June 27, 2014, 08:57:17 PM
Ahh, good old Ultimate Boot Disc!

The great (and frustrating) thing about the PC-98, is that it's *just* different enough from a PC to be annoying.

I doubt UBCD will boot on this computer. It's going to have to be a standalone program, and even then it may not work.

I tried the old DOS "speedsys" program, and the system crashes and reboots!

No, it won't work as PC-98 DOS is different from ordinary one.Anyway, I think there must be some utility on Vector.jp but, once again, damned japanese language! 

P.S.
I found this CPU Speed control program, you may give it a try:

http://www.vector.co.jp/soft/dos/util/se002303.html

 Hi RobIvy64 !

Your accelerator card needs CPU cache driver which is sometimes, if not mistaken, incorporated in the computers BIOS and can be overridden by software drivers. Here is what I have found out so far.

Here you can find good reviews of the various accelerator cards which were available back in the days. Might be worth to translate and add to the PC98 Wiki.

Am5x86-P75 (Am486DX5)
http://www.amy.hi-ho.ne.jp/nakajima-jr/kikaku/special2/cpu4_5.htm

Here are some cache drivers to try:

CPU information and settings
www.vector.co.jp/vpack/filearea/dos/hardware/cpu/

CPU-clock changer 0.01 (designed for Am5x86)

   > cpuspeed high <--- the fastest 1/1 clock
   > cpuspeed mid <--- 1/2 clock
   > cpuspeed low

CPUHIGH 1.10
wake 0.93-0020

Hardware benchmarks
http://www.vector.co.jp/vpack/filearea/dos/hardware/bench/

PC98 dip-switch settings
http://www.dw230.com/98/sw.php

You might try playing with the following jumpers:

SW3 block, jumper 8 - Selection of CPU operation mode
ON- HIGH (386)
OFF - LOW (μPD70116 (V30))

SW3 block, jumper 5
Try setting DMA to 高速 (High speed)

Here is the translation of your accelerator cards manual:

Dip-switch
Default settings = ON_OFF_ON_ON

SW1: CPU clock multiplier
ON  = x4
OFF = x3

SW2,3: 000C0000-001FFFFF cache options
ON_OFF = 000C0000-001FFFFF region caching (WB selected)
OFF_ON = Enable caching of the same region (WT selected)
ON_ON  = Disabled

SW4: Write-back / Write-through selection
ON=WT
OFF=WB

Do not use WB with SCSI_I/F bus master transfers.
Factory default WT L2 is recommended if computer or SCSI devices become unstable.

Best of luck and let us know how it went !

Keep the scene alive !
Eidis

Thanks for that post, eidis!

I did see the CPU DIP settings website, and they are set to the default.

Interestingly enough, CPUSPEED (clock changer), produces these results regardless of if I use HIGH, MIDDLE, or LOW.

1/157th speed 

Pretty sure it's reading the GDC clock (2.5MHz), and not the CPU clock.

 Hi RobIvy64 !

どれかキーを押して下さい = Press any key

Do you have the dip-swithes on motherboard or is everything controlled by the BIOS ?

Try playing with these jumpers and see if anything changes:

SW3 block, jumper 8 - Selection of CPU operation mode
ON- HIGH (386)
OFF - LOW (μPD70116 (V30))

SW3 block, jumper 5
Try setting DMA to 高速 (High speed)

Keep the scene alive !
Eidis

Hi eidis,

On a PC-9801, there are physical DIPS. On a PC-9821 (like mine), there are soft DIPS.

See above BIOS screenshots. CPU mode is HIGH, and DMA is set to high speed.

I also tried MIDDLE and LOW.

Low really does make the machine run at 8086/V30 speeds! SO SLOW!

 Hi RobIvy64 !

I found a site with valuable info about your accelerator card. Run it through translate google and see what you can make out of it.

http://homepage1.nifty.com/junke/pc/am586/

This page and the previous accelerator board info page mentions that wbtools should be used to enable the cache.

