Okay, thanks for letting me know slot 2 existed. That's got to be a rare system, then.

I also have the same Board, can you save your BIOS and upload ?
Maybe you have an newer one ?

brassicGamer wrote:

Okay, thanks for letting me know slot 2 existed. That's got to be a rare system, then.

They were not around for very long and were Expensive even by todays standards, slot 2 was truly the first generation xeons and the vast majority ended up as servers but there were small numbers of workstations. Very few of these systems survived and boards are hard to come by, slot 2 is a real money pit for retro but it is a privilege to even get a chance to build one.

Spent around $140-160 on mine and it isn't even built yet, need a good case with a very strong psu. Mine is more of a first gen slot 2 xeon setup without the agp slot.

OP if you run into trouble getting two 900mhz xeons working you might have to look into a pair of 700mhz xeons as support is spotty at best.

I have a quad Slot 2 system. It's a beast. It's the only computer I can't lift.

flupke11 wrote:

I'm eagerly waiting for the two PIII Xeon 900/2MB to arrive, so in the mean time I can show off the unboxing of the Abit DX2G Plus mainboard.

Where did you acquire the 900/2MB Xeons?

I know I didn't sell mine. They are still in my XG-DLS.

Also posting so I can watch this thread. For science.

Errius wrote:

I have a quad Slot 2 system. It's a beast. It's the only computer I can't lift.

pics please :> i have a sad multi-cpu fetish

I can't get at it right now but it's a HP NetServer LH4 with four "Drake" Pentium II Xeons (450 MHz/1 MB) and 2 GB of memory. It also has 12 hard drives and 3 PSUs and weighs about 100 kg.

luckybob wrote:

Also posting so I can watch this thread

Same, cause I'm jealous.

Got a Decommissioned Compaq workstation from work many years ago that I stupidly fried the motherboard within the 1st week.
Then even worse threw out the entire system accept the 450Mhz CPU (but not the VRM) RAM and SCSI HDD.
I haven't had another slot 2 anything cross my path since

luckybob wrote:

Also posting so I can watch this thread. For science.

theres that ominous "subscribe topic" button down there 😁

m1919 wrote:

flupke11 wrote:

I'm eagerly waiting for the two PIII Xeon 900/2MB to arrive, so in the mean time I can show off the unboxing of the Abit DX2G Plus mainboard.

Where did you acquire the 900/2MB Xeons?

OP posted in bought this hardware thread that he had paid $70 for them.

I sometimes run into matched pairs and sets of 700-900mhz xeons all the time but no boards for them. There was one seller that had a batch of new in box intel slot 2 boards at a fair price (bought one $60 shipped). The pair of 550mhz 2mb xeons cost me a little over $50 and had to cough up a little over $30 for the vrms 😒

Despite the cost I still feel that it was worth it, just need to find the right case and a good psu for the build.

The Xeons are in! They're refurbished HP stock, same as are found at this ebay auction, but I got them off a computer distribution store and at a better price (centralpoint.nl/.be).

The large heatsinks are a bit of an issue for the first slot. The heatsink hits the three larger capacitors between both slots.

It just fits, I can close the lever that holds the processor down, but I am not convinced it's doing the caps any good having an aluminium heatsink pressed on their heads. I'll take the undermost rib off the heatsink with a dremel tomorrow.

By the way, I have a compaq Quad Xeon PII 450 in the garage, I got that one for a few beers a few weeks back. The idea was to reuse those Xeons on this mainboard, but I couldn't resist the fair price for the 900/2MB PIII's. I'll post some pictures of that Compaq next week.

As soon as I fire the mainboard up, I'll try and copy the BIOS.

A good power supply is going to be different per motherboard. Some boards will draw high 5v. Others will feed from the 12v. The latter being a preferred board, because all new style power supplies are centered around 12v.

Slight tangent, but i do find it slightly humorous how we've gone full circle on power supplies. Old s-100 systems and their ilk ran on 16v and relied on each card to make its own power. The psi in my main system makes 12v FIRST, then makes 3.3 and 5v from the 12v. This is common in fact!

I digress. If your looking for a power supply with a beefy 5v rail, keep your eyes open for the old superflower units. They were quality P4 era units that were very underrated and performed WONDERFULLY. look: http://www.super-flower.com/4fan.html

Now if you find one, it will most likely need to be totally re-capped, but that is par for the course. I use a 480w model for my dual slot-2. Could not be happier. Its also red, but performance is more important than aesthetics.

I bought a dual slot-2 workstation many years ago, at the time they were commonly being liquidated on eBay and the CPUs were dirt cheap. I thought about upgrading it many times but never actually did. So I just looked at eBay and they aren't cheap anymore. Annoyed.

flupke11 wrote:

The Xeons are in! They're refurbished HP stock, same as are found at this ebay auction, but I got them off a computer distributi […]
Show full quote

The Xeons are in! They're refurbished HP stock, same as are found at this ebay auction, but I got them off a computer distribution store and at a better price (centralpoint.nl/.be).

The large heatsinks are a bit of an issue for the first slot. The heatsink hits the three larger capacitors between both slots.

It just fits, I can close the lever that holds the processor down, but I am not convinced it's doing the caps any good having an aluminium heatsink pressed on their heads. I'll take the undermost rib off the heatsink with a dremel tomorrow.

By the way, I have a compaq Quad Xeon PII 450 in the garage, I got that one for a few beers a few weeks back. The idea was to reuse those Xeons on this mainboard, but I couldn't resist the fair price for the 900/2MB PIII's. I'll post some pictures of that Compaq next week.

As soon as I fire the mainboard up, I'll try and copy the BIOS.

Hmmmm. The DX2G Plus supports the 5/12v Xeons with the onboard VRMs?

m1919 wrote:

Hmmmm. The DX2G Plus supports the 5/12v Xeons with the onboard VRMs?

Not a bad question. The manual does not mention voltages, but 5V instead of 2V for the PII Xeon is indeed a big difference.

>edit< I did some browsing on the net, and on this old ArsTechnica thread forum they're complaining that the DX2G Plus is not supporting the 2.8V processors. The only review I found was this one from 2CPU.com. No mention on the voltages there. I'll just have to try it out.

Thread seems to indicate it should work.

What kind of hardware are you planning on running with this board?

Interested in seeing this booted up! 😁

Ok, small update before I'm off to work. It's booting with a 450 PII Xeon I pulled from the Compaq server; so at least the board isn't dead. Pics will follow.

You can run the cpu for just a minute without the heatsink. The heatspreader is massive. Long enough to post really.