That was a fun read indeed! 😁

Btw your memory problems might be solved if you use the DIMM with the highest latency (the PC100 - 322- 620 one) in DIMM1 slot and the faster ones (the PC100 - 222 - 620 ones) in DIMM2 and DIMM3. I'm not sure as the pic of your board which shows your memory modules is a bit too vague, but it looks like the 2 PC-100 222 modules look similar and the 322 one looks a bit different and if that's the case, the 322 one was in the middle (which could account for the instability).nvm I noticed that I had noticed wrong. Maybe I should go get some sleep 🤣!
But anyway you could try the third module in the first memory slot and the ones with better timings in the later DIMM slots. It was a common trick I did and it helps prevent memory modules from causing intermittent stability issues of the most annoying kind due to them running out of spec.
But if this fixes your stability problem, it nice to have 192MB instead of 128MB 😀.

Other than that you could give memtest a try (there was a bootable floppy one, it worked fine and might be a fun little retro activity for you 😜).

My P2B was a 1.10 and I was fortunate enough to have one that did support Coppermine but not fortunate enough to actually know about this till after I had gotten myself a 550MHz Katmai 😵

Thanks for sharing your story here! 😁

The Ti4200 ought to play with Windows 98 SE just fine. In fact, for non-Glide game I feel it's probably close to one of the best High-End Windows 98 gaming cards out there. It will play lots of games that play better in Windows 98 then they do on XP. Not to mention late DOS games.

Are you sure you can't get Coppermine support with a simple bios upgrade?

EDIT: According to the page below you should be able to run a coppermine if you use a FPGA version with a Slotket or even a Tualatin if you have a Tualatin compatible slotket.

http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheidegger/p2b_p … pgrade_faq.html

I've found that 30.82 drivers play great with Win98se. I used to use my 4400 with 98se before i went to ME. You shouldnt have any issues.

Tetrium wrote:

Btw your memory problems might be solved if you use the DIMM with the highest latency (the PC100 - 322- 620 one) in DIMM1 slot and the faster ones (the PC100 - 222 - 620 ones) in DIMM2 and DIMM3.

Thanks I'll give that a try. It took a long time for the memory incompatibility to appear so hopefully it will work!

Trank wrote:

I've found that 30.82 drivers play great with Win98se.

The problem I had was no 3D acceleration on a couple of driver versions that I had downloaded from the Nvidia archive. And then the drivers would not uninstall at all, so I ended up doing a Windows reinstall (I had only installed a few games on there so no big loss).

My 50MHz overclock wasn't stable, which I assumed was due to overheating (given that my PII doesn't have a fan), so this was my solution 😉

Almoststew1990 wrote:

My 50MHz overclock wasn't stable, which I assumed was due to overheating (given that my PII doesn't have a fan), so this was my […]
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My 50MHz overclock wasn't stable, which I assumed was due to overheating (given that my PII doesn't have a fan), so this was my solution 😉

That's pretty nifty, but keep in mind rubber bands aren't a very popular method of solving retro computer problems in the long run due to rubber bands tending to dry out and falling apart so I wouldn't recommend using this fix as a permanent solution (but I still like it due to it showing your creativity 😀).

You could mount a fan on the CPU itself and add a case fan. Many older PSUs tended to run their fans faster and while this increases noise levels, it also increases airflow.
Btw, for this reason I liked one of my AOpen PSUs (which was actually a 300W FSP unit) so much as it actually had a knob on the back (near to where the flip switch of the PSU is) which is for regulating the PSU's 12cm fan 😀

its probably really silent isnt it? ive seen a pc where everything, including the hd was hanging on rubber bands and it was totally quiet 😀

there are alot of PII cooling kits out there, however do note that not all fit the plastic covers of the PII. Currently I am using a cooling kit from Cooler Master which seems to do the job just fine but is only a 50mm fan, but it didn't fit my deschutes cover (had to replace it with another cover just so it would fit), try ebay or your local websites for these coolers.
Another option is using case fan + plastic exchaust "pipe" which were popular with PII passive cooled heatsinks and later used as single exhaust points with new cases, I had this myself in my athlon wich functioned as a tunnel cooling with 1 fan on the CPU and 1 fan on the side of the case creating a wind tunnel effect).

If a PII already has a passive cooling solution which I want to improve, the easiest way to me is to simply 'activate' it 😜

I recently picked up a P2B rev 1.04 as well. Highest cpu supported is P3-600/100 Katmai. But if you use a slotket with voltage adjustment, you could potentially use P3 Coppermine.