Keep the scene alive !
Eidis

Thank you for that! I think adding WBTOOLS and setting DEVICE=WBON.EXE (enables WB Cache) has made the difference.

Flame Zapper Kotsujin runs MUCH better now, but still has some slowdown during more graphically intensive parts of the game. Setting FZK to 60 FPS makes it unplayable. This game really needs a low-mid-range Pentium CPU.

 Hi RobIvy64 !

Glad to hear that everything is working. By the way, I noticed that Cyrix CPU's have the best software support, even an IPL cache driver.

You could try switching the cache from WT to WB and experimenting with the CPU multiplier. However, please backup your HDD data if you are willing to try because there is high probability that it will get corrupted.

Keep the scene alive !
Eidis

P.S. What happens if you try using wbtools and cpuspeed together ?

I recently received a CPU upgrade adapter similar to the one that RobIvy64 posted above:

http://retro-type.com/PC98/Viper-Power-Multi-586Ce2-Board-front.jpg
http://retro-type.com/PC98/Viper-Power-Multi-586Ce2-Board-back.jpg

http://retro-type.com/PC98/Ce2-Viper-Multi-586Ce2-Card-001.jpg
http://retro-type.com/PC98/Ce2-Viper-Multi-586Ce2-Card-002.jpg
http://retro-type.com/PC98/Ce2-Viper-Multi-586Ce2-Card-003.jpg

Mine was being sold without any type up upgrade CPU, however I have a Kingston Turbochip Am5x86-133Mhz Upgrade Kit (Am5x86 P75/133, which is really the same chip from what I've been reading) + voltage regulator board and cooling fan) coming soon, so I hope to try that. It's got a 4 x clock multiplier so it should take the i486SX 25MHz and turn it into 100Mhz.

The only thing that concerns me is if you look at the 3rd image, you can see that there is not much space between where the new CPU can fit and the start of the FDD enclosure module that sits right on top of it. I'd say there is only about 3/4 of an inch of space there... so if anything, I might try and work with my friend Xalphenos to see if we can document how this Viper Ce2 adapter and voltage regulator board (which takes a 5v and turns it into a 3.45v) work and if need be perhaps we can create a new CPU upgrade with a smaller form factor and I can just send this Kingston Turbochip back to eBay where I barely won the bid on for around 35 bucks...

Edit: Okay! So the Kingston Turbochip 5x86-133 came in today and it was pretty simple to install:


(Turbochip Installed)

http://retro-type.com/PC98/Ce2-Viper-Multi-586Ce2-Card-005.jpg (Fan Spinning)
http://retro-type.com/PC98/Ce2-Viper-Multi-586Ce2-Card-006.jpg (With CD-Rom / HDD Enclosure Module)
http://retro-type.com/PC98/Ce2-Viper-Multi-586Ce2-Card-007.jpg (With FDD Enclosure Module ontop... It all fits! Wahoo!  )

Here is what CPUBENCH said before I installed the new upgrade:



And after the upgrade:



Running System Diagnostics Tool from Kobushi's image (can also be called used MSD) and hitting the "P" Key will obtain information about the Pentium Chip.

Before the upgrade it was showing 25 MHz:



Now it shows:



Which is now showing as 83MHz "Pentium Overdrive Processor" in katakana.

I first tried Briganty to see how it ran. It ran nice before, but I had remembered turning up the speed to HIGH before and seeing the game become rather impossible to keep up with, so I wanted to see how it would fair with a upgraded processor speed. It ran about the same as usual depending on the game settings setting the speed limit I suppose.



I also ran Flame Zapper Kotsujin for the first time today (which is really an impressive and fun game!) without the upgrade first, and though it ran fairly okay in 30 FPS as far as I could tell for a 25MHz processor with some slow down issues when several sprites were on the screen, after upgrading the CPU I did not notice any slowdown issues and everything was much smoother. I tried 60 FPS just for the hell of it, but everything ran pretty slowly to be expected.





