VOGONS


Pentium III Tualatin Adventures

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First post, by badmojo

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I'm not 100% sure what my motivation was for this project - I suspect that I just like building PCs. I do consider my existing PIII to be my most versatile and useful retro PC so it's good to have a backup I suppose. I had all of the parts on hand except for a motherboard, so I put the word out and was kindly gifted 2 DFI CA-64TC's by the most excellent BuuBox from OCAU. The CA-64TC is a VIA Apollo Pro 133A based board that a) can handle a 133MHz FSB and b) has an ISA slot.

One of the boards had bad caps so it was a good opportunity to dive in and practice my re-capping skills:

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I've done a fair bit of entry level soldering in my time and I have a decent soldering iron to work with, but desoldering ~20 caps (using braid) wasn't much fun at all and it would have been easy to burn a trace. Replacing the caps in my other systems is probably inevitable as they age so I think it's time I invested in a desoldering station - soldering caps back into this board was relatively quick and easy when I finally had clean holes to work with. Anyway, I got there in the end, and after a good wash and sporting nice new Rubycons the motherboard was ready to rock.

The CPU is a PIII Tualatin 1400-S with a FCPGA mod, bought from this Korean dude a couple of years ago. He seemed to have an unlimited supply but only has 10 left at the time of writing, and he's jacked up the price accordingly. I think it was more like $30AUD delivered when I bought mine. It's very neat work and has worked like a charm for me:

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For a GPU I went with a Geforce 2 Ultra, which is a lovely card for this era IMHO. The VGA / SVGA output is beautiful and it's of course an impressive 3D card too. I have 2 of these and ended up using the other one - I switched them when I was trying to track down the source of a buzzing noise when moving the mouse (via PS2 only, serial was OK). It turned out that having the mouse cord run over my little SRS processor (which sits b/w the PC and the speakers) was introducing the noise, so I just moved the mouse cable 😀

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For sound I went with a NOS Live! "X-Gamer" that I've had sitting around for years. It's a nice card and installed relatively easily (for a Live!), but I must admit that I find them as dull as dishwater. I use a Vortex2 based "SuperQuad" in my other PIII and I really dig that card - maybe I just prefer an underdog. Anyway the Live! sounds great and having EAX is nice for late Windows 98 games so it can stay there for now - its SB16 emulation is pretty aweful but I'm not planning on using this machine for DOS games anyway.

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Windows 98 SE installed without a hitch - I'm sticking with 512MB of RAM to keep it happy - and it's proving to be a quiet, quick, and very stable machine so far. The only instability I've seen was during the Live! installation process but of course a Live! can lock up a PC from the other side of the room. Plans for the future are some benchmarking, and maybe finding an ISA sound card to fill that slot.

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Last edited by badmojo on 2019-09-17, 21:00. Edited 2 times in total.

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Reply 1 of 23, by voodoo5_6k

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Nice machine 😀 I like it! The Pentium III-S from Korea is really a sweet little piece of work. I have a couple of those too and they always worked flawlessly. For RAM I'm also sticking with 512MB for Win98SE. It is way more than was ever used back then and therefore enough to play all the games. I don't see the necessity to use more in a Win9x system.

Although, I must say that I don't like VIA chipsets and would always prefer an Intel solution... But for combining a Pentium III-S (using 133MHz FSB without overclocking the chipset) with an ISA slot there is not really that much of choice.

badmojo wrote:

For sound I went with a NOS Live! "X-Gamer" that I've had sitting around for years. It's a nice card and installed relatively easily (for a Live!), but I must admit that I find them as dull as dishwater. I use a Vortex2 based "SuperQuad" in my other PIII and I really dig that card - maybe I just prefer an underdog. Anyway the Live! sounds great and having EAX is nice for late Windows 98 games so it can stay there for now - its SB16 emulation is pretty aweful but I'm not planning on using this machine for DOS games anyway.

