>>What video card are you using?

I'm using an ATI Rage Pro, with 8mb RAM. I think its "core" is Mach64? There's a sticker slapped on it's back which says May 99.

I hope you don't mind me briefly changing the subject, but I thought I'd crank up the CPU power by swapping out the P166 mmx for a P200 mmx. This 200 mxx looks different to the 166 mmx. This 200 cpu has a silver raised "heatsink thing" on it. It also looks different in as much as it's kind of "sexier" looking - a deeper black colour, rather than the duller light brown colour of the 166 cpu. Well, to get to the point, it doesn't seem to work. I've altered the mobo's jumpers to accommodate the faster cpu speed, but when I try and use the PC, it seems extremely unstable. Any ideas please? Thanks a lot! 😀

Rage Pro will probably work fine cuz it's probably from the same year as that mobo. It also doesn't use much power.

As for the PMMX, that's just a different packaging. Called PPGA. Plastic pin grid array.
http://sandpile.org/impl/p55.htm

Don't know why it would be unstable unless the CPU is defective or remarked (fake).

retro games 100 wrote:

Well, to get to the point, it doesn't seem to work. I've altered the mobo's jumpers to accommodate the faster cpu speed, but when I try and use the PC, it seems extremely unstable. Any ideas please? Thanks a lot! 😀

Say... are you testing without heatsink again? 😉

Amigaz wrote:

I have an 8gig hdd and a 20gig hdd inside this machine.
I tried to install both win95 and win98 to be able to dual boot but I couldn't install any of the above if one of them was already installed since they are some weird OEM versions...

Try not to Dual Boot. Make different partitions for each OS or install each OS to a different drive. Before doing any of these, just make sure to hide a partition after installing an OS. Then install another OS on a different partition or drive.

You can also pull out one of the hard drives' power supply so that the Os you're gonna install can't "see" the other drive.

After installing the other OS, you can unhide the partition or connect back the power supply.

To select an OS, if you've installed into a different partition, use any partition programs like fdisk, to set the respective partition active. To select an OS in a different drive, go to BIOS and select to boot from that drive.

I hope you get what I mean, if you're not confused already! 😁

@swaaye (Don't know why it would be unstable unless the CPU is defective or remarked - fake)
@5u3 (Say... are you testing without heatsink again?)

This is interesting - an SPGA-based P166MMX works great. A same-speed PPGA-based P166MMX causes almost immediate and major instability. I don't think it's a heat issue. I googled for their 5 digit "CPU ID codes", and cpu-world tells me that their (dual) voltage requirements are the same. (I guess this could be an error, but for now I will assume that this information is correct.)

Perhaps my board's BIOS needs to be given different settings for the PPGA MMX CPU? Or perhaps the voltage information from the cpu-world website is incorrect? Or perhaps my mobo doesn't like the more modern PPGA CPUs?

SPGA CPU ID = SL27K (works)
PPGA CPU ID = SY059 (fails)

Edit: I tried two PPGA CPUs, 166 and 200mhz. Both fail.

Oh dear. 🙁 I think I've killed the mainboard. 😢

I removed the working dual voltage P166 CPU, and replaced it with a P100 CPU, which I believe is single voltage. Its 5 digit ID code is SY007, and I believe it's a 3.3V chip. The printed mobo manual advises me to change the voltage configuration jumper, and so I set it to 3.3V (for this SY007 CPU), although the manual also says that single voltage Pentiums require 3.5V. Unfortunately, the manual's jumper diagrams all contain information regarding where "pin 1" is, despite this information not appearing on the mobo itself. This is extremely confusing. I expect what I have done is set the voltage jumpers the wrong way around.

I switched on power, and within a few seconds I smelt an awful burning smell. I switched off power, and tested every component from this Chaintech mobo on a different mobo, to see how much damage I had caused. Luckily, all components worked. Therefore, I think I have only destroyed the Chaintech board, and probably the P100 CPU.