Then I tried out an older game, AIZA: New Generation to see if it would affect the game in an adverse way of making it run too fast, but it played normally as well. I will continue to try some older games to see how the fair as well, such as Popful Mail or Ys to see what happens. My hope is that I won't have to remove the upgrade setup and that most games will run fine, but we'll have to see.



I tried running some of the other tools discussed in this thread as well such as TP2CPU.COM (which could not identify the CPU information when hitting "7" and using 1-4 to try and set the CPU clock lower did not do anything from what I could see. The CPUBench and MSD Pentium check still showed their original settings in the photos above after the upgrade was installed. The same went for the tool called CPUSPEED.EXE, in that it did not make any difference as far as I could tell.

At this point, I'm thinking that if you really wanted to lower your clock multiplier, it might need to be a hardware dip switch on the CPU regulator board itself, or perhaps some other method that could be researched. When I was first looking into these CPU Upgrades, some of them did have dip switches that could be used to set the clock multiplier specifically, but I don't think the Kingston Turbochip does.

Also, after testing all of this, I then edited the startup config.sys, so that it had a line for:

DEVICE=A:\TOOLS\CPUTOOLS\WBTOOLS\WBON.EXE

But this did not seem to really make any difference for me, I believe that the CE2 already detects everything correctly, at least in my case.

I definitely see a difference in the file read speed, for example when I used to go into Dos Shell‏, it would take some time to load so many files on the CF card. I think around 10-20 seconds?‏ Now it takes about 3-4 seconds.‏

EDIT 2: THE RISE OF EDIT!  I forgot to mention this, but since both the hardware boards such as the Viper Multi and the voltage regulator board + upgrade chip are somewhat of a rarity to find these days, I'm planning on sending these over to my friend Xalphenos who is a modder so he can take them apart and understand how to clone them. So if there are others who are interested in upgrading their CPUs at some point and perhaps don't have access to these rare kits, perhaps we can provide instructions for how to make your own.

-Thomas

 Hi SkyeWelse !

According to the following site Am5x86-P75 (Am486DX5) supports three different speeds - 80/ 100/ 133.
http://www.amy.hi-ho.ne.jp/nakajima-jr/kikaku/special2/cpu4_5.htm

It looks like you need to change the multiplier in order to make it work at full speed. Howerer, please take the following links with a grain of salt.

AMD AMD-X5-133ADW (Am5x86-P75)
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/80486/AMD-AMD-X5-133ADW%20%28Am5x86-P75%29.html

486 COMMON SOCKET IMPLEMENTATION
http://datasheets.chipdb.org/SGS%20Thomson/x86/486/4193.PDF

486 Processor Pinouts
http://pclinks.xtreemhost.com/486pin.htm

PGA (Intel 486DX4-like pinout) Option
http://datasheets.chipdb.org/IBM/x86/486/40024.PDF

IBM Microelectronics 486DX2 Common Socket Specification For 168 PGA Socket
http://datasheets.chipdb.org/IBM/x86/486/40004.PDF

The following article explains how to change multiplier. Be warned that it is for a different socket. However, the pin is the same and the same principle could apply. Check out "The motherboard jumpers" section for more info.

CPU Upgrade: Give your 486 PC a kick with the AMD 5x86 - 133! The whole story.
http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/amd5x86.htm

Keep the scene alive !
Eidis

Thanks for the URLs Eidis!

It's an interesting chip for sure, and I do know that the Kingston Turbochip upgrade version at least does not have any dipswitches for changing CPU cycle modes, so if I wanted to build one on there, we'd need to do some extensive research as far as which pins we should affect.

However, I would think that if there are no dipswitches on the Turbochip, would that normally mean that it only has one mode: Go as fast as possible, meaning it should be pre-configured to run at 133mHz unless the FSB is locked to the original chip on the motherboard.

What is weird is that my original CPU is a 25MHz I486SX and this instead is being read as a 33MHz, which may mean that my FSB is not locked so it's taking it from the Am5x86 and using a 2.5 multiplier to get to 83Mhz instead of what I thought I would be seeing of 25Mhz x 4 = 100Mhz. I have been reading though that depending on the motherboard, that could be something in itself that can limit the performance of an upgrade chip.

