VOGONS


Reply 160 of 311, by atacama40

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inspiring project.....I have a bad feeling I'm about to enter the world of retro gaming.

Joking aside this is really interesting. I didn't navigate to this site because of the gaming side but have to confess to liking the old gaming area. We are a house of PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, Xbox and the whole nine yards....kids you understand not moi. But the older stuff like Wolfenstein or Elite I'd love to revisit.

I'm going to do the dual moded PIII's and expand the memory because I need some dull functions on a secondary machine. but I think I'm also going to take a good few nights reading this site and learn some stuff then look at the older gen games.

Hope you don't mind if I come back with more Q&A as I step through it. Many thanks again for your help....a guy in Korea about to benefit from it 😀

Reply 161 of 311, by Skyscraper

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Here on Vogons we are glad to help 😀

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 163 of 311, by atacama40

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Skyscrapper....just ordered the moded PIII's from your guy in Korea....have to say he is most helpful and indeed was happy to negotiate price. Whats not to like? 😀

He also pointed me the right way for some budget 1GB memory chips for the board as well. Will take a short while to arrive but very interested in the results.

Will post back on this thread.

Now off to try and get the board booting of the Si3112 add in card!!!! One small step for newbie kind....

Reply 166 of 311, by atacama40

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Evening all.

My modified 1.4 chips arrived from Korea a couple of days back and the modification looks exceptionally professional. Both work fine individually but I do still have a problem I'm hoping one of you may be able to help with.

The Asus CUV4X DLS appears all in good shape and has been running...well forever. But I never managed to get the dual processors working. Unfortunately the new ones just fitted mirror previous matched pairs. I think we can conclude all the chips are good and that I have the wrong settings.

I've spent a good while pouring over the manual and internet but with little real movement forward.

At the moment it is in 'jumper free' mode. It may well be that I need use the jumpers to effect the second chip?

When the machine boots up, the bios indicats CPU1 with a * and CPU2 has nothing alongside. If I add the second CPU it makes zero sounds and has zero screen display. You can hear some HDD spin up. Remove the 2nd chip and it boots just fine. This has been the case on and off for ages each time I have a crack at it.

Would be extremely grateful for any suggestions or solid settings from any of you who had (or maybe still have) a working dual configuration. As I say the board has worked without incident for years....just on the one CPU. Many thanks in advance for any help you can provide

Reply 167 of 311, by ODwilly

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Atacama40: It looks like you have the same motherboard as me, but with SCSI onboard (mine is the version without) My CUV4X has had a sequential serial number pair of 1ghz coppermines since new. Would my current jumper settings help you at all?

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 168 of 311, by atacama40

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Would it ever ODwilly .... yes would be hugely grateful for settings / jumpers / bios etc etc.....anything. I must have tried this a dozen times on and off and never got to the promised land.

I also has the SCSI working until only a couple of weeks back.....had an IBM 40gb drive...it was over an inch thick! Back in 98 probably quite something....now only functioning as a door stop.

In fact that is the other thing I'm going to try do. it has a SIL Sata 2 card in and I'm going to try get WIN XP to boot from the sata disk. Can you believe I had to buy a single Floppy disk to do the F6 thing with XP. How times move on. Many thanks to you

Reply 169 of 311, by ODwilly

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No problem! I am currently working on the machine right now so perfect timing! There are a lot of little tricks with this chipset/board. Using a SB Live! card will result in data corruption due to a flaw in the pci bus. If you use more than one hard drive they have to be more or less identical drives (two 40gb WD drives play nicely but mix a 40gb wd and a 40gb Maxtor it will drop a drive out of the bios and emit beeps) Once you get it all setup it truly is a fantastic motherboard.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 170 of 311, by ODwilly

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Ok, it looks like I have all the DIP switches set to the OFF position for the jumper-free setup so it did not even need to be manually set. I went ahead and looked over the rest of the jumpers and can not find anything else that would be a deciding factor in it recognizing a second processor. The only relevant information I can glean from the manual and experience with this board is that it is picky with running two CPU's. I have a pair of 800's from different batches that will not work together. If you can find a CPU from the same batch as one of your existing processors it should just drop in and work. http://www.balta.pl/katalog/file/cuv4xdls-103.pdf here is a link to the user manual, but I just cant find anything that would prevent it from recognizing the second cpu. Also make sure you have the latest bios! I will keep thinking about this and let you know if anything pops out

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 171 of 311, by atacama40

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ODwilly wrote:

No problem! I am currently working on the machine right now so perfect timing! There are a lot of little tricks with this chipset/board. Using a SB Live! card will result in data corruption due to a flaw in the pci bus. If you use more than one hard drive they have to be more or less identical drives (two 40gb WD drives play nicely but mix a 40gb wd and a 40gb Maxtor it will drop a drive out of the bios and emit beeps) Once you get it all setup it truly is a fantastic motherboard.

