bestemor wrote on 2022-09-18, 11:29:

About those slot1 Intel Deschutes, just to clear things up - yes, it is not the stepping but date that governs multiplier lockin […]
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About those slot1 Intel Deschutes, just to clear things up - yes, it is not the stepping but date that governs multiplier locking, that is correct.
BUT what was referenced here (S7 vs U7) is part of the sSpec number and is not related to any steppings.
And SL2U7 is a totally different model, with higher base speed 450mhz, vs the SL2S7 at 400mhz.
And none of those 450mhz ones, nomatter the date code, have unlocked multiplier.

Maybe you can explain it some more: I thought the sSpec-number also changes with a new stepping. So there might be different sSpec with same stepping but not different steppings with identical sSpec.

Veeb0rg wrote on 2022-09-18, 19:37:

So I've been doing some testing. My SL2S7 will post at 3x, 3.5x, 4x and 4.5x but not 5x multiplier at 100mhz FSB. So unlocked is confirmed. Just for fun, I underclocked it to 50mhz fsb at 3x multiplier and it posted at 150mhz.

So your P2-400 (4x) boots with a multiplier of 4.5x? That matches my experience above, but I can't reproduce it anymore.

Veeb0rg wrote on 2022-09-18, 19:37:

The board I'm testing with is a ZP-6B1 ver 2.1. It supports 50mhz, 66mhz, 75mhz, 83mhz and 100mhz FSB with 3x to 5x FSB according to the silk screening.

I didn't know there were BX-Boards that support 50 Mhz 😀

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-19, 11:10:

Radical has a hate boner for ASUS and carries on as if they are the only AIB that produced shit boards, truth is they all produced shit boards occasionally back in the day due to the capacitor plague which hit all board partners. Even now AIBs still produce shit boards but are smart enough to label them as budget boards and price them accordingly, thankfully we dont have a cap plague to deal with.

Actually its not just ASUS he has a hate boner for ...its pretty much any bit of retro gear he decides is peasant quality, how he comes up with his metrics is anyone's guess but I have yet to find any value in his posts.

Just ignore their hate boner posts nothing of use comes from them.

Totally agree with you!

imi wrote on 2022-09-17, 12:20:

I hope you put a heatsink on there 😉

Just add a little magic here 😉

HanSolo wrote on 2022-09-19, 11:24:

Maybe you can explain it some more: I thought the sSpec-number also changes with a new stepping. So there might be different sSp […]
Show full quote

bestemor wrote on 2022-09-18, 11:29:

About those slot1 Intel Deschutes, just to clear things up - yes, it is not the stepping but date that governs multiplier lockin […]
Show full quote

About those slot1 Intel Deschutes, just to clear things up - yes, it is not the stepping but date that governs multiplier locking, that is correct.
BUT what was referenced here (S7 vs U7) is part of the sSpec number and is not related to any steppings.
And SL2U7 is a totally different model, with higher base speed 450mhz, vs the SL2S7 at 400mhz.
And none of those 450mhz ones, nomatter the date code, have unlocked multiplier.

Maybe you can explain it some more: I thought the sSpec-number also changes with a new stepping. So there might be different sSpec with same stepping but not different steppings with identical sSpec.

Veeb0rg wrote on 2022-09-18, 19:37:

So I've been doing some testing. My SL2S7 will post at 3x, 3.5x, 4x and 4.5x but not 5x multiplier at 100mhz FSB. So unlocked is confirmed. Just for fun, I underclocked it to 50mhz fsb at 3x multiplier and it posted at 150mhz.

So your P2-400 (4x) boots with a multiplier of 4.5x? That matches my experience above, but I can't reproduce it anymore.

Veeb0rg wrote on 2022-09-18, 19:37:

The board I'm testing with is a ZP-6B1 ver 2.1. It supports 50mhz, 66mhz, 75mhz, 83mhz and 100mhz FSB with 3x to 5x FSB according to the silk screening.

I didn't know there were BX-Boards that support 50 Mhz 😀

I got it and a Tyan s1692d (single slot) with a few slot 1 cpu's in a random "hey you like old computers, here" box.

