The first home-built PC in my family was back when our 386 died, and we decided to try using our old components to home build a 486. We made the mistake of just looking for the cheapest motherboard that was compatible with most of our components. We didn't know anything about what the good brands were. Of course we ended up with a PCChips 486 - but even that wasn't obvious because the board and manual didn't even have a brand name marked on them anywhere. The only clue was a PCChips sticker on the chipset - but that was just a sticker.
It looks like the same board that is featured in a redhill article, except ours had the cache chips in sockets. To this day I don't know whether they were real.
It was always unstable. I could play *some* DOS games on it, but others would crash every few minutes. Windows was okay at 640x480 with 16 colors, but using more color would make it crash. I played with every jumper and BIOS setting but I didn't really know what I was doing back then.
The problem wasn't solved until we upgraded to an M-Tech brand Cyrix 6x86 board, this time one that was endorsed and recommended on the Cyrix web site.
Years later, I let my nephew have fun using a soldering iron to destroy that 486 board. I kind of regret that, I wish I could get it out again now.

Malvineous wrote:

That's interesting - I picked up an M748-MR ("Xcel 2000") cheap off eBay a couple of years ago as I wanted a reflashable BIOS chip and the board was cheaper than the chip.

I had no idea they were so unreliable, but I did wonder as I remember in the 90s anyone who had one of those hybrid AT/ATX boards was always having problems.

I wonder how many problems on these type of boards (cheaper hybrid AT/ATX boards) might be associated with the user's choice of power supply.
The ATX connector provides a 3.3v rail, but AT does not. The RAM, chipset, AGP slot, CPU, and probably a bunch of smaller components on this era of boards need 3.3v. To generate 3.3v from an AT power supply, an onboard regulator has to be included. It's likely that the regulator could be subpar. I wonder whether people using an ATX supply (one of good quality) would have fewer problems with these boards.
This is assuming the boards are actually wired to use the ATX 3.3v rail directly when present.

There was one hybrid AT/ATX board that I've looked at in detail. It was a Tyan S1590. On that board, it is wired to make direct use of the ATX 3.3v rail if present, but otherwise it uses an onboard 5V->3.3v regulator with 7A output capacity. It uses the 5V input - I don't know how standard that is, maybe some boards use the 12v input instead.
I wonder if the 3.3v regulator circuit on these cheaper boards doesn't provide enough amps to be reliable.

shamino wrote:

Malvineous wrote:

I had no idea they were so unreliable, but I did wonder as I remember in the 90s anyone who had one of those hybrid AT/ATX boards was always having problems.

I wonder how many problems on these type of boards (cheaper hybrid AT/ATX boards) might be associated with the user's choice of power supply.

I was thinking the same thing. If you were the sort of person to save a few bucks and buy one of these motherboards (by choice or by financial limits), chances are the rest of the system would use budget components as well so it could be any number of things contributing to the problems.

shamino wrote:

5V->3.3v regulator with 7A output capacity. It uses the 5V input - I don't know how standard that is, maybe some boards use the 12v input instead.

Probably not, because such regulators are usually of linear type. So, voltage drop from 12v to 5v with 7amp current would cause power loss of 49 watts. That would end up with explosion of regulator. With 5v input maximum loss is 11,9 watts.
Switching regulators could take 12v without any problems, but I think that in 1998 they were too expensive and avoided when possible (they were used only with VRMs).

This motherboard tooks us into the internet era as our cyrix 5x86-100 wasn't up to the task, the motherboard was bundled in the cheapest desktop package i'd ever seen with celeron 333/3.2gig hard disk & 32meg of ram, the ram was immediately upgraded to 64meg.

I thought the integrated SIS6326 wasn't that bad considering it was a budget onboard solution, I remember comparing software mode to direct3d in Half life for no performance penalty running at 512x384 it was playable, I dont remember having many issues with the machine as a whole but for the price at the time it seemed like a bargain.

