Boot using a Win98 boot disk, use FDISK to create your W98 partition, then install. Then boot with DOS 6.22 and use FDISK to create your DOS partition.

I recommend using extended fdisk. It has a good, basic and easy to understand boot menu.
The menu even got an option, to boot drive a, build right into the menu.

The good part about this menu, if you ask me, is that it "hides" each primaery partition
from each other. Say you boot Win98, then MS-Dos-6.22 will be invisible from Win98.

The setup menu is easy to operate and the program is found on Hirens and Ultimate Boot CD.
You can possible get it as a standalone download too.
If you need to run it on older machines, with less ram, it is on Ultimate Boot CD 3.0 too.
An 10+ year old distribution, yet it have saved me lots of trouble.

Those two cd's are kind of like a must have item, whenever I play with old computers.

I have an Epox EP-MVP3G2 which is really a good board and support K6 II/III+s, is based on the VIA MVP3 chipset with the VIA VT82C596B southbirdge (ATA-66) and has 1 MB L2 onboard (there are another variant which is the EP-MVP3G5 which the only difference is the larger 2 MB L2). Max cacheable RAM on the EP-MVP3G2 is 256 MB RAM acording to the BIOS

You can find the newest BIOS for this board (and EP-MVP3C/EP-MVP3C2, EP-MVP3G-M and EP-MVP3G5 as well) here: http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm

Officially the board supports 384 MB acording to the manual, but it works with 256 MB sticks, so in the practice, the maximun RAM is 768 MB

Here is the case I have picked out. It includes an ATX 2.0 450W power supply. Will that be enough for a V2 sli + G400 max setup?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/381043265773

My case has arrived!! I have more photos if anyone wants them.
This is different than the case I linked to previously. This one has a 500w PSU as opposed to a 450w.
Next up: MOTHERBOARD!

So, The Gigabyte GA-5AX is currently on the back burner. I'm considering instead these two:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ECS-P5VP-A-Super-Sock … k-/252384871474?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/EFA-P5MVP3-AT-Super-S … 5YCGqZ#viTabs_0

Thoughts?

I'd go with the ECS simply for the convenience of the ATX form factor. If you've already got an AT and case and PSU, then either board is fine. It's just a pain in the behunkus to redrill and tap an ATX case to fit an AT board correctly.

Yeah. The ECS is my choice. I'm only going with it since the seller of the GA-5AX isn't accepting offers at the moment, and I'm sick of waiting! 😁
I got the case, but then school happened, so I haven't had any time to get more parts. Going to get the mobo, CPU (AMD K6-III+ 450), RAM, and 1st GPU hopefully.

Has ECS suddenly become a better brand in the last 10 years? When I was a system builder we avoided them like the plague because of the high failure rate.

Rhuwyn wrote:

Has ECS suddenly become a better brand in the last 10 years? When I was a system builder we avoided them like the plague because of the high failure rate.

Like any manufacturer, ECS makes good boards and sh|t boards. By now mostly their nice boards survived, so they're a pretty safe buy. The have some great boards as well - like the KV2 Extreme and the P6IPAT to name a few. Their late revision KT333A boards are pretty good too.

There was no KT333A chipset. It went KT-266->KT266A->KT333->KT400->KT400A. There were revisions of the chipsets (CE, CF, etc). These were minor tweaks, not new chipsets.

gdjacobs wrote:

There was no KT333A chipset. It went KT-266->KT266A->KT333->KT400->KT400A. There were revisions of the chipsets (CE, CF, etc). These were minor tweaks, not new chipsets.

The KT333a is a late VIA VT8367 revision witch supports FSB 166 (333) stable and has an enhanced memory controller. These can usually handle DDR400 as well (OC). Here: http://www.geek.com/chips/quicks-intel-and-ec … -kt333a-548138/

Not listed by the designer/manufacturer.
http://www.viatech.com/en/silicon/legacy/chip … sktop-chipsets/

Right - there's several revisions of the VT8367 chipset. The "CD" revision is the standard KT333 witch first came out. Then we have the CE and CF revisions. The CE can be found in KT333 and KT333a boards (OEM name, not official VIA name). Some of these boards support barton CPUs*, some don't. The CF revision is a cut-down KT400 chipset. These support FSB 166 (333) and DDR400, but only AGP 1x / 2x / 4x @ 1.5 or 3.3v**. Even tough these theoretically support DDR400 ram, KT333(A) and KT400 chipsets can only run memory at PC3200 speeds while the FSB is set to 133 (266) due to a design flaw. This was fixed in the KT400a version of the chip.