SteveC wrote on 2022-09-16, 17:14:

Another IBM PC 330, this one a 486 DX/2 66 (I think). Not opened it up yet but it does boot and beep 😀

Oh men... I love so much this geometric IBM design 😀

stef80 wrote on 2022-09-19, 10:55:

Managed to get my hands on two "new old stock" Asus boards.

Tusl2 I bought from a friend who got 10 such boards from a guy who had computer parts business years ago. All of the boards had a pattern of 3 bad caps that needed to be replaced. P5A came from ebay.de. It's revision 1.04 ... so K6-3+ 400ATZ found new home 😁.

Nice find. I keep trying to decide if I want to buy one of these, or keep using a slotket/440BX.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-19, 11:10:

Radical has a hate boner for ASUS and carries on as if they are the only AIB that produced shit boards, truth is they all produc […]
Show full quote

timsdf wrote on 2022-09-18, 19:50:

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-09-18, 08:29:

too bad is ASUS it may die for no reason (the usual BS with that garbage brand). But if u want reliable x58 board get anything that is not shitty ASUS, no wonder urs did die.. My Gigabyte x58 UD7 meanwhile is not dead, cuz is not shitty ASUS...

What's the problem with asus? Disregarding lowend boards on mainstream sockets (which are with all manufacturers questionable) I don't see any reason to call asus x58 boards bad like that. Specially with x58 gigabyte boards can be very unstable.

Radical has a hate boner for ASUS and carries on as if they are the only AIB that produced shit boards, truth is they all produced shit boards occasionally back in the day due to the capacitor plague which hit all board partners. Even now AIBs still produce shit boards but are smart enough to label them as budget boards and price them accordingly, thankfully we dont have a cap plague to deal with.

Actually its not just ASUS he has a hate boner for ...its pretty much any bit of retro gear he decides is peasant quality, how he comes up with his metrics is anyone's guess but I have yet to find any value in his posts.

Just ignore their hate boner posts nothing of use comes from them.

As someone who was really into computers in the day, none of this stuff was junk. We didn't find out about the capacitor plague until years later. Even that doesn't make the boards junk. It just means the capacitors are junk. There's a reason ASUS is still around today.

There were a ton more manufacturers back in the day and they were all trying to distinguish themselves. I was so much more excited about computers in that environment.

smtkr wrote on 2022-09-20, 00:13:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-19, 11:10:

Radical has a hate boner for ASUS and carries on as if they are the only AIB that produced shit boards, truth is they all produc […]
Show full quote

timsdf wrote on 2022-09-18, 19:50:

What's the problem with asus? Disregarding lowend boards on mainstream sockets (which are with all manufacturers questionable) I don't see any reason to call asus x58 boards bad like that. Specially with x58 gigabyte boards can be very unstable.

Radical has a hate boner for ASUS and carries on as if they are the only AIB that produced shit boards, truth is they all produced shit boards occasionally back in the day due to the capacitor plague which hit all board partners. Even now AIBs still produce shit boards but are smart enough to label them as budget boards and price them accordingly, thankfully we dont have a cap plague to deal with.

Actually its not just ASUS he has a hate boner for ...its pretty much any bit of retro gear he decides is peasant quality, how he comes up with his metrics is anyone's guess but I have yet to find any value in his posts.

Just ignore their hate boner posts nothing of use comes from them.

As someone who was really into computers in the day, none of this stuff was junk. We didn't find out about the capacitor plague until years later. Even that doesn't make the boards junk. It just means the capacitors are junk. There's a reason ASUS is still around today.

There were a ton more manufacturers back in the day and they were all trying to distinguish themselves. I was so much more excited about computers in that environment.

Lets be realistic here .. cap plague aside there were junky boards even back then just as there are now, my nostalgia glasses are not strong enough to let me forget that.

I and many others however dont have a hate boner over it.

timsdf wrote on 2022-09-18, 19:50:

What's the problem with asus? Disregarding lowend boards on mainstream sockets (which are with all manufacturers questionable) I don't see any reason to call asus x58 boards bad like that. Specially with x58 gigabyte boards can be very unstable.

