there is one compelling reason for Slot1 BX boards: They are bloody cheap!
So aside from getting a very versatile retro machine, that will cover all of Win98, most of DOS, and all of 3dfx, you get it virtually for nothing.

I can agree with swaaye as far as IRQs are concerned, that is a nightmare, but iirc this nightmare is more win98 than BX related. I was unable to install a USB 2.0 card on my BX board and get it to work high speed (so far).

retro games 100 wrote:

Whichever way you look at building a retro PC, it's hard to cover all bases using one machine. I'm suggesting that an i440BX mobo can cover most options.

Yepper... Everybody is at different stages in their DOS geekness, but I've built and rebuilt so many old systems that I'm tired of it now. I sold off any old 486 or Pentium I had while they were still worth money and concentrated on those two PII/III systems I referenced earlier for late DOS and Win95 games. My modern E8400 WinXP system can handle everything else with DOSBox.

How did you overclock the Powerleap? Don't they have their own bus speed and multiplier independent of the motherboard?

Slotkets just tell the mobo what FSB the CPU is designed for. It's not really any different than a Slot 1 CPU in that you can just overclock past that default with mobo jumpers/BIOS settings.

If the Slotket doesn't tell the mobo what FSB to use, I think you'll have compatibility problems with mobos that expect this to be indicated by the CPU. The mobo probably will just not boot up.

This Slotket looks just like the one I had, which I got from a friend. It had a Celeron Tualatin 1200 installed.

Wait, my Asus board with a 440ZX chipset has jumpers for a 133/33 MHz configuration.
Why wouldn't 440BX chipsets be okay with a 133MHz FSB?

I ran my 600/133MHz coppermine at full speed and it seemed to boot fine before I moved on to other things.
What would stop me from running a full Tualatin in my board?

retro games 100 wrote:

It's worth noting that it takes a Coppermine Pentium 3 to smooth out the frame rates in some very demanding DOS games.

What games would fall under this category?

I always assumed that all games from the PIII times are W95 or W98?

I do remember that there was a SVGA version of System Shock for DOS, but does it really need a PIII? When it came out I believe a Pentium was the fastest machine you could buy...

And didn't 3D games from that era use 3D accelerators anyway?

Here are some old DOS games I would prefer to play on a slot 1 system, as opposed to a socket 7/P1, or a 486 -

Cybermage
Battlespire
Duke Nukem
Shadow Warrior
Redneck Rampage
Blood
Witch haven 2
Tek War
Armored Fist 2
Extreme Assault
Quake (high res)
System shock
Skynet
Descent 2
Tomb Raider
The 7th guest Edit: wrong, sorry. I was thinking of the DX3/Win95 version.

Edit 1: Terminal Velocity, Azrael's Tear (probably best on a P2)
Edit 2: Magic carpet 2 ?
Edit 3: Jane's Longbow AH64 games, F-22 Lightning II, Whiplash, Carmageddon

DOS based flight sims and racing games benefit from a good CPU. I found this list of flight sims here, and it's surprising how many DOS titles are listed after 1995.

Now I am very interested...

Tomb Raider ran fine on my Pentium 133 with a 3DFX Voodoo. And the 7th guest just needed a decent CD-Rom drive back in the day. I believe a 4x was ideal?

I admit most other games I haven't even heard off (it was the 3 years of uni where I did not touch a PC at all)...

I have bookmarked this list, as it will come in handy one day!

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

... the 7th guest just needed a decent CD-Rom drive back in the day. I believe a 4x was ideal?

Re 7th Guest - You are right. Sorry, I was thinking of the DX3/Win95 version.

TheLazy1 wrote:

Wait, my Asus board with a 440ZX chipset has jumpers for a 133/33 MHz configuration. Why wouldn't 440BX chipsets be okay with a […]
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Wait, my Asus board with a 440ZX chipset has jumpers for a 133/33 MHz configuration.
Why wouldn't 440BX chipsets be okay with a 133MHz FSB?