Skyscraper wrote:

You diddnt happen save the "ATX form factor card" with USB and PS/2 ports or the audio bracket? I only have one of each but at least 4 differnt PC-Chips boards that can use them.

What does this look like?
If I pulled mine out of a system myself then chances are good I still have it in one of my bags/boxes of cables 🤣

Tetrium wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

You diddnt happen save the "ATX form factor card" with USB and PS/2 ports or the audio bracket? I only have one of each but at least 4 differnt PC-Chips boards that can use them.

What does this look like?
If I pulled mine out of a system myself then chances are good I still have it in one of my bags/boxes of cables 🤣

They look like this!

The "ATX form factor card".

The audio bracket.

You who think most of these boards bad reputation is mostly because of old bad AT power supplies dating back to the late 80s do have a point, I have only used these boards with old half dead 150 - 200W AT PSUs. On the other hand the same half dead AT PSUs do manage to power for example a K6-3 @500, a K6-3+ @600 or even single CPU Pentium Pro systems. My experience with these boards when using CPUs with 66 MHz FSB isnt that bad but the 100 MHz FSB always seemed really glitchy, especially in combination with 3d graphics.

These are the BIOS releases and bug fixes for the PC Chips M729, it explains alot of the issues.
Finding these BIOS updates wasnt trival back at the turn of the millennium.

______________________________________________________________________

NEW RELEASE

FILE NAME : 0527S.ROM

CHECKSUN : 6895 H

FIX BUG : FIRST FINAL

NEW RELEASE

FILE NAME : 0622S.ROM

CHECKSUN : 6694 H

FIX BUG : Fix Win98 can't install AGP Driver

NEW RELEASE

FILE NAME : 0718S.ROM

CHECKSUN : 1170 H

FIX BUG : Support 100 Mhz Host Clock CPU

NEW RELEASE

FILE NAME : 0805S.ROM

CHECKSUN : DEE7 H

FIX BUG : Add Chipaway Virus

Fix Pri. & Sec. Slave Can't Boot From Winnt 4.0 Server

NEW RELEASE

FILE NAME : 0921S.ROM

CHECKSUN : 6E74 H

FIX BUG : Fix 3 Dimm Full loading Can't Bootup

NEW RELEASE

FILE NAME : 1013S.ROM

CHECKSUN : B44D H

FIX BUG : Fix Use ATAPI Zip Can't Find CDROM

Fix BIOS Setup Non Save After Restart Hung Up In D3 or D4

NEW RELEASE *

FILE NAME : 1020S.ROM

CHECKSUN : 6381 H

FIX BUG : Fix Nec D4564163G5 3 Dimm Full loading

NEW RELEASE

FILE NAME : 990224S.ROM

CHECKSUN : E431 H

FIX BUG : Support Pentium III CPU .

Support Celeron 400 MHz CPU .

Support 3DFX BANSHEE AGP VGA.(But BANSHEE VGA Need Updata New Firmware)

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Note that you need the latest BIOS for the M729 and update the firmware on the Voodoo Banshee aswell just to be able to use it, the Banshee is one of the most compatible of all AGP cards...

I also like that you need to "checksun" to make sure the BIOS file isnt corrupt... I will have to wait for better weather!

I got my box of these adapter thingies from above and I seem to have 2 of those ATX FORM CARDs, both have Elpina on the bottom and both were made in 9837 (same week!) but both use a different font.

The audio adapter I have 3 of, but also all 3 have different fonts.

Were these adapters specific for PCCHips or were these adapters generic?

Tetrium wrote:

I got my box of these adapter thingies from above and I seem to have 2 of those ATX FORM CARDs, both have Elpina on the bottom and both were made in 9837 (same week!) but both use a different font.

The audio adapter I have 3 of, but also all 3 have different fonts.

Were these adapters specific for PCCHips or were these adapters generic?

