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Dual Pentium 1 Build

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First post, by matze79

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I'm going to build a Pentium 1 based Dual Processor RIG:.

Current Progress:

Asus Mainboard:

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Finally a POST:

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Homemade Adapter ATX/AT: (Cut a Piece of a old Motherboard, and soldered a AT Connector to it.)

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It needs a 3,3V Connector so i cutoff the 5V line of the ATX Extra Power Connector and put it on the Mainboard.
Perfect Fit, the 3 outer Pins of each side are always GND, and the Inner are 3,3V and each connected together.
So 2 wires are fine too.

I also have 2 133Mhz CPU's laying around which are going to replace the 100Mhz one's.
The Board does not support 200Mhz Classics, but i think it can be Done be wiring Bsel manually ?

For Graphics i think i will go with a 4Meg Matrox Mystique PCI.
Should well suited for this Build.

The Board also only caches 64Mb Ram as far as i know for now ?!?

To be continued.

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board

Reply 3 of 23, by jesolo

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Quite impressive.

First time I've seen a dual Pentium 1 board.
I have a dual Pentium II board myself (Gigabyte Slot 1 - forgot the model number).

I can recommend an AT to ATX adaptor. My understanding is that these are not so expensive and saves you the trouble of cutting wires and soldering everything together.

Also, see if there isn't perhaps a BIOS update for your motherboard that might support later CPU'S.

EDIT: Appears that, officially, BIOS revision 0205 (which is what it appears you currently have) only added support for the 120 MHz & 133 MHz Pentium CPU's. There is also a BIOS revision 0207 (and a beta release of 0208), but no further CPU support above the 133 MHz Pentium 1 CPU's. But, it should still perform quite nice with two Pentium 133 MHz CPU's on Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000. Windows XP (Professional) might be pushing it a bit too much, considering it was released long before Windows XP.

Last edited by jesolo on 2016-08-15, 13:17. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 6 of 23, by matze79

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Matching Coolers found 😀 now i need some Fans.

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Dual Pentium 133's installed:

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Found also a Matrox Millenium 2 PCI with 4Megs
http://www.512bit.net/matrox/hi/matrox_millenium2pci_3.jpg

And 2 Sticks of 16Mb FPM and 2 Sticks with 32Mb 😀 so a test running Linux or some Flavor of BSD is not so distant anymore.
Or Maybe OS/2 Warp Server or Windows NT 4.0 both Supporting SMP.
Unfortunally i don't have a Copy of both. NT4.0 from Winworldpc looks pretty incomplete.

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board

Reply 7 of 23, by matze79

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Another punch of pictures, now 96Mbyte RAM added.

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board

Reply 8 of 23, by matze79

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System boots from NetBSD 7.0.1 Boot floppys,
5 floppy's needed, and it seems it does not have Realtek Network Driver or 3Com inside 🙁
So no install from files over network..

But happily it recognizes both CPU's 😀
And there are no Errors, No MCE Errors at all.

The BIOS is pretty old, from 1995.
The Board has the Intel Neptune Chipset.

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board

Reply 10 of 23, by Oldskoolmaniac

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Pentium 1s are awesome processors, powerful at there time and to find a dual motherboard thats pretty rare.

Motherboard Reviews The Motherboard Thread
Plastic parts looking nasty and yellow try this Deyellowing Plastic

Reply 11 of 23, by matze79

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This Board is not easy to use.
PCI has to be configured manually.

it also supports only up to 504Mb HDD 😳

Still trying to get a IRQ assigned to eth0 rtl8139 Network Card
There are a lot of Jumpers on the Mainboard for this.

Plug and Pray 😳

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https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board

Reply 12 of 23, by oeuvre

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Try using dynamic drive overlay software to overcome the 504MB BIOS limit. http://www.philscomputerlab.com/dynamic-drive … y-software.html

HP Z420 Workstation Intel Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, RADEON HD7850 2GB, SSD + HD, XP/7
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Reply 14 of 23, by matze79

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Still no success with PCI IDE Controllers, they just can't find HDD's attached to it.

Tried some Promise Controllers and a VIA one.
Seems also no IRQ is routed to them.
I also tried to configure the Jumpersetting to route one manually.
Did also not work.

Has anyone experience with this old school Pentium SMP Board ?

it does boot very well and run from onboard ide, but one IDE Port is not enough to satisfy my needs.

Adaptec controller works fine, (SCSI) need to source a good working HDD, mine is defective 😒

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board

Reply 15 of 23, by chinny22

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Do think SCSI is your best bet, my Duel Slot 1 Compaq board doesn't even support HDD's on IDE.
Sadly drives will be getting on in hours by now but its not like your storing important data on the system

Reply 16 of 23, by luckybob

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if your looking for scsi drives, just ignore anything older and smaller than 1gb. Look for 68 pin drives in the 4-9gb range. They are fast enough for a pentium, reliable and quiet. (relatively) drives like these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/181844168307 They work wonders!

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 17 of 23, by matze79

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i try to source 2-3 Drives, i also need a decent 19" AT RACK Case.
I recieved today a P200 Classic, still need another CPU 😀
Also updated BIOS to latest Beta.

This Board suffers from being only PCI 2.0 😒

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board

Reply 19 of 23, by matze79

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Got LVDS SCSI Drives and Cable/Controller, so i may be able to continue when i have more time 😀

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board