I have the same card (CT4760) and I must say that the rear channel sounds definitely a lot better than the front channel (the rear channel is driven by a Philips DAC instead of Realtek AC'97 for the front). I'm using the rear output for my stereo speakers ever since I read about and confirmed this. What output are you using?

END OF LINE.

Reply 2 of 23, by badmojo

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voodoo5_6k wrote:

I have the same card (CT4760) and I must say that the rear channel sounds definitely a lot better than the front channel (the rear channel is driven by a Philips DAC instead of Realtek AC'97 for the front). I'm using the rear output for my stereo speakers ever since I read about and confirmed this. What output are you using?

Wow thanks for the heads up on that, I was using the front channel! Now that you mention it I did know that interesting factoid about the difference in front / rear from back in the day but wouldn't have ever remembered it without a prompt, so thanks again.

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Reply 3 of 23, by Radical Vision

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Crap keyboard, crap case, crap mobo, crap monitor, crap PSU, then what is not a crap in this build ?

Mah systems retro, old, newer (Radical stuff)
W3680 4.5/ GA-x58 UD7/ R9 280x
K7 2.6/ NF7-S/ HD3850
IBM x2 P3 933/ GA-6VXD7/ Voodoo V 5.5K
Cmq P2 450/ GA-BX2000/ V2 SLI
IBM PC365
Cmq DeskPRO 486/33
IBM PS/2 Model 56
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Reply 5 of 23, by gdjacobs

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Radical Vision wrote:

Crap keyboard, crap case, crap mobo, crap monitor, crap PSU, then what is not a crap in this build ?

That's a pretty arrogant statement. Haven't you considered the possibility that Badmojo knows what he's doing, maybe better than you do?

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 6 of 23, by badmojo

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Thanks gdjacobs 😊

I hurt Batman's feelings at some point by calling out one of his antisocial posts - this apparently is his "pay back" 🤣

He actually really likes my new P3. He finds the writing to be thoughtful and humorous, and the photographs well framed and highly detailed.

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Reply 7 of 23, by gdjacobs

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Textbook closet case self-loather. Can't be comfortable with his own taste in retro computers.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 8 of 23, by Tetrium

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Nice rig! 😁

The only thing I see missing is a (slow rotating) rear exhaust case fan 😜
The CPU HSF looks a bit more like one of the later ss7 ones? What was your experience with mounting the HSF on the Korean Tualatin?

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Reply 9 of 23, by badmojo

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Tetrium wrote:

Nice rig! 😁

The only thing I see missing is a (slow rotating) rear exhaust case fan 😜
The CPU HSF looks a bit more like one of the later ss7 ones? What was your experience with mounting the HSF on the Korean Tualatin?

Thanks! And yes you're right I need to get me a better HSF. I was being lazy and just grabbed whatever came to hand - it's NOS and was advertised as a Socket 370 cooler on the packaging, but I think you're right that it's just left over SS7 stock that they wanted to make a buck with 😵

I have a stock PIII Intel cooler somewhere that would be more appropriate - I've found these to handle the extra height of the Tualatin + mod just fine if you bend the spring loaded clip a bit.

It's also been pointed out to me that a Geforce2 is probably a bit old for this setup so I might think about switching that out one day.

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Reply 11 of 23, by gdjacobs

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Tetrium wrote:

The only thing I see missing is a (slow rotating) rear exhaust case fan 😜

A case window and cold cathode lighting?

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 12 of 23, by ODwilly

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Scubs wrote:
Radical Vision wrote:

Crap keyboard, crap case, crap mobo, crap monitor, crap PSU, then what is not a crap in this build ?

At least its put together well.