They are specific to PC Chips late Baby AT motherboards and other rebranded versions of the same boards. 😀

Luckily the weather improved so I have now updated my PC Chips M729 to the latest BIOS (990224s.rom) and I can now run CAS 2 at 66 MHz FSB !!!!

Skyscraper wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

I got my box of these adapter thingies from above and I seem to have 2 of those ATX FORM CARDs, both have Elpina on the bottom and both were made in 9837 (same week!) but both use a different font.

The audio adapter I have 3 of, but also all 3 have different fonts.

Were these adapters specific for PCCHips or were these adapters generic?

They are specific to PC Chips late Baby AT motherboards and other rebranded versions of the same boards. 😀

Luckily the weather improved so I have now updated my PC Chips M729 to the latest BIOS (990224s.rom) and I can now run CAS 2 at 66 MHz FSB !!!!

I hope you don't have to go outside in the winter in Sweden, is the weather over there that bad? 😜
And thanks, though I had hoped these would have more use. But this also means I might have more than 1 PC-Chips & Co boards laying around (lucky me 🤣)

Tetrium wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

I got my box of these adapter thingies from above and I seem to have 2 of those ATX FORM CARDs, both have Elpina on the bottom and both were made in 9837 (same week!) but both use a different font.

The audio adapter I have 3 of, but also all 3 have different fonts.

Were these adapters specific for PCCHips or were these adapters generic?

They are specific to PC Chips late Baby AT motherboards and other rebranded versions of the same boards. 😀

Luckily the weather improved so I have now updated my PC Chips M729 to the latest BIOS (990224s.rom) and I can now run CAS 2 at 66 MHz FSB !!!!

I hope you don't have to go outside in the winter in Sweden, is the weather over there that bad? 😜
And thanks, though I had hoped these would have more use. But this also means I might have more than 1 PC-Chips & Co boards laying around (lucky me 🤣)

Well I cant "CHECKSUN" inside now can I? Its important, otherwise I might flash a corrupted BIOS file! 😜

back in the day i had to deal with lots of M748, M810 and M598, they were everywhere!

things i remember and i had to deal:
the m748 dont support Pentium 3 Socket 370 and had IRQ problems in the PCI slots

the m598 whas picky with the memory and you MUST use the Dimm 0 in order to post. K6-2 obove 500Mhz had temperature problems on this board. When the battery is dead the clock in the bios resets to 150Mhz but they were so slow that most of the time you didnt tell the difference between 150 and 500Mhz

the m810 suffered of bad caps, problems with ide drivers and picky AGP slot

the m748 and 598 were about 30-40% slower than a decent motherboard with no onboard parts.

of course, with this massive amount of pcchips based computers at one point the ATX form card was much more expensive than the motherboard itself...

Around 2000 my best friend bought a supermarket clone. It came with the m598 and a K6-2 550Mhz and 64MB Ram + 10GB HDD. IT CRAWL even under windows 98 Desktop, when minimize the windows this piece of crap did it in parts 😖. At the time my computer had the Aopen AX59Pro with the K6-2 500Mhz, the difference was HUGE

Tetrium wrote:

I got my box of these adapter thingies from above and I seem to have 2 of those ATX FORM CARDs, both have Elpina on the bottom and both were made in 9837 (same week!) but both use a different font.

The audio adapter I have 3 of, but also all 3 have different fonts.

Were these adapters specific for PCCHips or were these adapters generic?

Most of them used the same pinouts but I don't know if all of them did.
http://www.interloper.com/products/product-de … =101688&cat=141

Asus used a similar slot-card + ribbon cable to add USB ports to some of their P3 motherboards.
.

Living wrote:

back in the day i had to deal with lots of M748, M810 and M598, they were everywhere! […]
Show full quote

back in the day i had to deal with lots of M748, M810 and M598, they were everywhere!

things i remember and i had to deal:
the m748 dont support Pentium 3 Socket 370 and had IRQ problems in the PCI slots

the m598 whas picky with the memory and you MUST use the Dimm 0 in order to post. K6-2 obove 500Mhz had temperature problems on this board. When the battery is dead the clock in the bios resets to 150Mhz but they were so slow that most of the time you didnt tell the difference between 150 and 500Mhz

the m810 suffered of bad caps, problems with ide drivers and picky AGP slot

the m748 and 598 were about 30-40% slower than a decent motherboard with no onboard parts.

of course, with this massive amount of pcchips based computers at one point the ATX form card was much more expensive than the motherboard itself...

