VOGONS


First post, by bloodem

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Hi guys,

I have (among others) a 440BX socket 370 motherboard: Chaintech 6BJM0-D100A
Until today, I was running a Celeron 500 MHz on it, but since the motherboard seemed to officially support an FSB133 MHz overclock, I thought I'd give it a try and purchased a Pentium 3 1000 MHz FSB133 and also switched the RAM modules from the 4 x 64 MB SDRAM PC100 that I had, to some 256 / 512 PC133 modules that I had lying around (more on this later).
Well, the PC booted fine, I entered the BIOS, adjusted FSB/PCI frequency to 133/33 MHz (although the "auto" setting was probably doing that already) - not sure about the AGP frequency, though, I'm guessing it's 1/2 FSB but, it's not specifically mentioned anywhere. Still, the Voodoo 3 3000 AGP card doesn't seem to have a problem... yet.

So, the good news is that everything works fine, didn't notice any issue, ran multiple benchmarks and the system seems very stable after a few hours of playing with it.
However, the CPU is clearly not supported by my current BIOS version (apparently, the motherboard actually has the original BIOS, which was never updated):
20200218-152715.jpg
20200218-152612.jpg
20200218-152902.jpg

Another strange behavior is with the new PC133 memory modules: it only sees half of the module's size.
So, if I add 256 MB, it will see 128, if I add a 512 module it will see 256... If I add both modules (256 + 512), yep, you guessed it: 384 MB total RAM. 😀 Also tried changing slots, same thing... Anyway, not a huge deal, 384 MB is A LOT for Windows 98 SE anyway, but I'm guessing that a BIOS update might help with this issue too.

Which brings me to.... yeah, a potential BIOS update. This motherboard seems to have been completely forgotten by the internet. There is virtually no information about it, no manual, no drivers (although, to be fair, drivers were easy to find from other manufacturers, since we're talking about a very common chipset). However, finding a BIOS update seems to be impossible. So, by any chance, does anybody own the same motherboard and maybe found a BIOS update long ago, when it was still available? 😀
Oh, and in case you are wondering why I need a BIOS update if everything seems to mostly work fine, it's my OCD, it won't let me sleep at night 😀)

1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k

Reply 1 of 4, by PARKE

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These are very nice boards imo. The version that I have here is Chaintech 6BJM0-C100N.
The BIOS it is running on is:
07/21/2000-i440BX-IT8693-jm69KC0CC-00 QS440BXP

You can dl the manual here:
6bjm0.exe 1138 K
https://www.infania.net/misc/moboarchive/Chai … xxxx/index.html

and a couple of BIOS versions here:
https://www.infania.net/misc/moboarchive/Chai … 6bjm/index.html

I don't know if this site is safe - download on your own risk

Reply 2 of 4, by bloodem

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Wow, thanks for the very quick & helpful reply!
Flashed the latest BIOS, all good now with the CPU:

20200218-173338.jpg

However, the problem with the RAM remains. Seems that the board doesn't like memory modules with capacity bigger than 128 MB. Anyway, I'll live with it 😀

Again, thank you!

1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k

Reply 3 of 4, by PARKE

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That is not a problem of the board. For 440BX you need 'early' design pc133 sticks with 16 chips. You can find some details in for example this thread:
Computer only detects half the RAM
quoting dionb:
That's single sided with 256Mb (32x8) chips, just as I suspected. 256Mb is not supported by the Via Apollo Pro 133 (693A) chipset, it can do 128Mb max. If your board really has the 133 not the 133A, then you're not going to be able to use more than half of these DIMMs. For 256MB DIMMs with 693A (or indeed i440BX) you need to get ones with "16pcs 16x8", i.e. double-sided DIMMs with 128Mb chips.
ooooo

440BX does not recognize 512 Mb sticks for the same reason, only 256 Mb will be 'seen'.

Reply 4 of 4, by bloodem

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Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's more of a general chipset limitation than a problem with my specific board per se.
Anyway, it doesn't bother me as much. Unfortunately I only have 512 / 256 'later' design modules. The older ones that I have are all PC100.

Thanks a lot for the help 😀

1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k