From an article I see on the web about the Kingston Turbochip‏: http://ancientelectronics.wordpress.com/category/classic-computers/page/2/ ‏

QuoteAlso the turbochip is not 100% compatible with all motherboards and on some may give reduced speeds. I had mine installed in an older 486 socket 3 board and was only able to achieve 100mhz (still fast for a 486).‏

QuoteNext is the 83mhz Pentium Overdrive. This is not a true Pentium and performance for regular tasks it scores slightly behind the AMD 133mhz but in 3D and tasks using the FPU or floating point math the POD does much better then the AMD.‏

And my MSD system tools does indeed see the Kingston CPU as a Pentium Overdrive‏... so that might explain some of the odd behavior I'm having. Still, odd behavior or not, running 83Mhz is certainly better than 25Mhz. Of course, 25Mhz is certainly a lot more powerful already than what I'm used to with my MSX hobby where we get 7Mhz on a TurboR. Haha.

-Thomas

I hope this is not off topic but I noticed that on my PC-9821AS2/U8W with an Intel PODP5V83 @83MHz, system informations reported it  @66 MHz which is the frequency of the near oscilator on motherboard.So, I'm wondering if I can push it up to 83MHz.

I've recently aquired a ViPER PowerMULTi 586Cs2.

I own a PC-9821Ce2, but the seller at Yahoo auctions advertised it for both the 9821Cs2 and 9821Ce2.

Unfortunately I cannot put the adapter on top of the CPU, because the connector to the left pcb is too high and blocks installation.


It does fit when I turn the adapter by 90 degrees. However in this case the notches would not match up.

Would it work if I turn the 586 upgrade cpu by 90 degrees as well? Or can I damage the system by doing this?

I asume it would work if every line on the pcb is individually wired. However multiple lines (e.g. ground) may be connected together.

Would be happy about help. Thank you.

good news, the ViPER PowerMULTI 586Cs2 does work on a Ce2 machine:



required modifications:
- cut pins on ViPER PowerMULTI 486Cs adapter
- move two capacitors
- cut plastic from the connector to the IDE board
- cut metal from the cd rom case
- use power from psu for cf card

Uunfortunately the AMD 586 upgrade kits are too tall, you won't be able to install the cd rom drive.

The Intel DX2 66Mhz runs at 50Mhz on the Ce2 though. Still more than double the performance compared to the stock Intel SX 25Mhz.

Hey, any idea about the HRD-2oT cpu upgrade for PC9801DA?
I think it needs some special drivers but i cannot find em :-(

EDIT
Its this one;
Blue Lightening 3
https://www.vector.co.jp/soft/dos/hardware/se025675.html

[Moderator edit: Kendrick here. As a reminder, please label your external links and embedded videos. Also, make it clear when you're linking back to your own external content for purposes of full disclosure.]

KC - This first video is a test of Quake using the EUD-HP0M CPU posted on Uroko Sakanabito's Youtube channel.

KC - Second video is a similar test showing Doom performance from the same channel.
EUD-HP0M is insane btw ^___^

Quote from: -Uroko Sakanabito- on February 22, 2022, 09:34:00 AM[Moderator edit: Kendrick here. As a reminder, please label your external links and embedded videos. Also, make it clear when you're linking back to your own external content for purposes of full disclosure.]

KC - This first video is a test of Quake using the EUD-HP0M CPU posted on Uroko Sakanabito's Youtube channel.

KC - Second video is a similar test showing Doom performance from the same channel.

EUD-HP0M is insane btw ^___^

Whoa! Nice job! :O

Oh, sorry for the missing labels!
I did think it shows in the YT window.
Maybe we could use this thread for all PC98 CPU Upgrades in the future?

Wait, there is a port of Quake for PC98? Can this port be found somewhere? Google doesn't produce any results, so it is prolly on some Japanese site, right?

Or is was there an official port for the 98 platform, like with Doom.