Around 2000 my best friend bought a supermarket clone. It came with the m598 and a K6-2 550Mhz and 64MB Ram + 10GB HDD. IT CRAWL even under windows 98 Desktop, when minimize the windows this piece of crap did it in parts 😖. At the time my computer had the Aopen AX59Pro with the K6-2 500Mhz, the difference was HUGE

The supermarket clone should have used a PC Chips M577 MVP3 board instead, while having a bit dodgy L2 cache performance with Pentium CPUs these really shines with a fast K6-2.

I have only done some quick testing with the M729 BXCel ALi Aladdin Pro II Slot-1 board so far but I have to say the PC Chips M577 Super Socket 7 board with whatever CPU is faster clock for clock, alot faster.

Im running the M729 system as optimized as possible with 2-2-2 memory timings. The unlocked Klamath P2 CPU was first running at 3.5x66 MHz and it's now running at 3x100 MHz.

I get reasonable results in SuperPI, Quake and PCPbench but the 3dbench2 score is on the level of a fast 486 and the DOOM FPS is on the level of a rather slow 486.

PCBONEZ wrote:

Most of them used the same pinouts but I don't know if all of them did. http://www.interloper.com/products/product-de … =101688& […]
Show full quote

Tetrium wrote:

I got my box of these adapter thingies from above and I seem to have 2 of those ATX FORM CARDs, both have Elpina on the bottom and both were made in 9837 (same week!) but both use a different font.

The audio adapter I have 3 of, but also all 3 have different fonts.

Were these adapters specific for PCCHips or were these adapters generic?

Most of them used the same pinouts but I don't know if all of them did.
http://www.interloper.com/products/product-de … =101688&cat=141

Asus used a similar slot-card + ribbon cable to add USB ports to some of their P3 motherboards.
.

True. The small already mentioned PCBs I took out of a bag which, for the remaining part, was filled with ASUS thingies. Most are USB and most are I suppose from the ASUS A7V and A7V133 boards I was gifted years earlier (these should be roughly same age as ASUS's P3 boards you probably are referring to), but some were different, dunno from top of my head where all of them came from.

The one in your link is a bit different (due to PS/2 ports, those are usually for AT boards as ATX ones will obviously have these onboard), but I might have one or a couple of these parts. I might have a few more caches with these parts but at some time I somehow figured it was more logical to keep the original cables with the boards themselves as often these cables could hardly be used by other boards anyway.

I'd need to go through my boxes of AT s7 boards just to find these, but I'm almost 100% positive I have more of the stuff your link is referring to (I might go through these boxes later but I have tons of AT s7 boards and most are stuffed away in the far reaches of my stash, I'd need to dig really deep to find all of em 🤣)

edit:

Skyscraper wrote:

Well I cant "CHECKSUN" inside now can I? Its important, otherwise I might flash a corrupted BIOS file! 😜

🤣! watch it, you might "burn" your BIOS chip 😜

I have concluded that the PC Chips M729 BXCel ALi Aladdin Pro II isnt very fast!

The good news is that the 990224s.rom BIOS seems to have fixed any glitches at 100 MHz FSB.

The bad news:

The performance still sucks.
Wont post with a Katmai P3 600(100).
486SX class Doom performance.
As bad memory performace as Super Socket 7.
Far worse video playback performance than PC Chips M577 (MVP3),

Much of this is probably because of low PCI throughput and memory bandwidth, see Speedsys.

I do all my 486/Pentium/K6-X/P2 DOS benching with a PCI S3 Trio64V+ 2MB.