Ironically enough that actually looks like a well constructed, thick steel case. I bet it is twice as thick as most of todays budget aluminum jobs. Also DFI has a fantastic reputation for build quality, sans bad caps. In fact even the bulged caps appear to be from a reputable brand from what I can see. At least they look like Sanyo's. PSU is an Antec unit of some sort, so it is either well built and full of crap caps that needs/have been replaced, or is well built and has fine caps. Didnt Phillips make good CRT's? I know the few I used at least back in the day had great image quality. No comment on the keyboard, looks like any other generic beige keyboard that does the job any other cheap keyboard does just fine 😊

Regardless we can all agree it is very well put together and looks great! And that to most people that would come into his house and see it, it would be absolute crap 🤣

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 13 of 23, by Radical Vision

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Compared to my 100% completed builds his build is just ordinary PC from the scrap...

https://imgur.com/a/jUmfz

https://imgur.com/a/mubGE (this is not 100% completed need an Creative X-Fi xtreme music and front panel, and Cooler Master Musketeer 2 and 3)

Mah systems retro, old, newer (Radical stuff)
W3680 4.5/ GA-x58 UD7/ R9 280x
K7 2.6/ NF7-S/ HD3850
IBM x2 P3 933/ GA-6VXD7/ Voodoo V 5.5K
Cmq P2 450/ GA-BX2000/ V2 SLI
IBM PC365
Cmq DeskPRO 486/33
IBM PS/2 Model 56
SPS IntelleXT 8088

Reply 14 of 23, by x0zm_

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Radical Vision wrote:

Compared to my 100% completed builds his build is just ordinary PC from the scrap...

I don't think it's a competition mate. Don't know why you're being so derisive.

It's a nice solid build using period appropriate parts. /shrug

Reply 15 of 23, by Wester547

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The bulging capacitors on that DFI board actually appear to be G-Luxon (the LY series?), one of the most notoriously unreliable brands from the “capacitor plague” days. Fortunately, at least one of the boards appears to use decent capacitors in the CPU VRM area (Rubycon ZL).

Reply 16 of 23, by Eep386

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Chemi-con KY (long life) and KZE (lower ESR) can be used to replace those horrible G-Luxons. Use KZE for the 'low esr' caps, and KY everywhere else.
Rubycon YXF is roughly equivalent to KY but might be cheaper in quantity through digi-key. YXG has slightly better ESR figures, but is a little more expensive and not available in as many values/voltages.

Life isn't long enough to re-enable every hidden option in every BIOS on every board... 🙁

Reply 17 of 23, by shamino

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The CA64-TC that I'm familiar with is a 694T based board (Apollo Pro 133T). If so, it should work with an unmodded Tualatin. Did you just use that chip because you already had it? Or is this actually a 694X based version of the same board?

The original caps shown in the picture are definitely not Sanyos. Sanyo electrolytics have a "K" shaped vent, not a cross. It's not the same style of "K" as Rubycon uses though.
I don't know if this is universal across their product line - there might be some Sanyo series that look different, but at least the ones you'd see on motherboards have a "K" vent.

Reply 18 of 23, by Radical Vision

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Wester547 wrote:

The bulging capacitors on that DFI board actually appear to be G-Luxon (the LY series?), one of the most notoriously unreliable brands from the “capacitor plague” days. Fortunately, at least one of the boards appears to use decent capacitors in the CPU VRM area (Rubycon ZL).

All of the brands that are not Japan ones are proven junk.... Of course with some small exceptions....

Mah systems retro, old, newer (Radical stuff)
W3680 4.5/ GA-x58 UD7/ R9 280x
K7 2.6/ NF7-S/ HD3850
IBM x2 P3 933/ GA-6VXD7/ Voodoo V 5.5K
Cmq P2 450/ GA-BX2000/ V2 SLI
IBM PC365
Cmq DeskPRO 486/33
IBM PS/2 Model 56
SPS IntelleXT 8088

Reply 19 of 23, by badmojo

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shamino wrote:

The CA64-TC that I'm familiar with is a 694T based board (Apollo Pro 133T). If so, it should work with an unmodded Tualatin. Did you just use that chip because you already had it? Or is this actually a 694X based version of the same board?

No you're right it's 694T based; the pin modded chip was the only Tualatin I had on hand. I have a couple of Celeron Tualatins now too so might give them a shot one day if I'm looking for something to do.

Life? Don't talk to me about life.