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My Pentium 133 build

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First post, by derSammler

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My Pentium 133 build is finally making progress after I had to disassemble what I already had due to broken caps on the main board.

Anyway, here's the main board in its full glory: an A-Trend ATC-2000 with a P54C 133 MHz, and 4x 16 MB PS/2 EDO RAM (60ns). The two caps above the cpu socket are new. I modified the power connector of the cpu fan so that it can be connected directly to the main board. Also gave it a brand new CR2032 coin battery.

PC011445.JPG
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Full specs:
* Mainboard: A-Trend ATC-2000, i430HX chipset
* 256 KB Pipeline Burst Cache
* 64 MB EDO RAM (4x 16 MB), 60ns
* Pentium P54C ("Pentium-S"), 133 MHz
Cards
* S3 Savage4 Pro PCI, 8 MB
* D-Link 100mbit/s Ethernet card
* USB 2.0 card, 4x ext. ports, 1x int. port
* Adaptec AVA-1505 SCSI-II card
* ALS100+ sound card with Dreamblaster S2
Drives
* WD IDE hard disk, 6.4 GB
* AOpen CD/RW burner 24x10x40x
* Zip100
* 3.5" and 5.25" HD floppy disk drives
* internal 8 GB USB flash drive (!)

Running Windows 98 SE.

Last edited by derSammler on 2017-12-12, 18:36. Edited 3 times in total.

Reply 3 of 48, by Anonymous Coward

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I'm also really interested in building a P100 or p133 system, but I feel it needs to have a motherboard that was available when the P133 represented the fastest available option from Intel. Probably either the Neptune or a 430FX. I'm probably going to go with a dual Neptune.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 7 of 48, by derSammler

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No, TAG RAM is on-board. The socket is for a larger TAG RAM, so 512 MB instead of 64 MB can be cached.

However, I found the cause. There's a jumper right from the empty socket. I thought that's only set when populating the socket, but it must be always closed to enable cache. I guess the pre-owner had the turbo switch connected there and hence the absence of a jumper. Did the same now. 😀

Reply 8 of 48, by derSammler

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Speed test is looking good:

IMG_20171201_223615909.jpg

Faster than the average P1 133.

Was thinking about which graphics card I should use. Have a pile of S3 ViRGE/DX, those are always a good choice. First however I tried a ATi 3D Rage Pro 8 MB, as I thought that one should be quite fast. Interestingly, it only did 25 MB/sec. in 16 and 32 bit transfer modes. Next I did try was a S3 Savage Pro and that immediately ended my quest for a graphics card.

IMG_20171201_223602521.jpg

(holy sh*t, still can't believe how fast it is...)

ps: yes, that's a PCI card, no AGP.

Reply 9 of 48, by melbar

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derSammler wrote:

Next I did try was a S3 Savage Pro
(holy sh*t, still can't believe how fast it is...)

Yes, thats completely reasonable. The CPU is from 1995 and the VGA from 1999:

The graphics core was clocked at 125 MHz, with the board's SDRAM clocked at either 125 MHz or 143 MHz (Savage4 Pro).

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Reply 10 of 48, by derSammler

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What has the CPU to do with that? I've compared the ATi 3D Rage Pro 8 MB (1998) with the S3 Savage4 Pro 8 MB (1999) and while the ATi does not even reach the speed of the average PCI VGA card, the Savage4 is 2.4x faster than the ATi and almost twice as fast as the average PCI VGA card. This is quite a surprise, as I never seen anyone recommending a Savage4 when someone asked for a fast 2D PCI card.

Reply 11 of 48, by melbar

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Yes, you're right. What i mean with the CPU is: it's not time-period combination anymore...
Yes, the ATI card is quite bad, and the S3 performs really good.

#1 K6-2/500, #2 Athlon1200, #3 Celeron1000A, #4 A64-3700, #5 P4HT-3200, #6 P4-2800, #7 Am486DX2-66

Reply 12 of 48, by derSammler

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melbar wrote:

Yes, you're right. What i mean with the CPU is: it's not time-period combination anymore...

Well, the CPU has a sticker indicating it was sold in 1997. And two years later one may have upgraded the graphics card. Works for me. 😉

Reply 13 of 48, by derSammler

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Just benchmarked my ViRGE/DX cards. One does 42 MB/sec., one 46 MB/sec., and one 51 MB/sec. I may use the latter one in combination with a Voodoo 1 instead, but for now I go with the Savage4 and see how it performs overall. Have no Voodoo 1 left currently anyway.

Reply 15 of 48, by derSammler

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mrau wrote:

whats the difference between practical and theoretical video performance in text mode for example?

practical = how many characters it can display per second (relevant for DOS etc.)
theoretical = how many bytes it can transfer per second (meaning depends on usage, so this is no practical value)

Reply 16 of 48, by mrau

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but that's what i don't get: bytes copied into gpu memory are going to be displayed (usually 1 char for every 2 bytes in text mode) - but we have far more bytes copied than characters displayed - this does not make sense to me...

Reply 17 of 48, by derSammler

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mrau wrote:

but we have far more bytes copied than characters displayed - this does not make sense to me...

Because it takes more to display a character than just copying bytes. Text display is handled by the BIOS, so lots of overhead.