I ran my 600/133MHz coppermine at full speed and it seemed to boot fine before I moved on to other things.
What would stop me from running a full Tualatin in my board?

The BX chipset usually is very humble and does its job at 133 MHz as well. So does the PCI bus, which works at 33 MHz again. With a very good chance, all this will be fine. However, the AGP Slot is runnung 33% above specs. So are cards in there. The problem is usually not with the BX, but with the AGP card.

Jorpho wrote:

... Wouldn't you want a retro machine to go slower?

I've just thought of an additional benefit in having a retro mobo which is capable of running a reasonably fast processor. You can dual boot it with another operating system, making it more of an "all rounder". For example, I think you could get away with having Windows XP on a ~ 1.5 GHz machine.

It makes much more sense to me to run XP on a much faster machine, even if it means having a separate box.

But whatever fascination I might have once had for old hardware is long dead, which is why I was trying to divest myself of it in that other thread.

ux-3 wrote:

The BX chipset usually is very humble and does its job at 133 MHz as well. So does the PCI bus, which works at 33 MHz again. With a very good chance, all this will be fine. However, the AGP Slot is runnung 33% above specs. So are cards in there. The problem is usually not with the BX, but with the AGP card.

Oh, so it's overclocking the card by 33% or is it just the bus running 33% faster that the card cannot handle?
So, if that is the only drawback a full Tualatin P3 should work?

Jorpho wrote:

It makes much more sense to me to run XP on a much faster machine, even if it means having a separate box.

I completely agree with you!

[quopte]But whatever fascination I might have once had for old hardware is long dead, which is why I was trying to divest myself of it in that other thread.[/quote]

I can sympathize with you too. I am willing to maintain one retro machine to rule them all... But it shouldn't be too retro. So I forced myself to assemble just one machine to do 90+% of the old games that a new XP won't do right.

Ok, a working 486 fell on my feet and I couldn't drive it to the dump, but I'd give it away for a reasonable offer. I don't really use it.

Hello RG 100. Nice system. As a fellow Asus 440bx user, I thought I'd share what I know. Here is an excellent resource for anyone considering upgrading the CPU on a 440bx based board (albeit somewhat Asus specific):

http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheidegger/p2b_p … pgrade_faq.html

I am typing this on a P3b-f with an Asus ASUS S370-133 slocket and Tualatin pentium 1.4Ghz 512kb cache (SL6BY is the best Tualatin, and is readily and cheaply available on ebay), overclocked to 1.47, running XP. I was unable to acquire a powerleap slocket, at least not at a price I was comfortable with, so looked to alternatives. I previously ran a coppermine 1Ghz, but much prefer my system as it is now.

Unlike some of the powerleap adaptors, the Asus S370 slockets (and at least one revision of the MSI MS6905) do not have voltage regulation, but where your board has the right chip (see link above) to regulate voltage down to the low levels needed by the Tualatin CPU's, these slockets work. AFAIK, some P3b-f rev 1.03 boards (as per the one I am using) fall into this category, as do all rev 1.04 boards. You also need to flash the bios with a modified one that is readily available over the net.

It is easy to get the impression that either the slockets I have mentioned, or the CPU needs modding when running a Tualatin on a 440bx board, but I do not believe that is essential providing you have a board with the appropriate revision/chip. AFAIK, my current S370-133 slocket and Tualatin CPU remain untampered. I will be able to provide more definite advice on this topic in a few days time, as I build a different 440bx based system.

Moving away from slockets, a little known but highly important fact with Asus P2/3b boards, as mentioned by ux-3 earlier, is that when the FSB is overclocked to 133mhz, the PCI clock gets divided down to 33mhz, instead of the 44mhz that you would expect. That is to say, when the FSB is overclocked to 133mhz, the PCI clock runs at the default factory frequency. Thus, the only hurdle left is choosing an AGP card that runs comfortably at 89mhz. I believe that higher spec Nvidia Gefore 4 and 5 series cards are safe choices. This article provides more details and covers earlier cards that work and do not work in this application:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/574

@buckrogers, swaaye: awesome information, thanks very much! 😀

Introduction
I've done some more testing. This time I've used 3DMark 2000, and also incorporated benchmarking from an over clocked Geforce3 Ti200 card. I've also included some "real" benchmarking screen shots showing information about the over clocked Pentium 3 CPUs.

