Making Windows 95 fly with advance/EV baseboard
Making Windows 95 fly with advance/EV baseboard
By Zatni Arbi
JAKARTA (JP): When my friend Michael from Regina's Bakery told me he wanted to buy a new computer, I said to him, "Why don't we have some fun? We'll buy the components and we'll assemble it together." He immediately agreed. So we spent the following week discussing his requirements and what we would put in his PC.
My friend wanted the fastest CPU available in Jakarta, the best combination of motherboard, RAM and cache memory available, and a one gigabyte fast SCSI-2 hard disk. He wanted his new machine to be able to run Windows 95 applications at autobahn speed.
According to a press release from Intel, which I had recently received courtesy of SIMA, Intel has released the Pentium 150 MHz and 166 MHz in addition to its Pentium Pro CPU line. However, at the moment, the fastest CPU available in Jakarta is the Pentium 133 MHz. The two higher speed Pentium chips are expected to arrive in one or two months. We settled on a 133 MHz tire burner.
When choosing the motherboard, I told Michael that the best one on the local market was made by Intel itself. The motherboard, named Advanced/EV by Intel, replaced the company's older model Advanced/ZP. I had installed the latter in a Pentium 120 MHz before, and I wrote a little about it in my article on SCSI.
For the SCSI subsystem, the choice clear: an Adaptec AHA 2940 SCSI controller card and a Quantum Fireball hard disk, just as I wrote in my update of the SCSI interface.
Michael wanted a name-brand SuperVGA card, similar to the ones used in high-end Pentiums from branded computer vendors. He chose the Diamond Stealth 64 with 2 MB of VRAM. I had a little hassle with this expensive product, though.
For the computer case to put everything together, I recommended a medium height tower model which looked exactly like the one Micron used for its award-winning Pentium PCs. In Glodok it was even called "Micron casing". I liked it very much despite its steep price.
For the floppy disk drive, the choice was easy: the Sony 3.5". A winner for the 5.25" floppy disk drive is impossible t find because this format is now being phased out. Michael decided that he would buy one later.
We put his PC together in four hours one evening, and when we finished we could smell the tires burning as the new machine kicked off Windows 95.
Endeavor
Endeavor is the nickname for the Advance/EV motherboard. Intel calls it a baseboard instead, and it was intended to be an OEM product. An OEM, which stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer, is a company that assembles PCs using components from other vendors and then sells them under its own name.
The Endeavor is a full-sized motherboard and is made in Ireland. It can use the more expensive Extended Data Out (EDO) RAM or the less expensive Fast Page Mode DRAM SIMMs, or even a combination of the two. A spec sheet from Corsair told me that the best RAM SIMMs for this motherboard are the EDO version with 60 nanosecond speed. Michael wanted to buy the minimum required amount of RAM to run Windows 95, knowing he could buy more as his need arose. So he bought 16 MB of this EDO, 60 ns RAM. He bought generic instead of a brand name, because my experience shows that this component rarely malfunctions.
Endeavor can run in three different second-level (L2) cache configurations: cacheless -- only by using the EDO RAM; with the standard 256 asynchronous L2 cache; or with the 256 or 512 KB pipelined burst cache. The performance, of course, differs according to which configuration you choose. Second level cache increases performance by reducing the delays that occur as the CPU retrieves information from the main memory. The performance level is therefore lowest without cache memory.
Michael decided to go all the way, installing a 512 KB pipelined burst cache module made by Corsair. Actually, 256 KB would be sufficient. Tests show that it is generally the point of diminishing return in terms of performance.
The pipelined burst cache RAM comes in a module format, similar to the RAM SIMMs. Endeavor has a customized slot called CELP for it -- no screws or clips. The BIOS automatically detects that EDO RAM has been installed.
In Britain and Europe, Endeavor is sold to OEMs with a SuperVGA chip built in. In Indonesia it does not have a SuperVGA system but there is a ViBRA SoundBlaster compatible subsystem on board.
Endeavor is also Windows 95-ready with its plug-and-play capability. The motherboard we bought came with four diskettes, three for the built-in sound card and one containing the BIOS upgrade. The BIOS upgrade will enable the motherboard to boot up from a CD-ROM, when the required BIOS comes out. Being able to boot from a CD-ROM will provide a great alternative for PCs shared by multiple users. It will eliminate the need for a hard disk, with each user just slipping in his or her own CD-ROM containing the operating system and the applications he or she needs.
The board has three PCI slots, two ISA slots, and one for either the PCI or ISA. There are two IDE channels to connect up to four IDE hard disks or an ATAPI CD-ROM drive. All the standard I/O cables and connectors are included in the package. It is even ready for infrared connection.
Much as I like Endeavor, it doesn't have on-board antivirus protection.
The Micron case
The Micron-like case from Glodok really showed quality workmanship. The power supply was made by Seasonic, the same maker of the power supply in the EPS Technology's 386DX 33 tower that I bought in the U.S. in 1990. Opening the case only involves a single screw. Two latches at the back snap the cover to the chassis. The front face can also be easily removed. There are three 5.25" half-height and one 3.5" accessible storage bays. This case also uses railings to hold peripherals such as a CD ROM drive and a 5.25" floppy disk drive, so installing them or taking them out is as easy as inserting and ejecting a 3.5" floppy diskette.
The hard disk is placed vertically on a cage next to the power supply. The cage swings out and upward, so installing the hard disk is simple. You can screw in the hard disk or use the clips that come with the case, either way it is easy to secure or remove hard disks. There is room for two 3.5" half-height hard disks.
There is no keyboard key lock, no Turbo switch, and no processor speed display. Find an ad for Micron to see what the case looks like. I don't know if Micron sources its cases from the same company in Taiwan, but this case is great.
Fixing the motherboard to the chassis is simple. The only tool needed is a screwdriver. All the clips are included and all the cable plugs are clearly marked.
The only problem is that the top and left side of the cover are plastic, which might warp in the long run. Obviously, you can't put something heavy, like a UPS, on top of the case.
The Adaptec AHA 2940 and the Quantum Fireball hard disk worked flawlessly and fast. The SCSI adapter automatically assign Drive C: to the hard disk, and we were able to partition it and make it the boot drive without having to reconfigure the adapter card's BIOS or change the SCSI ID number of the hard drive.
However, I wasn't impressed by the performance of the expensive Diamond Stealth 64 Video, which came with 2 MB of VRAM. At first, although the box had the "Designed for Windows 95" logo, Windows 95 did not recognize it as Diamond Stealth 64 Video. Instead it recognized it just as an S3-based SuperVGA card. It then assigned the driver for S3 Vision864 PCI. The result was terribly disappointing. The display was in the interlaced mode.
It took a lot of fiddling to find the cure. It turned out that I had to install the driver for the sound card first. Then I had to install the DOS driver, misleadingly called GO95, and specify the correct refresh rates I wished to use.
Loading this DOS driver forces Windows 95 to run in MS DOS compatibility mode, and this reduces the overall performance of the PC. An updated, native Windows 95 driver will fix this.
I didn't test the Video and MPEG player capabilities of Diamond Stealth, since Michael wanted to take the Pentium screamer home with him right away. However, at a glance, I didn't like the screen display. The screen fonts were not as sharp as my ordinary, Cirrus Logic-based SuperVGA card that only has 1 MB DRAM.
As Michael left my house late that night with his new PC in his hands, I reminded him that in just a year his Rp 5.5 million speedster wouldn't be worth even half what he paid for it, so he'd better make sure he really used the PC. That's exactly what I tell anyone wanting to buy a computer.