Incidentally, I removed the P100 from the Chaintech mobo, replaced it with the working P166 and reset the mobo's jumpers to a configuration I knew worked, and powered on the mobo, but it won't POST.

Edit: The P100 CPU is OK, I just tested it in another mobo.

I love the smell of burning hardware in the morning.

I believe that all electronics run on this mysterious substance I'll refer to as "Blue Smoke". Therefore, if by chance you let the Blue Smoke out, things won't run anymore.

I am testing a board which both Malik and I bought from BlackmoreIT, the MS-5169. First impressions are good, as it looks more modern than the Chaintech mobo I accidentally finished off. Unlike the CT which only had a chunky keyboard port, this one's got all of the typical keyboard/mouse/usb/com/printer stuff on the back. After switching on for the first time, I go in to the BIOS area and immediately notice that the general onscreen image quality is inferior to that of the CT's, despite using the same AGP Rage graphics card! Strange. So I swap out the current 350W PSU, and replace it with one that I was using when I tested the CT, that being a Corsair 520W PSU. May be I was tired (and confused), but it seemed to improve things a bit.

To cut a potentially tedious account of events short, the board's up an running with no problems so far, although (like the CT), I've hardly tested it at all.

@Malik, how are you getting on with this board? Like it? Any problems? Anything you don't like about it?

I tried out a handful of games. Dark Forces looked particularly good. Spinning quickly around in a circle, the frame rate was fast and smooth. Skynet in hi-res mode seemed to show up some minor graphical glitches. Speedsys gave me an almost identical score to the CT - about 126.

Before you fall asleep reading this, 2 other things - the voltage for the CPU I/O is 3.45, unlike the CT's 3.3 setting. I don't know whether this affects CPU temperature, but the P166MMX (without a heatsink but with a case fan) was much hotter than when used on the CT mobo.

retro games 100 wrote:

@Malik, how are you getting on with this board? Like it? Any problems? Anything you don't like about it?

So far so good. No problems. I've flashed to the latest BIOS available for the board from MSI's website. I've also downloaded the manual from MSI's website and have set the cpu settings as per the table shown for the Pentium 200MMX.

I have placed my PIII's heatsink/fan combo on it. Fits well.

The LAPC-I works fine. Voodoo graphics is also fine running Quake I in Windows 95. Windows 95's GUI speed is good. Using S3 Virge.

One thing I don't like is that, once I've set the preference to initialize AGP first, and when there's no AGP card, the bios won't auto-detect the available PCI and boot from it. So, I had to install an AGP card to set the starting graphics to PCI.

Amigaz wrote:

I have a brand new OEM NT4 sp3 here...can I dual boot Win98SE and NT4?

I would think so. Certainly you can multi-boot NT4 with Windows 95, DOS and linux, and recently I installed Windows 2000 on a machine that had all these and it just got added to the boot menu.

Malik wrote:

I have placed my PIII's heatsink/fan combo on it. Fits well.

Hehe, maybe I ought to do that. 😉

swaaye wrote:

Super 7 mobos suck and most of the suckage emanates from the AGP slot. That's about all that needs to be said.

This is absolutely true. I had incredible problems with the old Chaintech 5AGM2 and Geforce 2 MX400. It woulndt even load up drivers right, let alone run D3D. Worked fine with 3dfx Voodoo 3 Velocity 100 though.

There are two pieces of hardware I ever really hated: My old Pentium 90 Mhz and this crappy CH 5AGM2. The Super7 MB I have now (Asus P5A) is way better - but its based on ALi and not on buggy and hateful VIA MVP3 chipset.

Man... When I remember that George's memory optimizer for MVP3 I still get creeps and nightmares. Yuck! 😵

In the end my friend, you are better off without that MB! The fact u fried it can only be a blessing!

elfuego wrote:

swaaye wrote:

Super 7 mobos suck and most of the suckage emanates from the AGP slot. That's about all that needs to be said.

In the end my friend, you are better off without that MB! The fact u fried it can only be a blessing!

Hehe!! Given the burning smell when I switched on the power, I think the word "fried" is appropriate. 😉