* a good example of rev. CE boards with barton support is the Shuttle AK35GT2. On the other hand, the Gigabyte GA-7VRX does not. This is because gigabyte used both CD and CE revision chips in these boards, and not all CD revision boards can handle FSB 166 stable, so they played it safe. CE boards are great overclockers - in fact my AK35GT2/R can do FSB 200 stable. CD boards on the other hand suck ass.
** some KT333 rev CF boards only support 1.5v agp cards. A good example of this is the MSI KT3V.

A good source for this is OEM product pages:

Gigabyte GA-7VA-C KT333a (Rev. CF) clearly states support for FSB 333 and barton CPUs : http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page … spx?pid=1609#sp On the other hand, the GA-7VRX only supports FSB 266 processors: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page … spx?pid=1450#sp and while Gigabyte specifies the nortbridge revision for the 7VA-C on the product specs page, they omit it for the 7VRX.

Why is this important you ask? It is if you're a 3dfx enthusiast or benchmark maniac. Rev CF boards (KT333a as OEMs call it) allow you to run a wide range of early AGP video cards, including your shiny Voodoo 5 5500 (or 6000 if you're lucky enough to own one) with a very fast CPU - Athlon XP 3200+ AXDA3200DKV4D 2333MHz or Mobile Barton CPUs. This is about as fast as you can go with a V5 w/o going into expensive PCI v5 territory or using improvisations like an AGP to PCI bridge. It's also THE go-to platform for testing all AGP 3.3 and 1.5v video cards on one machine for consistency - immagine the charts one could make 😀 Sure, you could use a KT266 or 133, but some later AGP 4X video cards will be bottenecked by slower Palonimo CPUs.

It's for these reasons that I (and some OEMs like Epox and Acorp) use the "KT333A" when referring to the VT8367 rev. CE

As for the reason I think VIA did not label an official KT333a chipset - I remember there was a bit of a scandal back in the day since early rev CD boards had little to no performance increase when running DDR333 ram. I think this was caused by a bug that noticeably increased memory timings and latency when using 333MHz ram or faster. Also, overclockers discovered that when configuring memory to run at 400MHz, the system would fail to post unless you set the FSB to 133Mhz (266). I remember discussing this in forums quite a bit. I had an ECS K7VTA v3.0? with the CE northbridge, and could not use my shiny new 2500+ in it. A week later I swapped it for a v 5.0 board witch ran my barton just fine. The down-side was v5.0 had fewer memory slots...

Yup, the 'CF' revision is a KT400 with AGP 8x disabled. Purely a marketing move.

Rhuwyn wrote:

Has ECS suddenly become a better brand in the last 10 years? When I was a system builder we avoided them like the plague because of the high failure rate.

Yeah, I too have a long standing rule of avoiding them like the plague. But like it's already been pointed out, they did make a few good boards from time to time. I'd say about 70% of the rig I built with their boards from the 90s had failed or developed major issues within a year. I quickly learned to run, screaming when I saw mile high stacks of them on sale at my local Micro Center.

That was then, and this is now. Simply put, it's getting harder to find SS7 boards at reasonable prices, and you take what you can find.

OP, make sure you ask if the board has been tested, and what the return policy is. If the seller plays hardball, then forget it. Be patient, and willing to pony up a bit extra for a better deal down the road. But a chance for a decent MVP based SS7 may be worth the risk at current prices.

So should I not get the ECS board? Sounds like I shouldn't. It is completely refurbished. Agin, the board is the PV5P-A+. Any experience with that board?

Jupiter-18 wrote:

So should I not get the ECS board? Sounds like I shouldn't. It is completely refurbished. Agin, the board is the PV5P-A+. Any experience with that board?

You mean P5VP-A+. I've never used one personally, so I can't give you any advice about it. It looks good on paper - 82C586B ATA66 southbridge, 512 or 1mb of L2 cache, 1.2v to 3.5v for CPU power, 66 to 124MHz FSB supported... I'd buy it if the price was right.

Here's a manual for it, with layout and specs: http://th99.classic-computing.de/src/m/E-H/35849.htm

I decided to go with an EFA motherboard based on the VIA MVP3 instead. Going to avoid ECS just in case.

Jupiter-18 wrote:

I decided to go with an EFA motherboard based on the VIA MVP3 instead. Going to avoid ECS just in case.

Spec wise the EFA P5MVP3 is not nearly as good as the ECS - it has a lot less features, and finding a k6-3 / large HDD bios for it is going to be a pain. I would have gone for the latter. Plus, I trust ECS boards more then EFA or ZIDA. The ECS board is also very well documented, and supports K6-III cpus and HDDs up to 160GB out of the box.

Also, ECS made boards for Chaintech witch were excellent.