I believe it also depends on the BIOS?

At least when you use a Slot1>S370 adapter. I'm pretty sure I have a 1GHz 100FSB chip lying around somewhere...

IMI it's a nice OEM machine, I would just leave it as it is 😜

Deskpro? Ew. You can't even fit any worthy PCI video card in those such things. Forget about upgrading!

leileilol wrote:

Deskpro? Ew. You can't even fit any worthy PCI video card in those such things. Forget about upgrading!

If I remove the floppy drive, I can fit a Voodoo 2 PCI inside it!

It has the Rage Pro onboard, so shouldn't need anything else, maybe an AWE64 Gold.

SquallStrife wrote:

It has the Rage Pro onboard, so shouldn't need anything else

Try a Vesa SVGA dos game. you'll change your mind on that quickly as onboard rage variants really suck at those.

An FCPGA2-Slot1 adapter would get you support for up to a 1.4GHz Tualatin-based PIII (though not guaranteed to work properly), but from what I've seen with this particular generation of Slot 1 motherboards, they seem to top out at 800-850 MHz. Have you checked to see if there's any more additional jumpers for frequency multipliers perhaps?

And yes I've had some nasty issues in the past with both VGA and VESA SVGA DOS games with earlier ATI chips.

Many of those Compaq boards were made by Intel. Is your board a standard ATX format?

If it is Intel, there should be several sets of numbers printed on the pcb, often on the right side of the board. Google searches may reveal the model number.

Btw, 440BX officially never supported 133Mhz fsb, you'll need a VIA (preferably not a 693) or i815 (no ISA, usually) board. Or ofcourse one of those Slot 1 RDRAM boards! 😜

Definitely not ATX... it's a very compact, very non-standard shaped board.

I'll post some photos later on.

I found this board in my cupboard:

No AGP, no ISA, but the onboard sound does have BIOS options for SB Pro compatibility, and that includes a port for MPU-401 (obviously not intelligent though).

The onboard VGA is a Trident PLE-133T, which uses 1-8MB of system RAM.

What sorts of tests or benchies should I be running on this sucker?

Given there are no ISA slots, what'd be a good PCI substitute for an AWE64 Gold if I wanted to use a DB?

DB? I would say Vortex 2 would be a good option.

OK, I've booted it up, and it's a bit of a mixed bag.

Good:
- No drivers required. SET BLASTER and go.
- Nice sounding output. No "computer is thinking" noises.
- Drove MT-32 pretty nicely

Bad:
- No internal synth at all, OPL or GM. No DB header.
- Couldn't find a mixer anywhere on the Intertrons for DOS.
- Outputs on left speaker only, even with mono sounds (probably a hardware fault rather than an actual problem)

I installed an SB Live in the interim, till I get a Vortex 2 (thanks for the suggestion!), or a new mobo with an ISA slot for an AWE64.

Can SB Live drive an external synth in pure DOS? Despite my best efforts, all MIDI plays through the internal wavetable. I know I used this card with my MT-32 before, but that was under Windows XP.

May I also suggest getting a PCI Voodoo 3 card, instead of that POS Trident?
Vortex 2 is quite good, it offers nice DOS compatibility and DB, but it's FM synth is really bad.
AFAIK the Live! uses wavetable for FM and as you have witnessed it sucks at it.

Has anyone actually used a Vortex2 with a PLE133 board? Reason I ask is, the Vortex's SBPro emulation causes crashes and hard freezes on some Via boards, and I think the issue may have centered around the 686A/B southbridge.

SquallStrife wrote:

Can SB Live drive an external synth in pure DOS? Despite my best efforts, all MIDI plays through the internal wavetable. I know I used this card with my MT-32 before, but that was under Windows XP.

Under pure DOS I haven't been able to achieve that. But the Live! has pretty decent General Midi to begin with.

Still, ISA FTW when it comes to DOS and sound.

BTW I have a similar board. Supports tualatin and has also 3 PCI slots, but it's a bit wider than yours and has a single ISA slot as well.

F2bnp wrote:

May I also suggest getting a PCI Voodoo 3 card, instead of that POS Trident?
Vortex 2 is quite good, it offers nice DOS compatibility and DB, but it's FM synth is really bad.
AFAIK the Live! uses wavetable for FM and as you have witnessed it sucks at it.

Cheers for the tip, I'll see what I can rustle up. Very limited funds at the moment.

Ideally I'd like a Skt370 board with AGP and ISA, but finding one at a price I'm willing to pay is proving difficult. 😒

Hi-res photo of the mobo in this Compaq sucker:

Click for high res image, 5.7MB.

SquallStrife wrote:

I found this board in my cupboard: […]
Show full quote

I found this board in my cupboard:

No AGP, no ISA, but the onboard sound does have BIOS options for SB Pro compatibility, and that includes a port for MPU-401 (obviously not intelligent though).

The onboard VGA is a Trident PLE-133T, which uses 1-8MB of system RAM.

What sorts of tests or benchies should I be running on this sucker?

Given there are no ISA slots, what'd be a good PCI substitute for an AWE64 Gold if I wanted to use a DB?

Sorry about no AGP slot, but this board supports Tualatin! Nice!
http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-AOpen/MX36LE-UN.html

And I agree, a Voodoo 3+ PCI seems like a good option for your board. A shame that it's exactly those Voodoo's that seem to be somewhat expensive these days.
If you need an alternative, perhaps you should go for one of those PCI GF2MX's.

Not having much luck with this P3 rig...

The AOpen board is quite flaky after it's been powered up for 20 mins or so, eventually it will hard reset, and the display will be gone, even if you're using a PCI video card. Almost every cap on the board has bulged, which explains it I guess...

So anyway I picked up another board from a Facebook friend:

Currently fitted out thusly:

Pentium III 1000B CPU (133MHz FSB, 256KB L2)
256MB PC133 RAM
Radeon 9200SE 128MB AGP
Voodoo2 12MB PCI
Sound Blaster Live!
3Com 3C905 PCI NIC
30GB Seagate Barra HDD
MS-DOS 6.22
Windows 98SE

Any suggestions?

SquallStrife wrote:

leileilol wrote:

Deskpro? Ew. You can't even fit any worthy PCI video card in those such things. Forget about upgrading!

If I remove the floppy drive, I can fit a Voodoo 2 PCI inside it!

It has the Rage Pro onboard, so shouldn't need anything else, maybe an AWE64 Gold.

For PIII era games a Voodoo 3 or Riva TNT2 would be better.

SquallStrife wrote:

Hi-res photo of the mobo in this Compaq sucker: […]
Show full quote

Hi-res photo of the mobo in this Compaq sucker:

Click for high res image, 5.7MB.

You have the memory expansion slot for the Rage Pro. My Dell GX1 machines also have this but I only have one of the memory cards to go with it. If you're set on using the Rage Pro graphics to save a PCI slot then you should try to find the memory upgrade. I think the onboard has 4mb and the upgrade kicks it up to 8.