So, i've been playing around with this board and seems like there is some kind of issue with it.
I've tried numerous CPUs, RAMs and graphics cards. (I most like Radeon 9250 with 128bit ram - i have 3 of them.)
And there seems to be some kind of issue with any pentium 3 CPU i try with it.
Pentium 2 (3.5x100) and Celeron 300A (4.5x66 & 4.5x100 OC) work perfectly.
One Pentium III i have (5x133) locks up even at 5x100 and other Pentium III on slotket (6.5x133) does the same also even at 6.5x100.
Everything works well until i do something graphically demanding. I can cause the lockup easily with 3DMark2001. Sometimes it takes a bit of time until it locks up, but then it seems to degrade for that day and usually i even can't get passed the first car demo on second+ run.
I'm using Windows 98SE and i've re-installed it countless times. I've also used both SSD with SATA-IDE adapter as well as CF card for storage to have at least 2 different storage mediums tested - no behavior change.
With windows, I've tried all kinds of different orders of installations after windows install. On top of windows, i install 440bx chipset drivers, graphics drivers, soundcard (ymf724) and NIC drivers and all main windows updates. For windows updates i've used windows 98 SP3 (only the "main updates" parts) as well as restored windows updates through browser. The behavior does not change.
I have an oscilloscope, i believe pretty decent one. But I'm very new in this. I tried to measure CPU voltage and 3.3V from graphics card (from an unpopulated capacitor pad) and everywhere i read anything, i see noise/ripple with peak-to-peak of 250-400mV. It seems crazy, especially when considering that my Pentium 3 wants 1.65V. The voltage itself with multimeter seems to be on correct level.
Because oscilloscope is pretty new to me, please instruct me, what to measure and what settings should i have on my oscilloscope to do the measurement. Like AC/DC coupling, the 10x/1x on probe, etc. I don't believe the ripple is that large - the CPU wouldn't be able to work AT ALL with such big noise on its power supply.
So any suggestions and instructions are welcome! It is a beautiful board, i would like to get it fully working.
NB! Not using any ATX extensions for now. All voltages are within normal range measured from the motherboard. I use the latest bios from retroweb, that is patched with rom.by for better support of CPUs and whatnot. For oscilloscope, i used serial port's shield as ground, as it was closest bare and shiny metal. (it should be good ground, right?)
EDIT: Just to confirm.
Celeron 300A @ 450MHz.
128GB SSD over IDE-to-SATA adapter
Fresh windows 98 install.
All drivers + Main updates from Service Pack 3.
DX 8.1 + 3DMark2001
And is rock-solid. I made it to loop 3DMark2001 low-detail cars demo (as that should stress more the CPU, motherboard and RAM instead of being bottlenecked by GPU) and it just continues to loop with no issues.
May there be some kind of incompatibility with P3 type CPUs somewhere/somehow? Not even sure is it incompatibility with the board or with windows or something else... Maybe some of you have encountered similar issues and can suggest some ideas?
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - And i intend to get every last bit out of it even after loading every damn driver!