Well that's already an interesting as guess what, there is a SB Live card in it.....currently being removed. 😀

There is only one drive off the main board, it's a WD800 80gb which seems happy enough. In fairness I did also have a SCSI unit in it until recently and that seemed to play well with the WD.....now moved on to another place.

Mind you, removing the sata card to eliminate other distractions may be a good idea on the same basis as the SB Live.

Now I read a few places that a second adapter socket is needed to place the larger PIII's into. I have a couple of these but cannot imagine what difference they would make and appear to make no difference if fitted or not.....well to the single working CPU that is. The processors I bought were already modified to make that unnecessary I believe. Here is a link to the item: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/281238323137?_trksi … K%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

I'm certain the chips themselves are not the problem and well modified.

Bios wise I 'think' we have the latest. I don't have access to that this second although can do easily enough. Possible to cross check with yours please? I do remember (some years back) upgrading in prep for adding paired 1.0 CPU's....first failed attempt way back.

Thanks for the pointers already....all stuff I did not know about and all stuff to check and eliminate. Are all great solid leads. Many thanks again, look forward to hearing from you

Reply 172 of 311, by Skyscraper

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I did some quick searching and people have been able to run dual Tualatins 1400-S on this board. (with socket adapter, socket mod or CPU mods)

Check if the CPUs are of the same stepping. An other thought is that it could be a power issue. The PSU needs to have decent with amps on the 3.3V and 5V rails. Nothing extreme 25A on each of those rails should be plenty.

Yet another option is that the board is somehow faulty as you could not get dual Coppermines working. If the Coppermines are not of the same stepping that could be the issue with those aswell. I think some steppings of the Coppermine P3 dosnt even support SMP.

As a backup plan if nothing else helps. Turn the system into a fast Windows 9x gaming rig using a single P3 1400-S 😀 Your board can even overclock the Tualatin.

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 173 of 311, by atacama40

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Skyscraper wrote:
I did some quick searching and people have been able to run dual Tualatins 1400-S on this board. (with socket adapter, socket mo […]
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I did some quick searching and people have been able to run dual Tualatins 1400-S on this board. (with socket adapter, socket mod or CPU mods)

Check if the CPUs are of the same stepping. An other thought is that it could be a power issue. The PSU needs to have decent with amps on the 3.3V and 5V rails. Nothing extreme 25A on each of those rails should be plenty.

Yet another option is that the board is somehow faulty as you could not get dual Coppermines working. If the Coppermines are not of the same stepping that could be the issue with those aswell. I think some steppings of the Coppermine P3 dosnt even support SMP.

As a backup plan if nothing else helps. Turn the system into a fast Windows 9x gaming rig using a single P3 1400-S 😀 Your board can even overclock the Tualatin.

Hi Skyscraper.....yes I think it's the board. The Korean gentleman who sold the chips has been super on support today....it's definitely not the chips, as you say the 1.0 ones also didn't work.

He gave me a bios memory option to change which was set wrongly. But also gave me a test procedure to prove if socket 2 is working or not. It appears not to be working but he is coming back with some more suggestions as to that. Hopefully a fix can be made with not so much cost.

In fairness he's good as gold, the products he sold are clearly good and the commercial side has also been very good. And indeed he does have answers and good support. Anyone considering buying from him can be very confident.

Even though we don't have the final objective knocked yet, I'm more than happy with the suggestion, the product and service....it was always a risk to be the board. Also super support from you guys on Vogons. And I have a feeling we are still not exhausted in solutions yet....I think there maybe repair options...I hope so...the objective has become bigger than the target but what the hell...would still be nice to pull a result. Thanks again Skycraper.

