Nice build!

I think you will not be very happy with the Soundblaster PCI card if you want to play some games in MS-DOS mode, inside Windows it will work fine though.

The Pentium II 266 is also a bit too slow (when writing "a bit" I really mean "very much") to do the nice Voodoo 5 5500 card justice.

Both issues are easy to fix, add a Sound Blaster ISA card to the build and replace the CPU with a faster one.

To get a faster CPU than a PII 450 working with your Biostar M6TBD you will need to update the BIOS. See this recent thread for reference. Perhaps member darry could share the pached BIOS he used?

Help needed with booting slot1 boards with unsupported CPUs

Remember that CPUs with 133 MHz FSB will not run at full speed on your board as it only supports 66 and 100 MHz FSB. 100 MHz FSB versions of Pentium III and Coppermine Celerons were made in speeds up to 1.1 GHz but you will need to use a FCPGA to Slot1 adapter (slotket). Make sure you get an adapter that actually support the Coppermine CPUs as not all do.

I did some Ebay searching and most slotkets available are of the cheap kind which only supports the PPGA Mendocino Celerons or seem unreasonable expensive with shipping.

I thought these (links below) were bad deals at first but after doing some more searching I think things actually have got this expensive so it might actually be worth it. Only a couple of years ago these prices would have seemed outrageous.

The Russian sellers slotket looks cheapish and has had some minor repair done to it but at least it has VID selection jumpers which is important to get Coppermine CPUs working with early revison i440BX boards that lacks the correct VRMs to support the needed 1.65V - 1.75V.

The VRM issue is solved by changing the CPUs VID to 1.8V which 99.9% of the motherboards support. If you compare your board revison with member darry and its the same or newer you can be reasonable sure you can jumper the slotket for the correct VID, otherwise I would use 1.8V or make sure the board is giving the CPU the correct voltage with a DMM.

Stuff from Russia or the Ukraine rarly get cought in the customs net. At least it has never happend to me and I have bought loads of stuff from Russia and the Ukraine.

The Coppermine P3 1.1 GHz from Russia with slotket. $49 + $10 shipping.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SLOT1-SLOTKET-WITH- … nUAAOSw5cNYST1i

A Coppermine P3 1.1 GHz FC-PGA CPU (without slotket) from the Ukraine costing $46 + $5 shipping if someone else can hook you up with a better slotket.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Pentium-III-1 … %3D302210318578

Be sure you get the BIOS with Coppermine support before you spend any money on expensive stuff from Russia or the Ukraine. 😀
There are of course cheaper more hassle-free options like getting a Slot-1 Katmai P3 600 with 100 MHz FSB but with a Voodoo 5 I would want 1 GHz or more.

The BIOS below works with Coppermine CPUs :
https://web.archive.org/web/20021219235945/ht … nb/tbd0302d.exe

If you want better CPU support and other unofficial patches, you can run it through BIOS Patcher 4.23 (I did) .
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/bios_patcher.html
Dependencies required by BIOS Patcher :
cbrom.exe (rom.by/Award/patcher/cbrom.rar)
lha.exe (rom.by/Award/patcher/lha.rar)
reall.cod (rom.by/Award/patcher/real_microcodes.rar)

Pre-patched file :

For flashing, Awdflash did not work for me . I used uniflash version 1.40
http://www.rainbow-software.org/uniflash/

If you want to compare board revs and layouts :
download/file.php?id=27753&mode=view

Nice system. I'd put a faster cpu like a 450mhz Pii and oc It to 500 or 550mhz and call it a day.
Piii are nice and all, but kind of boring to me. However that system will not hold back the voodoo5500 to such a extent that it can be used well.

Jade Falcon wrote:

Nice system. I'd put a faster cpu like a 450mhz Pii and oc It to 500 or 550mhz and call it a day.
Piii are nice and all, but kind of boring to me. However that system will not hold back the voodoo5500 to such a extent that it can be used well.

I looked through the manaul for the Biostar M6TBD quickly and I don't think the board has any overclock features at all.

Using a Voodoo 5 5500 with a stock PII 450 would be like using a Voodoo II with a Pentium 133, doable as you can play some games but a waste. People often try to build fast Athlon XP systems to pair with their Voodoo 5 cards but a Pentium 3 at 1.0 or 1.1 GHz is fast enough for late Windows 9x games.

Another option would be to get a PII 450 and a Voodoo II card and build another faster system to put the Voodoo 5 in. If he chooses to not get a fast Coppermine CPU it's perhaps even better to keep the PII 266 CPU in the M6TBD system and get an original Voodoo card which would complement another faster system with the Voodoo 5 really well as some games refuse to work with anything but an original Voodoo card.

No oc option? Setfsb should work.

As for the cpu, yes all Pii will hold back a v5.5k but so will a 1ghz piii. You need a p4 or AthlonXP system to make the most out of them.
But for 9x games a 450mhz pii is ok. Not ideal but ok. It's not like your be playing hl2 on a pii or even a piii with one

I'd think a Voodoo3 or a Matrox G400 MAX would be a decent match with a P2/450. Or possibly something like an original Radeon.

Thanks for all the feed backs 😀

The voodoo 5500 was more of a impulse buy since it was so nice keept 😉

Also thanks darry for modded files, not sure yet if i will use it, but at least i will upgrade the bios since i cant go past the 8gb disk limit for some reason.

But true, i will probably suff the card down in a nice box with original cd and manual and add a voodoo 1/2 card instead in the machine.

As for sound card i got a hold of brand new original create sound blaster ct1350,ct1600, ct2239 and full size ct3980. So i have to decide which to put in, i have another new ct1600 in my other wip computer that wont be the sleeper one. Ct1350 went to my friend that just got him self a compaq armada 433 😀

Will post more pictures as soon i get my last parts for the computer.

tabm0de wrote:

But true, i will probably suff the card down in a nice box with original cd and manual and add a voodoo 1/2 card instead in the machine.

As for sound card i got a hold of brand new original create sound blaster ct1350,ct1600, ct2239 and full size ct3980. So i have to decide which to put in, i have another new ct1600 in my other wip computer that wont be the sleeper one. Ct1350 went to my friend that just got him self a compaq armada 433 😀

Will post more pictures as soon i get my last parts for the computer.

I advice a voodoo 2 over voodoo 1, otherwise your slot 1 build will be crippled by the voodoo rather then otherwise around 😉

Nice sb cards

Sorry for the necro M6TBD has been documented:
https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/12056
we found a manual