Abit BE6-II

Any gotchas on this board? Like 384MB limited? Certain revisions to allow P3 higher than 550mhz? etc?

I also recall that Abit had a bad reputation with the capacitors used in their boards. Not sure if this particular vintage is also suspect.

BX (and even LX) take double sided 256MB sticks for a total of 768MB on a board with 3 DIMMs.

I have some older Intel BX440-2 board that seems to max out at 384MB. Whenever I tried 256 sticks (of various brands and flavours of 100 and 133) in the thing it would never post.

Have you replaced the battery by chance? Or try loading defaults and making sure it isn't an overclock issue or pulling parts out one by one to make sure something else isn't dying/unstable

You can buy a bios chip off ebay:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/BIOS-Chip-ASUS-P3B-F … igAAOxyeglTbI4S

I got two dead abit be6-II boards from way back in the day. I almost got one to post a few times a couple of years ago. the other doesn't post for me. Was hoping to change caps someday but haven't taken the time.

I tried replacing the battery, booting without the battery. Removed every component except the CPU and RAM and a PCI card I know is good. Tried different CPUs, including an older P3 550, different RAM. At one point during all of this it once complained of a BIOS Checksum Error and to insert a disk and press a key, but pressing a key didn't do anything. I can try a BIOS chip, but honestly I didn't care too much for the board to begin with and want to look at other options.

Maybe it is the caps, but the board was used semi-frequently. I've noticed that caps tend to be use it or lose it. Now, yes, things can go bad, but I don't suspect it at this point and it's not worth spending $20 on a BIOS chip and another $10-$15 in misc low ESR 105C caps for this board.

The point RogueTrip2012 was trying to make is that a bad battery can cause the BIOS settings to become corrupted, so replacing the battery without reloading BIOS defaults after a Checksum error (usually caused by a bad battery) won't make the board magically fix itself.

Yeah I tried resetting the BIOS via the jumpers and still no dice. I'm going to gamble on a SOLTEK SL-65FV+. Not BX440, but Via, but we'll see if it's something decent or a piece of unstable garbage. Looks like I could possibly use a 1.4ghz Tualtin in it.

Soltek SL-65FV+ terrible board for DOS gaming in case anyone is curious. Via 4-in-1 drivers needed in windows to fix terrible 3d performance. Might be OK for an Unreal, Quake 2, Quake 3 machine. Still on the look out for something else. Another P3B-F at this point is OK. If it works properly.

How about using the Soltek to hot-flash the P3B-F's BIOS chip ?

I already returned that board. I was so disgusted with the performance with it I returned it the next day. Ih ave another P3B-F on the way. But, in the mean time I did get an MSI MS6119 BX2 v1.1 board but that has it's own issue, see: MSI MS6119 BX2 v1.1 Requires -5V?