Reply 174 of 311, by ODwilly

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Dang it sounds like you kind of got a lemon from the factory. Wish you the best of luck and hope you get your issues resolved! Good to hear more good feedback on the Korean seller. As Skyscraper says if nothing else you have a killer 98se system. On a side note the issue with the hard drives were only over the IDE channels as far as I know, being that I have the cut down version w/o scsi onboard. The gentleman who built the machine mentioned that it has the same issue even with using pci ide cards, so it sounds like an inherent issue with the pci bus (seeing as how the SB Live! has issues) A good replacement pci audio card would be a Aureol Vortex 2

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 175 of 311, by atacama40

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Thanks ODwilly....yes even though I don't have a solution yet, I made more progress in a week on Vogons and from our man in Korea than I did in the last 10 years! 😀 .... is at least refreshing to have had the option to try a few things. Now to see if a fix or repair on that second socket is a possibility. I suspect that is something I would have to find a specialist of some sort to look at. If anyone can suggest someone who does that sort of work at a reasonable price I'd be interested. Many thanks again ODwilly, will report back any progress and of course if anyone has pointers on the socket repair side of things that would be great.

Reply 176 of 311, by appleiiguy

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Well just got my P3TDDE mostly up and running, Still waiting on some ide drives so i stuck a CF card in it and ran some benchmarks.
Specs:
2x P3-s 1.4 Ghz
4 Gb ECC PC133 Ram
Radeon HD 2400 Pro
40/24/40 EIDE CD-Rom Drive

Coming Soon: 4x Maxtor 6L250R0 250GB (Will be in a Raid 0+1)

I have only been able to get it to 140 mhz FSB so far but it is fully stable. Ran windows memory diagnostic for 12 hours.

w8DmfBH.png

Reply 177 of 311, by feipoa

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Try running MemTest86+ v4.20 for 48 hours. With my P3TDDE, I discovered errors in the 20-48 hour range, especially with 4 GB. Maybe it is just my board, or maybe not?

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 178 of 311, by Skyscraper

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My dual Coppermine 1000 + Geforce2 Ultra "year 2000 build" pretty much instantly degraded/evolved into a dual Tualatin + Geforce3 Ti500 year 2001 build.

The Iwill DVD266 Apollo Pro 266 motherboard isn't really Tualatin capable and as far as I know no BIOS with support exists to get hacked Tualatin CPUs correctly recognized but I'm not sure it matters. Perhaps the BIOS for the Iwill DVD266u-RN Apollo Pro 266T could be crossflashed to the DVD266 but I don't think I will risk it as everything seems to work anyhow. I think the Pentium III-S 1.4 was released Jan 8 2002 but as I don't own any PIII-S 1266 CPUs I will have to cheat a little. This motherboard supports overclocking so running 1266 CPUs at 9.5x 147MHz = 1400MHz would be possible and also faster so I think using 1400 MHz CPUs running @stock is totally fair for this year 2001 system.

This is the motherboard I use (the picture is from the Ebay auction I won).

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Spec.

Iwill DVD266 VIA Apollo Pro 266
2x Tualatin Pentium III-S 1.4 (Korea mod)
2x1024MB DDR PC2100 CL2-2-2-5 1T
Geforce3 Ti500
Sound Blaster Live! !!!
Maxtor Diamondmax 10 200GB PATA drive (lets pretend it's a year 2001 SCSI RAID setup)
Random optical drive.

Some early not very optimized performance numbers:

Windows XP SP3 fully updated with firewall and stuff running.

SuperPi 1M: 1m 35s (Probably decent for VIA chipset Pentium III running @stock, i440BX is slightly faster but this is on pair with i815)

Everest 5.50.2253 Beta

Memory read: 1047 mb/s (Same as with Coppermine 1000)
Memory write: 1054 mb/s (Same as with Coppermine 1000)
Memory copy: 849 mb/s (For some reason slower than with the Coppermine 1000, 849 vs 920)
Memory latency: 96.0 ns (A little bit faster than the Coppermine 1000. 96.0 vs 98.0)

CPU Queen: 5427
CPU PhotoWorxx: 1739
CPU ZLib: 16508
CPU AES: 4431

FPU Julia: 686
FPU Mandel: 384
FPU SinJulia 654

Some 3D benchmarks with the Geforce3 Ti500 @stock (240/500) with the driver Forceware 71.89. This driver is probably a bit new for this card.

3dmark 2000: 9188
3dmark 2001: 7125

Stability so far has been flawless but I have not done any marathon stability or memory tests.

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 179 of 311, by feipoa

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The thread is alive!

I wonder how the Apollo Pro 266 compares to the 266T and the 133 when using Tualatin CPUs...

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.