That is a very nice Super socket 7 board, I have some doubts about it beeing able to handle more than 128 MB cached memory though?

I would not have any any problems my self with only beeing able to use 2 PCI and 2 ISA or 3 PCI and 1 ISA card but I normally do not use more than 1 or 2 sound cards.

It isn't overclocked. I am not a PC expert but i could say it's fine. You don't have to worry about the PCI slots, they might fit (but not always, like on some ocassions).

Is it just me or does that board have quite a bend?

It seems to me that the surface this board was on when taking those pictures isn't flat as well (looks like a couch), so the board appears more bent than it really is. It might not even be bent at all to begin with.

Also, I don't think those jumpers would interfere much with a full-length ISA card. Worst case scenario, get an ISA NIC, and that should free up one PCI slot. AFAIK that isn't really needed... unless you need the transfer speed, such a late S7/SS7 board should have an USB 1.1 controller onboard, just make sure you get the pinout right. IMHO if the board supports the HDDs you want to use through the onboard controller, all you really need here is the NIC, the vídeo card and the sound card.

shock__ wrote:

Is it just me or does that board have quite a bend?

Might be yes... that motherboard looks quite bended. But it's because the surface the board was standing on wasn't flat.

It's a nice board. I still have mine (+K6-2 450MHz).

You can flash the BIOS to have 32+GB HDD support.

I do have an isa nic but I never used it ( it came with the other Mb that I got.
I'm using an USB keyboard and mouse but if the Mb came with the onboard ps2 connector I could use it with the USB mouse, and the keyboard I could get a ps2 one with DIN adaptor.
One thing that I liked about that Mb is that you can check the temperature from the m. And the CPU, also you can check the voltage from the psu from all the lines ( this one idk if its a special version of this motherboard.)

I can clearly see the USB header on the pictures. All you need is the connector and the pinout. Also, it looks like one of those "combined" USB+PS/2 headers, so you might need to get the correct bracket anyway... it shouldn't be hard to find one, I myself have seen quite a few of them online in Brazil.

About that supported memory, is the chipset revision E?
You know, how much are cacheable and how much the board supports in total are two different things.

Cacheable:
http://www.amd-k6.com/cacheable-ram-on-socket-7-platforms/

alexanrs wrote:

I can clearly see the USB header on the pictures. All you need is the connector and the pinout. Also, it looks like one of those "combined" USB+PS/2 headers, so you might need to get the correct bracket anyway... it shouldn't be hard to find one, I myself have seen quite a few of them online in Brazil.

AFAIK its actually a combined USB + PS/2 + IR daughter-board (I've had an Asus S7 board or two that has one, and looks fairly similar to that). The "ATX Form Card" (http://www.ebay.com/itm/201346546874) As you say - they aren't all that uncommon. IIRC you can connect USB to the "USB half" of the connector too, as long as the plug fits. That, plus an AGP card, a sound card, and a NIC should be no problem with the available slots.

brostenen wrote:

About that supported memory, is the chipset revision E? You know, how much are cacheable and how much the board supports in tota […]
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About that supported memory, is the chipset revision E?
You know, how much are cacheable and how much the board supports in total are two different things.

Cacheable:
http://www.amd-k6.com/cacheable-ram-on-socket-7-platforms/

It looks like it's the Revision E (the one that could came with 512kb or 1mb L2 cache

Well, since I may get another mb, I decided to try windows ME on the one that I have for now...
untill now, no boot freeze, the os already had the driver for the NIC, flashdrives and usb controller.
The voodoo 3 driver worked quite well and I actually saw some performance boost over it (compared to quake2) but, I got an weird problem with the audio driver.
it looks like the system doesn't know how to handle with their own sounds, because the rest works fine on it, all the system sounds (beep, shord, tadah,...) got a repetitive loop, and I know why, it's because the sound is sended to the sound card buffer, and it's played, but, since there isn't a stop sound, the ESS chip will continue to play in loop that buffered sound...
And since it only happens with windows sounds (videos, quake 2 and dxdiag worked fine), I don't need for now windows sounds.

What is the sound card? AFAIK Windows ME ships with WDM drivers for EVERYTHING, and for older hardware you might have better luck using the official VxD drivers for Windows 95/98.

you dont want to run VxD's in ME, the old VxD drivers are what causes the instability everyone complained about with ME, if you need VxD's stick to 98

candle_86 wrote:

you dont want to run VxD's in ME, the old VxD drivers are what causes the instability everyone complained about with ME, if you need VxD's stick to 98

Not necessarily true. It was the immature System Restore implementation, the beta Internet Explorer (that permeated the entire system, thanks to it being intertwined with the shell) and a bunch of other stuff that got patched later that gave the system a bad name. For DOS gaming they are not ideal, since they have a fixed okay-ish SBPro emulation going on, and if his sound card has good DOS support on the VxD drivers that will usually be better.

I experinced it and alot of other folks as well, matter of fact entire articles where written about not using VxD's in ME, and to make sure every device or expansion card you had, had Windows ME drivers made for it specifically.

the sound card is a maxi sound game theater 64 (ISA), it has windows 3.11 driver, 95/98 and windows 2000 (no windows me driver...)
With windows me the system was kinda stable, but the sound sux, I'm gonna try win 2k (even without ms-dos) and see what it does.
Maybe the newer system are more stable with an unstable hardware, or, my windows 98 cd is bad 🙁
EDIT:
nvm, the system hangs on the install process ... (it takes so many time to pass from the "Please wait message"), the keyb and mouse works, but when a question window is showed, I cannot use the keyboard and mouse anymore...
Well, I'll get that mb then, the K6-II will give a boost compared to the PMMX233.

One insteresting note.
CPU score on 3dmark99, on windows 98, it was 1500, and with 250MHz oc it was 1800. For some reason, I got 1930 on the stock clock over windows me 😮 (maybe because the sound card wasn't well installed)

EDIT2: Hm, I could install windows 2000 now, the audio driver works, the install problem was that it wasn't recognizing the driver for the usb 1.1 onboard, but I could work fine with the pci usb board (normally I use the usb 1.1 because it gives me more "performance)...
All in all, quake 2 score with sound is lower than win 9x score, but without sound it's higher than windows 98 and me (40fps, vs 38,5 from me and 38fps from 98)

Windows ME and 2K worked fine on my test, still no iuse, maybe my problem is related with a bad 98 cd, I may get a english one, since the portuguese one that I have may not be compatible with the unoficial flashdrive support