The video tests were done in Windows Media Player 6.4 "windowed mode" with the S3 Trio64V+ 2MB at 1024*768 65K screen resolution. Using 800*600 or a media player capable of resyncing to the actual resolution in fullscreen mode would have resulted in better FPS.

Pentium III 550 "Katmai" 5.5x100, PC Chips M729 BXCel ALi Aladdin Pro II, 256 MB PC100 CL2-2-2. S3 Trio64V+ 2MB. Windows 98SE.

(DOS 7.1)

Quake: 67.9 FPS
Doom: 39.73 FPS (2134 gametics in 1880 realtics)
3dbench2: 101.0 FPS
PCPbench: 88.3 FPS

Write Combining on (MTRRLFBE)

Quake: 93.3 FPS
Doom: 44.86 FPS (2134 gametics in 1665 realtics) <--- WTF!
3dbench2: 442.3 FPS
PCPbench: 143.7 FPS

SuperPi1M: 6M 4s

MPEG1 512*384 23.976 MP2: OK
"MPEG1 DVD" NTSC 720*480 23.976 MP2: ~18 FPS

K6-3+ 550 5.5x100, PC Chips M577 VIA MVP3 1MB L2 Cache, 256 MB PC100 CL2-2-2. S3 Trio64V+ 2MB. Windows 98SE.

No optimization utilities (DOS 7.1)

Quake: 88.5 FPS
Doom: 90.10 FPS (2134 gametics in 829 realtics).
3dbench2: 311.4 FPS
PCPbench: 169.8 FPS

SuperPi1M: 5m 37s

MPEG1 512*384 23.976 MP2: OK
"MPEG1 DVD" NTSC 720*480 23.976 MP2: OK

The Katmai P3 550 kind of saves the M729 because it's fast enough to make this board a decent DOS box as long as you dont intend to play Doom engine games because WTF happend there?

The S3 Trio64V+ isnt suited for video playback but it's nice when you want to know what the CPU and memory can do by them selves. With a Voodoo Banshee the K6-3+ can even handle high bitrate 640*480 Xvid with "Media Player Classic" and the P3 550 + PC Chips M729....can at least decode a few more frames per second.

Now if only this board would support the VIA C3, this would appear to make this board an excellent slowdown candidate 😁

Skyscraper, Thanks for sharing these Benchmark results! If you feel like doing something more extreme, I would love to see the bench of the L2-Cacheless Celeron 300 on the M729.

"486SX class Doom performance."
Actually, 39.73 FPS is exactly like an Am486DX4-100MHz. But still...

I just checked my old parts box, but unfortunately I don't have any connectors for the M729.

gerwin wrote:

Skyscraper, Thanks for sharing these Benchmark results! If you feel like doing something more extreme, I would love to see the b […]
Show full quote

Skyscraper, Thanks for sharing these Benchmark results! If you feel like doing something more extreme, I would love to see the bench of the L2-Cacheless Celeron 300 on the M729.

"486SX class Doom performance."
Actually, 39.73 FPS is exactly like an Am486DX4-100MHz. But still...

I just checked my old parts box, but unfortunately I don't have any connectors for the M729.

I thought I could simulate a Covington Celeron 300 using a Klamath PII 300 with disabled L2 cache but the stupid motherboard disables both caches, the only multiplier I can get L1 cache but not L2 cache with is 2x.

I have already benched a Celeron 333 but I found a Celeron 300A which will be somewhat slower (and the 333 was slow eventhough it has L2 cache).

Darn. When the BIOS cannot toggle L2 cache properly, maybe SetMul can:
-Pentium Pro/2/3 toggle L2 cache: parameters L2D / L2E

gerwin wrote:

Darn. When the BIOS cannot toggle L2 cache properly, maybe SetMul can:
-Pentium Pro/2/3 toggle L2 cache: parameters L2D / L2E

SetMul worked just fine, I will update with benchmarks later tonight or tomorrow.