karakarga wrote on 2023-09-11, 05:37:

Here is a bios modification tool called UBU at https://winraid.level1techs.com/t/tool-guide- … dater-ubu/30357 and discussion thread at: https://winraid.level1techs.com/t/mc-extracto … ssion/31555/261

The guy preparing it called SoniX retired, related with health concerns. You are within a few people who can maintain this program. (latest revision v1.79.17, last updated: 06/30/2020) would you like to think about a new work over it?

I'm ... not really looking for more work, and especially not commitment to supporting a community tool.

Fine, UBU was good at old days....

Hello,

I just wanted to say thank you for your work and making this BIOS available. I just installed an ASUS P2B-F Revision 1.00 motherboard in my PIII system and flashed the BIOS with your version and it's working great! Recognized my 80GB drive with no problems at all. My board does have the newer voltage regulator, the HIP6019BCB, that will allow me to upgrade from my 450Mhz Katmai to a Coppermine processor.

Anyway, thanks for your work!

Best wishes,

Tony.

TuesdaysGone wrote on 2023-09-20, 20:17:

I just wanted to say thank you for your work and making this BIOS available. I just installed an ASUS P2B-F Revision 1.00 motherboard in my PIII system and flashed the BIOS with your version and it's working great! Recognized my 80GB drive with no problems at all. My board does have the newer voltage regulator, the HIP6019BCB, that will allow me to upgrade from my 450Mhz Katmai to a Coppermine processor.

Thanks for the feedback; glad to read the mod is useful to you. Good luck with your system! 😀

Hi Deniz,

Thank you so much for making these new BIOSes! I was wondering if you might make a version for the P3B-1394. I've got a Slot 1 P3-866 I would like to use in this board, but it doesn't POST with the official BIOS. The board is quite nice otherwise.

I already tried your latest P3B-F BIOS (with a humble Deschutes Celeron) in case the P3B-1394 is similar enough to the P3B-F to "just work", but unfortunately not - just repeated long beeps 😁

Hi,

spacemoose wrote on 2023-10-14, 18:48:

Thank you so much for making these new BIOSes! I was wondering if you might make a version for the P3B-1394. I've got a Slot 1 P3-866 I would like to use in this board, but it doesn't POST with the official BIOS. The board is quite nice otherwise.

I already tried your latest P3B-F BIOS (with a humble Deschutes Celeron) in case the P3B-1394 is similar enough to the P3B-F to "just work", but unfortunately not - just repeated long beeps 😁

Ah, the P3B-1394 is the odd one out. It's the only "P3"-branded board that uses an Award 4.51 BIOS instead of 6.0 -- for whatever reason. Not POSTing with a P3-866 is unusual, though. Does it hang at a certain point or does the screen just stay black? Does this also happen at 100 MHz FSB?

You can try the attached build, though I doubt it will remedy your issue.

[Edit: Moved attachment to download site.]

DenizOezmen wrote on 2023-10-14, 19:30:

Ah, the P3B-1394 is the odd one out. It's the only "P3"-branded board that uses an Award 4.51 BIOS instead of 6.0 -- for whatever reason. Not POSTing with a P3-866 is unusual, though. Does it hang at a certain point or does the screen just stay black? Does this also happen at 100 MHz FSB?

You can try the attached build, though I doubt it will remedy your issue.

Thanks for such a quick reply! I'll try the attached build and report back.

The behavior with the stock BIOS (version 2004 001) and (apparently) unsupported CPUs is:
- Board powers up immediately when PSU power switch is switched on, and it stays powered on (whereas with a supported CPU, it powers up very briefly, and then powers off again until ATX soft power switch is pressed)
- No BIOS beeps, no display, no nothing
- Same behavior at any bus speed (66, 100, 133)

The above behavior applies to the Slot 1 P3-866 I mentioned, but I see the same behavior with various Socket 370 CPUs I've tried - 2 P3-700s and a P3-1000 - using 3 different slocket adapters. The odd one out is a Coppermine 1.5V Celeron 600, which somehow works great in one of the slocket adapters with this board (and overclocks nicely to 750 w/83MHz bus).

(The board is also rock solid with various Slot 1 Pentium 2s and Celerons, and pre-Coppermine S370 Celerons in slocket adapters.)

That's odd and doesn't sound like a BIOS issue. The board officially supports Celerons up to 1100 MHz and P3s up to 1000 MHz, so it can't be a general issue with Coppermine processors. Even if the CPU is specified for 133 MHz FSB, running it at 100 MHz FSB should work at the very least.

Maybe someone knowledgeable in hardware debugging has to chime in?

DenizOezmen wrote on 2023-10-14, 21:05:

That's odd and doesn't sound like a BIOS issue. The board officially supports Celerons up to 1100 MHz and P3s up to 1000 MHz, so it can't be a general issue with Coppermine processors. Even if the CPU is specified for 133 MHz FSB, running it at 100 MHz FSB should work at the very least.

Maybe someone knowledgeable in hardware debugging has to chime in?

That's what I thought, too! However (spoiler alert) the BIOS you sent helped - see below!

Test results below using 2004001_20230905 BIOS - DIP switches were always set to minimum bus and multiplier (66 * 3.0), cleared CMOS with each new CPU:

* P2-266 - works, as before
* Slot 1 Celeron 366 - nothing, but doesn't work with stock BIOSes now either (tried 2003 and 2004) - maybe I killed this CPU somehow when I ran the P3B-F BIOS earlier, oops
* Coppermine Celeron 600 in jumperless slocket with "1.5V" marking - works, as before, but is now correctly reported as a Celeron rather than a P3, and BIOS no longer alarms about 1.5V VCore - nice
* S370 P3-733 in same jumperless slocket - nothing, as before
* S370 P3-733 in jumpered slocket jumpered to 1.8V (the minimum) - nothing, as before
* Finally, the Slot 1 P3-866 that didn't work before - now works! BIOS reports 1.7V VCore - nice. Seems good so far at 133MHz bus, too.

