Tyan s1836 CuMine Support

Everything on this page is from Snowghost's s1836 CuMine Support Page and he retains the copyright of the content. The original site has gone offline and he no longer has access to his own files. Snowghost has kindly agreed to let me put up the info I had saved offline. I didn't save all the pages so some of the links don't work ... including the picture of the 1836 :(. If you have any of the missing parts, I would be grateful if you could email them to me - tmtan (at) tm.net.my.

The Tyan Thunder Pro 100 s1836 does not officially support Intel Coppermine CPUs. Coppermine is a code name that Intel used to describe the new P3 CPUs that have the L2 cache on die. All current Intel Pentium CPUs faster than 600 are CuMine (Cu, elemental symbol for copper). There are three main issues with a motherboard supporting a certain CPU. They are

1: Chip set support
2: Voltage Suport
3: BIOS Support

Chipset

The s1836 is a BX/GX chipset Board. The chipset controls the way the CPU talks to your RAM and periphials, such as PCI cards. The chipset obiously also has to know about the CPU and support it. Intel has made the CuMine P3 compatible with the BX/GX chipset, and there are numerous motherboards with this chipset that happily support the CuMine CPU's all the way to 1000 mhtz (1Ghtz). Therefore we well know that the chipset is not a concern in this case.

Voltage

This gets a little bit harder. The Early Pentium2 CPU's ran with a voltage of 2.8v. Around the time that the P2-333 was relased, there was a voltage drop, down to 2.0v. All BX boards are required to support down to 1.8v, which easily covers the 2.0v volts for the P2 and P3's.

The CuMine's are running at either 1.65v or 1.7v. There is no requirement that the early motherboards supply this low voltage. You can find out what version of board you have by looking at this picture. The revision is located at the lower edge of the board in a white square. This square will have a letter in it. (Note, this picture doesn't have the square, but does reflect the location)

Image stolen from Tyans website, and I'll bet they own copyright on it too

Also important to the voltage issue is which voltage regulator module (VRM) you have. My s1836 is a REV 'E' and has a VRM marked as RC5051. Checking with the manufacturer of the VRM shows that this particular VRM can supply down to 1.3v. This then proves that at least SOME s1836's have the required voltage support to handle the CuMine's.

The above picture has the VRM chips circled. You may not be able to see the top most one while your board is installed, but the lower one should be plainly visible. I am not saying that all s1836's will be able to supply the required voltage. All REV 'E' boards should have the same construction as mine, and have the same VRM on board.

**Revisions and VRM's**
Rev A		Unknown
Rev B		RC5051
Rev C		RC5051
Rev D		RC5051
Rev E		RC5051
Rev F		Unknown if this revision exists
Rev G		Unknown if this revision exists

So, by the look of this, almost all of the s1836 motherboards out there should be capable of supporting the required voltage. This is in direct opposition of a claim made by Tyan to myself claiming voltage incompatibility.

There is a second option that is applicable, and that is to use a Slot converter card. I use 2x Abit SLOKet!!! cards, and run 2x celeron 533's in a 75M bus, for total speed of 600Mhtz. Tyan do not support Slot cards in any way, nor do they support dual Celeron's. This setup is not 100% reliable and has minor problems. I have had to bump the voltage to 2.1v but it's working OK.

There is an Voltage Regulating FC-PGA - Slot1 Adaptera vailable, developed by Friendtech http://www.friendtech.com/PIII.htm capable of running two FC-PGA Coppermine CPU´s up to 1 Ghz in older Mainboards with no native 1.65V Supply.
A short Review on this Adapter may be found in German: Heise C´t 2000 18/Page 65 here Unfortunantly, I don't speak German. thanks ewald schmitz for the info about friendtech

If you have a different REV board to mine, please drop me a line at CuMine revisions. If it's at all possible I'd like to know what REV letter you have, and what is printed on the VRM chip.

Bios Support

This is entirly up to Tyan. And the purpose of this page. I want to get together a petition to send to Tyan to prove that there is a demand for an updated BIOS that supports the CuMine CPU's. Even if it's only for those late revision boards that have a VRM capable of supplying the correct voltage.

There is a BIOS ROM image floating around the net that is purported to be a mythical Version2 BETA that allows CuMine support. It is also supposed to allow ACPI support in Microsoft Windows 2000. I have a copy of this image that you can email me for if you like. NOTE: I make no promise that this BIOS Image is complete, correct or will work. I have not applied it myself, because I have no need for it. I have no CuMine CPU's nor do I use ACPI under Windows 2000.

Other BIOS Issues

Successful non standard configuartions

Email me any comments additions or otherwise that you have. I'll be happy to list any information you can supply here.

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