A P3 with 128 is way overpowered for MS-DOS games IMO.

The 1mb Board has the exact same model number as the 2mb board as far as I can tell.
Same stickers and all, they were both new in box they just sat around for a decade and a half 🤣 i just recently acquired them from a thrift store.
They were both in a White boxes , that were completely sealed with wrap, the static bags with the boards inside were also untouched sticker intact sealing them too.
The 1mb board failed while I was doing a 3dmark 2000 benchmark in windows 98se, it just turned off in the middle of the High detail Helicopter test, and refuses to ever turn on again. No beeps no errors, and one Pen-tip sized hole through the top chip near the Coil that is under the agp slot, where it says NBCLK 2 on the mobo.
Both boards are labeled
2.0 E-O036
Under the northbridge.

I checked the chips (both of them) and afaict they read:
842
MDS
9435A

and

51031
9842S

Google revealed nothing, which either means there isn't anything about them or (more likely) I misread their part numbers as the fonts are very hard to read.

Btw, I'm not sure how I know my board is the 1MB version. I originally bought a 2MB version and must've powered it on at one point.

Tetrium wrote:

I checked the chips (both of them) and afaict they read: 842 MDS 9435A […]
Show full quote

I checked the chips (both of them) and afaict they read:
842
MDS
9435A

and

51031
9842S

Google revealed nothing, which either means there isn't anything about them or (more likely) I misread their part numbers as the fonts are very hard to read.

Btw, I'm not sure how I know my board is the 1MB version. I originally bought a 2MB version and must've powered it on at one point.

Those 2 chips yea I can't make out the first one due to the hole but the 2nd one is labeled the same, i'm just gonna write the 1mb board off and use the 2mb board with no AGP card no sense in risking it. It is completely unstable anyway when rendering 3d with any AGP card i stick in it anyway 🙁

The 1mb board uses bulky cache chips, the 2mb board looks like the board, that Brostenen posted with the smaller chips.

AlphaWing wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

I checked the chips (both of them) and afaict they read: 842 MDS 9435A […]
Show full quote

I checked the chips (both of them) and afaict they read:
842
MDS
9435A

and

51031
9842S

Google revealed nothing, which either means there isn't anything about them or (more likely) I misread their part numbers as the fonts are very hard to read.

Btw, I'm not sure how I know my board is the 1MB version. I originally bought a 2MB version and must've powered it on at one point.

Those 2 chips yea I can't make out the first one due to the hole but the 2nd one is labeled the same, i'm just gonna write the 1mb board off and use the 2mb board with no AGP card no sense in risking it. It is completely unstable anyway when rendering 3d with any AGP card i stick in it anyway 🙁

The 1mb board uses bulky cache chips, the 2mb board looks like the board, that Brostenen posted with the smaller chips.

I have just looked up the part number of the 4 cache chips, they are made by Winbond and appear to be 256KB, so 1MB in total as I remembered.
Not really a problem since I didn't overpay for the board anyway and I think it works, which is more important to me anyway.

I have no idea what the 2 little chips are. Perhaps you could desolder (or perhaps even cut?) the molten chip and power it on while leaving the AGP slot empty? I mean the board is dead anyway, perhaps it's shorting in the molten chip.

Tetrium wrote:

About the AGP slots, I think you're confused, there is a 1x/2x slot and a 4x slot. The 4x slot doesn't have a notch in it while the 1x/2x slot does. The 8x slot btw also has a notch but in a different position.
The FIX PA-2013 is different from the GA-5AX as the latter doesn't even use a VIA chipset, it uses an Ali instead.

Ohhh.... Now I know what it is. Googled a bit.
By AGPx1, I meant the first version. AGP version 1, not AGP-Speed. My mistake.
Anyway. I wrote it wrong, yet remembered correct about the voltage.
Even my spare P4 has it written, that using 3.3 volt agp cards will damage the board.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Grap … s_Port#Versions

Tetrium wrote:

AlphaWing wrote:

I have just looked up the part number of the 4 cache chips, they are made by Winbond and appear to be 256KB, so 1MB in total as […]
Show full quote

Tetrium wrote:

The 1mb board uses bulky cache chips, the 2mb board looks like the board, that Brostenen posted with the smaller chips.