Mine came with a P2-350. I think original SECC heatsink/fans are going to be a PITA to find.

I'll have to agree with Tetrium in the CPU cooling question, if you want something more permanent. Just "activate" the passive cooling by mounting a fan on the heat sink, even a minimal airflow will do wonders. If you feed it with, say 7 volts, even a small fan will be virtually noiseless. A properly dimensioned resistor in series with the fan would do the job if you don't have a spare fan controller. If you post the fan's current or power rating, there are plenty of people here that could help you with the resistor calculations. Otherwise, there's always the option of making a fan shroud/adapter out of thin sheet metal or something, and use a larger fan. A little bit more work with that though.

About drivers for GF4 family cards; done quite a lot of experimenting through the years, and so far my Detonator version of choice for those is 45.23. Those drivers never let me down, can't remember a single game they gave me trouble with.

I have similar setup:

ASUS P2B mobo
Pentium II 400Mhz 100Mhz FSB
256MB RAM Kingston
Matrox Millennium II 8MB AGP
Diamond Monster Voodoo2 8MB SLI
Aureal Vortex 2 Diamond Monster Sound MX300
Maxtor HDD's

Tetrium wrote:

If a PII already has a passive cooling solution which I want to improve, the easiest way to me is to simply 'activate' it 😜

To be honest, this was just a 'prototype' to test whether my CPU overclock was unstable due to overheating rather than a permanent cooling solution, and I got fed up of holding a fan in one hand whilst gaming with the other! It turns out my PC is still unstable, even with that 120mm fan spinning at 2200RPM moving a lot of air over the CPU and RAM. So it must be something else 😒 For the moment I am back with 450MHz and a silent PC...

Almoststew1990 wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

If a PII already has a passive cooling solution which I want to improve, the easiest way to me is to simply 'activate' it 😜

To be honest, this was just a 'prototype' to test whether my CPU overclock was unstable due to overheating rather than a permanent cooling solution, and I got fed up of holding a fan in one hand whilst gaming with the other! It turns out my PC is still unstable, even with that 120mm fan spinning at 2200RPM moving a lot of air over the CPU and RAM. So it must be something else 😒 For the moment I am back with 450MHz and a silent PC...

If cooling the heatsink is not the problem, maybe its the way the heatsink is fitted to the CPU cartridge (the Slot 1 CPUs often had the cache chips not touch the heatsink so extra cooling of the heatsink will not matter here). But quite frankly, replacing the Deschutes with a Katmai will yield good results (I went from 350MHz Deschutes to 550MHz Katmai and the speed increase was even noticeable when booting).

No worries, I think you're being very creative here and like I said, I enjoy reading about your efforts 😀. It even reminds me of when I started messing around using inventive schemes to get my own rigs working 😜

If you want, you should see my own prototyping in my own retro rig thread (in my sig), I think my 'work' might look somewhat familiar to you 😜

I've taken the plunge and bought a Slocket and I made sure I got one with lots of voltage / FSB options! I also bought a PIII SL4ZM 700MHz/100MHz FSB/ 1.75v CPU to go with it. How do I cool it? Do I use the heatsink from a SECC / SECC 2 cooler? Or do I need a S370 cooler? The slocket doesn't have any mounting holes...

Almoststew1990 wrote:

I've taken the plunge and bought a Slocket and I made sure I got one with lots of voltage / FSB options! I also bought a PIII SL4ZM 700MHz/100MHz FSB/ 1.75v CPU to go with it. How do I cool it? Do I use the heatsink from a SECC / SECC 2 cooler? Or do I need a S370 cooler? The slocket doesn't have any mounting holes...

s370 and sA HSFs are interchangeable and will mount onto the same CPU sockets (provided no components are blocking the heatsink). Slot 1 HSFs are not compatible with any socketed CPU.

edit: here's what I mean

Thanks, that's very useful to know! This means I can use the Socket 478 cooler than came with the motherboard in the case and save a few £££. Do you think a stock 478 heatsink would be sufficient to passively cool a 700MHz PIII?

Almoststew1990 wrote:

Thanks, that's very useful to know! This means I can use the Socket 478 cooler than came with the motherboard in the case and save a few £££. Do you think a stock 478 heatsink would be sufficient to passively cool a 700MHz PIII?

s478 is NOT compatible with sA/s370/s7/s5/s3

I seem to recall that some cooling system manufacturers had mounting kits that allowed headsinks to be converted, although I could be mis-remembering. Certainly they're incompatible out of the box.