I've pulled 3 ASUS sabertooth X58s out of ewasted systems recently and all worked fine. I'm typing this on a sabertooth X79 which has been powered on 24/7 since 2016 and is also fine. My old gigabyte LGA1155 board before that was on 24/7 for 4 years and was fine, other than USB 3.0 ports not working if I applied the UEFI BIOS update. Whatever.

Generally speaking, every motherboard manufacturer has similar reliability over long term periods like 5 years, in the same way that hard disk manufacturers and product lines all roughly even out and none are "better" or "worse" overall. There's always going to be the odd dud like the IBM deathstars or seagate ST3000DM001 or whatever, and plenty of anecdotal experience reports like what I just posted here, or someone going "I bought 3 asus boards and they all failed asus sucks". And motherboards often have dumb quirks like flawed BIOS updates or janky controller chips. Statistically speaking, it all evens out, so one should take anecdotal reports with a bucket of salt. And since none of the hardware that's relevant to the purpose of this forum was sold with the intent of it lasting 20+ years, one can't really form opinions of manufacturers based on its reliability if used today.

Except OCZ. We can probably all agree OCZ became objectively terrible before they went out.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-20, 01:51:

Lets be realistic here .. cap plague aside there were junky boards even back then just as there are now, my nostalgia glasses are not strong enough to let me forget that.

I and many others however dont have a hate boner over it.

Cap plague isn't even a big deal. Through hole solder new caps on. Takes 10 minutes. Fresh new board. I stopped sending cap plagued gaming boards to recycling a long while back and just redo the caps when I have time.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-20, 01:51:

smtkr wrote on 2022-09-20, 00:13:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-19, 11:10:

Radical has a hate boner for ASUS and carries on as if they are the only AIB that produced shit boards, truth is they all produced shit boards occasionally back in the day due to the capacitor plague which hit all board partners. Even now AIBs still produce shit boards but are smart enough to label them as budget boards and price them accordingly, thankfully we dont have a cap plague to deal with.

Actually its not just ASUS he has a hate boner for ...its pretty much any bit of retro gear he decides is peasant quality, how he comes up with his metrics is anyone's guess but I have yet to find any value in his posts.

Just ignore their hate boner posts nothing of use comes from them.

As someone who was really into computers in the day, none of this stuff was junk. We didn't find out about the capacitor plague until years later. Even that doesn't make the boards junk. It just means the capacitors are junk. There's a reason ASUS is still around today.

There were a ton more manufacturers back in the day and they were all trying to distinguish themselves. I was so much more excited about computers in that environment.

Lets be realistic here .. cap plague aside there were junky boards even back then just as there are now, my nostalgia glasses are not strong enough to let me forget that.

I and many others however dont have a hate boner over it.

What do you mean, S3 never made the Trio3D/2X.

libby wrote on 2022-09-20, 02:08:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-20, 01:51:

Lets be realistic here .. cap plague aside there were junky boards even back then just as there are now, my nostalgia glasses are not strong enough to let me forget that.

I and many others however dont have a hate boner over it.

Cap plague isn't even a big deal. Through hole solder new caps on. Takes 10 minutes. Fresh new board. I stopped sending cap plagued gaming boards to recycling a long while back and just redo the caps when I have time.

Its not a big deal to you or me who have the experience and tools to replace caps but to your average joe such boards are just e-waste or listed on eBay at unrealistic prices as used but untested. The original discussion wasn't really about the cap plague but rather Radical Visions hate boner for ASUS and any retro part he considers "peasant" quality and that curious posters should really just ignore his hate filled posts as nothing of value comes from them.

libby wrote on 2022-09-20, 02:03:

I've pulled 3 ASUS sabertooth X58s out of ewasted systems recently and all worked fine. I'm typing this on a sabertooth X79 whic […]
Show full quote

timsdf wrote on 2022-09-18, 19:50:

What's the problem with asus? Disregarding lowend boards on mainstream sockets (which are with all manufacturers questionable) I don't see any reason to call asus x58 boards bad like that. Specially with x58 gigabyte boards can be very unstable.