I have just looked up the part number of the 4 cache chips, they are made by Winbond and appear to be 256KB, so 1MB in total as I remembered.
Not really a problem since I didn't overpay for the board anyway and I think it works, which is more important to me anyway.

I have no idea what the 2 little chips are. Perhaps you could desolder (or perhaps even cut?) the molten chip and power it on while leaving the AGP slot empty? I mean the board is dead anyway, perhaps it's shorting in the molten chip.

Chip popped off easy. Not posting still tho.
Must be some part of its boot up sequence whatever those 2 chips do.
Sad to see these boards go.

IT is so hard to find old parts anymore.
To the point I've given up trying to restore my 486.
The slowest machine I still have working 🙁 is a Pentium 120.

Many spare parts are easily available through http://www.ebay.com / http://www.amazon.com and places like http://www.codemicro.com / http://www.acsoutlet.com and so on. 😀

There are also many desktops / towers / MOBOs and everything else from 8086 through today that are available 24/7/365. I do not really understand it when people say: "hard to come by".

brostenen wrote:

Ohhh.... Now I know what it is. Googled a bit. By AGPx1, I meant the first version. AGP version 1, not AGP-Speed. My mistake. An […]
Show full quote

Ohhh.... Now I know what it is. Googled a bit.
By AGPx1, I meant the first version. AGP version 1, not AGP-Speed. My mistake.
Anyway. I wrote it wrong, yet remembered correct about the voltage.
Even my spare P4 has it written, that using 3.3 volt agp cards will damage the board.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Grap … s_Port#Versions

Normally from, my experience its impossible to Plug a 4x or 8x agp card into a 1x\2x slot if the card doesn't support 2x voltage.
They are keyed differently to prevent it unless the manufacturer of the mobo or card wanted to cut corners.

PeterLI wrote:

Many spare parts are easily available through http://www.ebay.com / http://www.amazon.com and places like http://www.codemicro.com / http://www.acsoutlet.com and so on. 😀

There are also many desktops / towers / MOBOs and everything else from 8086 through today that are available 24/7/365. I do not really understand it when people say: "hard to come by".

Ebay is pay n pray :d but I have got some stuff off it.
You see I'm used to getting used\old parts at computer tradeshows, Hamfests etc.
But those same shows have started vanishing in recent years.

AlphaWing wrote:

Normally from, my experience its impossible to Plug a 4x or 8x agp card into a 1x\2x slot if the card doesn't support 2x voltage.
They are keyed differently to prevent it unless the manufacturer of the mobo or card wanted to cut corners.

Didn't you just try a ATI-9800 agp in you'r board?

brostenen wrote:

AlphaWing wrote:

Normally from, my experience its impossible to Plug a 4x or 8x agp card into a 1x\2x slot if the card doesn't support 2x voltage.
They are keyed differently to prevent it unless the manufacturer of the mobo or card wanted to cut corners.

Didn't you just try a ATI-9800 agp in you'r board?

Yea its a 2x\4x card. Gets its power off 12v Molex connector, was hoping it would be stable on the 2mb board because of that, but it is just as unstable as anything else I plug into the 2mb boards AGP slot.

I find online shopping extremely convenient: I click and it arrives at my door a few days / weeks later. 😀

PeterLI wrote:

I find online shopping extremely convenient: I click and it arrives at my door a few days / weeks later. 😀

Yep, if its intact or not is another story, and then hassles of returning items, not to mention having to be home when said items are delivered. If not home more then likely, they won't be there a few hours later after delivery (sad, but true where I live). So I really don't order of the web much unless I really need something.
Then there's discovering the items in a pile of junk for cheap 😎. That feeling you get when you do is always great.