I'm going to experiment some more with the different slockets and the S370 P3s - I know the whole Coppermine + slocket situation is a mess, but the fact that the board now apparently knows how to do 1.7V (thanks to your BIOS) is promising.

Thanks again! Very cool to have a faster Slot 1 P3 working!

spacemoose wrote on 2023-10-14, 21:18:

That's what I thought, too! However (spoiler alert) the BIOS you sent helped - see below!

I admit to being confused, but glad nonetheless. 😀 Thanks for testing!

My P3B-F wont boot with VIA C3 Nehemiah 800MHz. Maybe it's just that only older C3 cores work with 440BX.

@dj_pirtu

I have checked Asus P3B-F CPU support page, no Cyrix CPU supported. But, there are various Slot 1 adapters which can support (if also such Cyrix microcode included in your bios), like this Soltek adapter which I have posted earlier. It has a special jumper selection for Cyrix processors.

dj_pirtu wrote on 2023-11-05, 07:12:

My P3B-F wont boot with VIA C3 Nehemiah 800MHz. Maybe it's just that only older C3 cores work with 440BX.

For some reason, P3B-F and C3s seem to be a bit hit-and-miss. I'm pretty sure I tested a 1.2 GHz Nehemiah on the P3B-F, but maybe I'm mistaken. I'll have to retest.

Your CPU is not a 1.25V part, I assume? Do you happen to know its CPUID?

dj_pirtu wrote on 2023-11-05, 07:12:

My P3B-F wont boot with VIA C3 Nehemiah 800MHz. Maybe it's just that only older C3 cores work with 440BX.

Strange, I know someone here who got a Nehemiah 1.0A CPU working fine on the ASUS P3B-F motherboard just a few days ago.

karakarga wrote on 2023-11-06, 22:42:

But, there are various Slot 1 adapters which can support (if also such Cyrix microcode included in your bios), like this Soltek adapter which I have posted earlier. It has a special jumper selection for Cyrix processors.

That jumper only applies for the very early VIA Cyrix III CPU, the ones that got the VIA C3 naming are developed by Centaur Technology and works fine with slotket adapters that supports Coppermine CPU.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2023-11-07, 00:04:

Strange, I know someone here who got a Nehemiah 1.0A CPU working fine on the ASUS P3B-F motherboard just a few days ago.

That was me 😀

Only issue I'm having with my Nehemiah is that it doesn't like booting at 133MHz FSB reliably. I have some new memory on the way to see if that's the issue. The Sloket I'm using is pretty generic.

Thanks for the BIOS mod! <3

Deniz,
Nearly all of the P2 and P3 mainboards at the "https://oezmen.eu/bios/" list does not have USB boot option in the 'boot menu' as you know. Even some early P4 ones too, starting from P4 i865 and i875 chipsets from Asus supports USB boot at their 'boot menu'. You have to check those mainboard bioses to find a solution I think!

Can you make a fix for that problem?

Without having taken a detailed look at it, I don't think this would be an easy port. It's not like the BIOS contains some sort of "USB boot module".

Currently, I'd recommend overriding the built-in boot manager by something like PLOP (see the tests here in the thread, roughly starting here. This is likely way more compatible with current flash drives etc. than anything we can port over from later Award BIOS versions.

You can replace the Symbios module (or possibly the anti virus module) and then turn the additional boot manager on/off as needed.

If you need more detailed instructions on how to integrate the boot manager, feel free to ask.

ifrit05 wrote on 2023-11-07, 00:30:

That was me :) […]
Show full quote

Gmlb256 wrote on 2023-11-07, 00:04:

Strange, I know someone here who got a Nehemiah 1.0A CPU working fine on the ASUS P3B-F motherboard just a few days ago.

That was me 😀

Only issue I'm having with my Nehemiah is that it doesn't like booting at 133MHz FSB reliably. I have some new memory on the way to see if that's the issue. The Sloket I'm using is pretty generic.

Thanks for the BIOS mod! <3

OK! So I need to test all my slotkets. I have MS-6905 (MSI Master), Abit Slotket III and maybe a third one...

Got the Nehemiah working on Abit BX133 which is a S370 -board. Only thing is that the first boot (after CMOS clear or CPU change) is with very high voltage and I need to get in BIOS very fast and take it down. If I'm not fast enough it starts crashing. Funny thing is that MSI 694T Pro which is a nice VIA Tualatin-board (1xISA) won't work with Nehemiah, only Ezra.

Edit: took my most basic slotket and it's working on P3B-F! Takes 1,6GHz @1,55V so double overclock 😁

dj_pirtu wrote on 2023-12-06, 09:36:

Edit: took my most basic slotket and it's working on P3B-F! Takes 1,6GHz @1,55V so double overclock 😁

Cool. 😀 So there's a certain pickiness regarding slotkets at play. Good to know.

DenizOezmen wrote on 2023-12-08, 21:29:

dj_pirtu wrote on 2023-12-06, 09:36:

Edit: took my most basic slotket and it's working on P3B-F! Takes 1,6GHz @1,55V so double overclock 😁

Cool. 😀 So there's a certain pickiness regarding slotkets at play. Good to know.

Maybe it's a little offtopic here but 1,6GHz just wasn't fully stable but 1,5GHz is at 1,35V. Funny thing is that it's about half the speed of P3-S Tualatin at the same clock. 150FSB and Gf5900XT is used. For example Flatout2 is butter smooth with Tualatin but on the unplayable side with VIA. 3DMark01SE scores:
VIA 1,5GHz: 5700
P3-S 1,575GHz: 10800