I've pulled 3 ASUS sabertooth X58s out of ewasted systems recently and all worked fine. I'm typing this on a sabertooth X79 which has been powered on 24/7 since 2016 and is also fine. My old gigabyte LGA1155 board before that was on 24/7 for 4 years and was fine, other than USB 3.0 ports not working if I applied the UEFI BIOS update. Whatever.

Generally speaking, every motherboard manufacturer has similar reliability over long term periods like 5 years, in the same way that hard disk manufacturers and product lines all roughly even out and none are "better" or "worse" overall. There's always going to be the odd dud like the IBM deathstars or seagate ST3000DM001 or whatever, and plenty of anecdotal experience reports like what I just posted here, or someone going "I bought 3 asus boards and they all failed asus sucks". And motherboards often have dumb quirks like flawed BIOS updates or janky controller chips. Statistically speaking, it all evens out, so one should take anecdotal reports with a bucket of salt. And since none of the hardware that's relevant to the purpose of this forum was sold with the intent of it lasting 20+ years, one can't really form opinions of manufacturers based on its reliability if used today.

Except OCZ. We can probably all agree OCZ became objectively terrible before they went out.

Yup OCZ got terrible before it quietly went to pasture and died by buy out, shame as their early Core2 era stuff was pretty fucking solid.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-20, 03:19:

Its not a big deal to you or me who have the experience and tools to replace caps but to your average joe such boards are just e-waste or listed on eBay at unrealistic prices as used but untested. The original discussion wasn't really about the cap plague but rather Radical Visions hate boner for ASUS and any retro part he considers "peasant" quality and that curious posters should really just ignore his hate filled posts as nothing of value comes from them.

ASUS was never "peasant quality" anyway. they always made good boards with plenty of features, good BIOS support, few significant flaws or issues. OEMs used them a lot for good reasons. most of their boards one could call "duds" were OEM boards like the A7V8X-X or P4S533-VM with budget chipsets and stripped out features.

this is not a hobby where there is room for elitism, it is best kept accessible and friendly for all and the more people are into it, the better.

smtkr wrote on 2022-09-20, 00:06:

stef80 wrote on 2022-09-19, 10:55:

Managed to get my hands on two "new old stock" Asus boards.

Tusl2 I bought from a friend who got 10 such boards from a guy who had computer parts business years ago. All of the boards had a pattern of 3 bad caps that needed to be replaced. P5A came from ebay.de. It's revision 1.04 ... so K6-3+ 400ATZ found new home 😁.

Nice find. I keep trying to decide if I want to buy one of these, or keep using a slotket/440BX.

Ah ... decisions decisions 😀.
I'm thinking of migrating my main slot-1 rig from 440BX to VIA Apollo Pro 133A (Asus P3 V4X). Some advantages:
* 133Mhz FSB
* up to 1GB memory module size supported .... unbelievable for SDRAM platform
* AGP 4x
* UltraATA 66
* 6 x PCI + 1 x ISA

It would be interesting to compare such platform with Intel i815 using same 133MHz FSB CPU. VIA drivers were not the greatest at the time, but that was fixed at some point.

Regarding TrashPanda's / Radical Visions lament, I'd still choose Asus for the time period over Abit / Epox / Soltek cap bulging horrors 😀.
BTW, this is Asus Tusl2-C ... unused/new from the box, after 20 years:

Friend bought 10 recently and they all have same pattern (3 caps, same location). I never knew caps could degrade so much without ever being used.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-20, 03:19:

The original discussion wasn't really about the cap plague but rather Radical Visions hate boner for ASUS and any retro part he considers "peasant" quality and that curious posters should really just ignore his hate filled posts as nothing of value comes from them.

I did not mean to derail from actual hardware conversation like this but was curious about the reasoning behind. One mans trash is others treasure I guess. Reliability isn't much about manufacturer but ie. caps used like KZG, KZJ these days.

timsdf wrote on 2022-09-20, 09:21:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-20, 03:19:

The original discussion wasn't really about the cap plague but rather Radical Visions hate boner for ASUS and any retro part he considers "peasant" quality and that curious posters should really just ignore his hate filled posts as nothing of value comes from them.