If your interested Brostenen, here's a picture of the 2mb board I have that still works.

Theres a Geforce 2 MX plugged into the PCI slot. Which will be replaced soon.
A compaq branded Intel PCI 10/100 nic and a ISA Awe64 Value which with this board, actually passes the Speaker input at POST to the sound card which is very nice don't have that cable plugged in at the moment tho, usually have to make your own out of a 4-pin CDROM cable an some 2-pin cable spliced together.

1 generic MT doubled sided 256mb PC133 Sdram stick in dimm slot 2, since dimm slot 1 is so close to the atx power input the ram actually touches it.
Nothing really special. Its solid and stable with the PCI Geforce 2 MX.
With the last beta bios you can use drives up to 128gb over the ide ports, if your wondering, anything over that and you need a software overlay.

AlphaWing:

That is some nice setup you get there. Extra fan's and such. 😜
If I may suggest something, then it would be an even more cool setup, if cables were managed as fine as possible.
On the other hand, it is indeed nice to see build's were cables are not tossed in like crap. 😀

It is great to know that this mobo is rock solid on just pci and isa.
Thanks for the picture and peep inside the machine.

Why it blew, I can honestly not say. The only reason I can come up with.
Is still that the board might have tried to feed the agp card's at a higher voltage than it could handle.

For the harddrive, then I will be using an 16 gigabyte harddrive and pure dos.
No need to use 120 gig harddrives (the fat16 2048 megabyte, you know!! 😉 )

You could use the unofficial Dos 7.1 and have fat32 with a large drive.
No windows and its still dos with large drive support.

As for the cables I plan to get more rounded ones when I can.
The case is one of those silver aluminum cases with a window on the side, there's actually another exhaust fan on the window.

I'm just glad I got two of these boards when I did and one actually works OK.
So much of this stuff is being recycled, even the few tradeshows and hamfests left, are not immune to the recycler vultures posing as vendors. Who buy up every low priced older electronic thing, before the show even officially opens.

Sad about the vultures and recyclers. Sad indeed. Here in Denmark, we do not see much of that.
Shure all the stuff is being recycled, even the working parts.
Here in Denmark, the broad "audience" is into new stuff. More and more are getting tablet's/iPad's.
And when some new stuff is bought, the old and still working are automatically recycled.
Not bad for the environment (in some way), only sad that working stuff are being lost.
It is all being recycled through the official recycling stations, not goldscrappers and such.

I must confess that I am a sort of goldscrapper. Well... I scrap the defect and non salvageable parts for gold.
And one day, when the jar is full, I am going to recycle all that gold into an goldring for my girl.
Seems like an apropriate way of dealing with non salvageable defect parts, like bad memmorychips and dead cpu's.
The worst part of all, is that all the Pentium PRO chips, and all other cheramic cpu's are getting REALLY rare.

On the other hand.....
Goldscrappers make our hobby even more interresting, as we are taking up soldering skills and such.
We are learning to repair our old stuff, and we are taking up the challenge of locating hard to get hardware.

I am still looking forward to fire up my old Gravis Ultrasound ACE card, combined with a SoundBlaster card.
Yes...
I have one of those GUS-ACE, complete in working order, and complete with all manuals, software and package.

My GUS-ACE (Love it dearly)

Thats great, those gus's are super rare.
I don't think they were to common in the US, atleast in my area, as I have never seen one for sale ever.
And you even kept the box, that's just excellent.

I'm using a SBPRO2 CT1600 In my main slower dos system, which is a Cyrix PR 200 on of those Common PC-Chip ali rebranded topgun mobo boards + PCI voodoo banshee, and a SBLIVE! for windows use with a generic ISA nic.
Was actually the first system I built completely from scratch as a kid, tho it did have a different case back then and no live! and started its life with a S3 Virge 🤣 .