Testing information
The following table shows the new test results. Please be aware of the footnotes below this table. They explain the meaning of the values in the table.

Chart information
The following chart shows the results from the 3DMark 2000 benchmarking table.

Screen shots
The first screen shot shows information about the over clocked Coppermine (124 FSB, 1239 MHz), and the second screen shot shows information about the over clocked Celeron (120 FSB, 1679 MHz). I used Sandra 2002 Pro.

Over clocked Celeron (120 FSB, 1679 MHz)

Over clocking a Celeron 1200
I have successfully over clocked the mobo to 133 FSB, running a Celeron 1200 GHz (100 -> 133 FSB, 1200 -> 1595 MHz) processor, CPU code SL68P. I set the Powerleap's voltage jumpers to 1.65/1.675, and the system worked flawlessly first time. This is very good news, because it means that the mobo's PCI bus is running at its default setting of 33 MHz, as mentioned above by @buckrogers.

I reran 3DMark 2000, and I got a score of 8597. This is really interesting, because the over clocked Celeron 1.4 GHz CPU (100 -> 120 FSB / 1400 -> 1679 MHz) could only manage a score of 8429. I then over clocked the Geforce3 card, and reran 3DMark 2000. I got a score of 9507. This beats the over clocked Celeron 1.4 GHz with the over clocked GF3 card, which only managed 9184. So, it looks like the Celeron 1200 (100 FSB) is the champ, because of its over clocking versatility.

The following screen shot shows information about the over clocked Celeron (100 -> 133 FSB, 1200 -> 1595 MHz). I used Sandra 2002 Pro.

I decided to push the over clocking to the limit, and adjust the FSB from 100 to 140. Incredibly, the mobo running the Celeron 1.2 GHz CPU was able to get to the desktop, and allow me to run Sandra 2002 Pro. I took a screen shot of it running its tests at 1679 MHz! However, this successful test was overshadowed by the fact that running 3DMark 2000 resulted in failure. When I launched this benchmarking app, I got a BSOD.

I decided to increase the Powerleap's voltage jumpers by one notch, from 1.650/1.675V, to 1.700/1.725V. (The default voltage for this 1.2 GHz processor is just 1.5V). I rebooted, and was able to run 3DMark 2000. However, after a few of its tests, it quit back to the desktop. I guess a 100 -> 140 FSB / 1200 -> 1679 MHz over clock is just too outrageous. However, it's good to know that it nearly worked, because it makes the 100 -> 133 FSB over clock test seem good and stable, which it appeared to be.

Nice one RG! Now, when are you going to try a SL6BY? While it MAY not be the best option for maxing out the overclocking capabilities of your mobo (although 1547Ghz stable is not too shabby), its 512kb cache allegedly makes it superior to its predecessors. So much so that in a dual CPU capable board, some prefer one SL6BY to dual 1Ghz coppermines. I also read a comment that the SL6BY is better than any P4 up to about 2.6Ghz (it was on the internet so it must be true).

I am unsure as to the extent that the SL6BY is deserving of such praise. Perhaps it was built to a very high standard in smaller quantities than the early P4s that succeeded it?

SL6BY is a type S server type cpu with more cache as you mentioned. It is also the last and top PIII ever made.

I got 2 chips here, but haven't got a slotkey that supports tualatin.

It also supports dual cpu and there are mainboard than can run two 1.4 GHz PIIIs.

There are also PIII boards that support DDRAM and have newer chipset )Intel 815 and VIA VIA Apollo Pro266)

Here is a review of a dual CPU PIII board: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/d … l-dvd266-r.html

Such a machine should be able to Run Windows 7 quite well.