I did not mean to derail from actual hardware conversation like this but was curious about the reasoning behind. One mans trash is others treasure I guess. Reliability isn't much about manufacturer but ie. caps used like KZG, KZJ these days.

Back during the plague it was because of a bad electrolyte mixture used in the caps, the caps themselves were fine but the electrolyte used was wrong and it hit every capacitor maker on the market that used the electrolyte supplier(s).

Shame honestly as many perfectly good components got tossed because of it, but thankfully today many retro collectors have the skills required to fix the bad caps so even the bad boards can be saved.

I honestly have no idea why he has so much hate for ASUS but I suspect its because he is one of the few that got multiple bad boards from them .. for me I have had multiple bad Gigabyte boards one was especially annoying a X299 gaming 9 board went bad on me (A 1200 AUD board at the time) so I had it RMA'ed and well .. the replacement board died in the exact same manner a month after I got it. By that point I had had enough of Gigabytes terrible RMA support run around and simply replaced it with a ASUS Rampage VI Extreme OMEGA and the system has been rock solid since. (The OMEGA is an absolute unit of a motherboard)

Do I hate Gigabyte because of that .. nope but I wont be using their RMA support ever again, never had so much run around and bullshit trying to get a defective motherboard replaced before.

libby wrote on 2022-09-20, 06:54:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-20, 03:19:

Its not a big deal to you or me who have the experience and tools to replace caps but to your average joe such boards are just e-waste or listed on eBay at unrealistic prices as used but untested. The original discussion wasn't really about the cap plague but rather Radical Visions hate boner for ASUS and any retro part he considers "peasant" quality and that curious posters should really just ignore his hate filled posts as nothing of value comes from them.

ASUS was never "peasant quality" anyway. they always made good boards with plenty of features, good BIOS support, few significant flaws or issues. OEMs used them a lot for good reasons. most of their boards one could call "duds" were OEM boards like the A7V8X-X or P4S533-VM with budget chipsets and stripped out features.

this is not a hobby where there is room for elitism, it is best kept accessible and friendly for all and the more people are into it, the better.

I fully agree, even the "bottom of the barrel" retro parts have a use now when supply of working parts is limited and getting smaller, there is no room for brand snobbery in my view. (Though .. certain S3 cards do need to be recycled 😜)

If it works and does what you need it to and allows you to enjoy your retro rig then awesome, enjoy it for what it is !

HanSolo wrote on 2022-09-19, 11:24:

bestemor wrote on 2022-09-18, 11:29:

About those slot1 Intel Deschutes, just to clear things up - yes, it is not the stepping but date that governs multiplier lockin […]
Show full quote

About those slot1 Intel Deschutes, just to clear things up - yes, it is not the stepping but date that governs multiplier locking, that is correct.
BUT what was referenced here (S7 vs U7) is part of the sSpec number and is not related to any steppings.
And SL2U7 is a totally different model, with higher base speed 450mhz, vs the SL2S7 at 400mhz.
And none of those 450mhz ones, nomatter the date code, have unlocked multiplier.

Maybe you can explain it some more: I thought the sSpec-number also changes with a new stepping. So there might be different sSpec with same stepping but not different steppings with identical sSpec.

Well, I was here only trying to point out that we were talking about totally different CPU models, as in a 400mhz CPU vs a 450mhz one.
And my sentence about what was not related to any core steppings, was referring to the partial sSpec code, meaning the the 2 characters (U7 or S7) was not a stepping designation at all, but just a part of the sSpec code. Hope that explains it.

(and yes you are correct, 1 actual core stepping code can have many different sSpecs attached:
https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Pentium- ... 512E).html
dB0 (Q562, SL2U5, SL2U6, SL2X2, SL2YM, SL3EE) )

bestemor wrote on 2022-09-20, 10:25:

(and yes you are correct, 1 actual core stepping code can have many different sSpecs attached:
https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Pentium- ... 512E).html
dB0 (Q562, SL2U5, SL2U6, SL2X2, SL2YM, SL3EE) )

Makes sense, at least in context of P2 300s I'm interested in: