There are both.

The thing to look for with slockets is FC-PGA compatibility. There are three types of So370 pinout: PPGA (for Mendocino Celeron CPUs up to 533MHz only), FC-PGA (for Coppermine Celeron and P3 CPUs, and backwards compatible with PPGA) and FC-PGA2 (for Tualatin Celeron and P3 CPUs, backwards compatible with FC-PGA but not with PPGA). Two models that definitely support FC-PGA are the MSI MS-6905 Master and the Abit Slotket III. But there are many, many more out there.

As for Slot 1 Coppermines - yes, they also exist, the P3-700 you already have is one, and they can be found right up to 1GHz. Just make sure you find a 100MHz FSB version. Note that these CPUs are rare, so probably not cheap.

But take a step back here - you are once again attempting to reconcile conflicting requirements: to push the system as far as it will possibly go, but to do so without modifications or even complex configuration. Does. Not. Compute. Either resign yourself to a lot of work, possibly involving a soldering iron, or just be satisfied with the system as it is. Don't try and jump before you can run, walk or even crawl. Just buying your way out of complexity only goes so far too.

dionb, I would LOVE to buy my way out of this...but I can't find a way too 🤣. And Max, yeah, the kicker is that 100mhz bus speed - just don't seem to be easily/currently available.

So guys, I really can solder just fine. This mod actually seems pretty simple. What isn't simple for me, and is over my head, is quantifying if doing this mod will work on my ASUS S370 adapter. There has to be several different versions of the S370 (and I'm not talking about the S370 -D, -DL, and -L versions...but this exact "S370" no-suffix one). Both these guys say theirs can be set to 1.65v through the jumpers...but mine only goes to 1.80v. Think I should still try it? I still need to cross-reference more but I think they're doing the same exact thing (hell, it could be the same guy posting in multiple places). ...if I screw it up it's not like I can use this adapter for anything else, right?

dionb wrote on 2020-01-19, 00:59:

Two models that definitely support FC-PGA are the MSI MS-6905 Master and the Abit Slotket III. But there are many, many more out there.

I found the MSI MS-6905 "Dual" adapter, not the "Master" version. If this one will let me buy my way out of this PLEASE let me know 🤣.

Oh, also wanted to ask, so what processors are actually meant to go with this Asus S370 if it doesn't work for Coppermine? Any of them up to around 1ghz by chance? (see, this is what I'm just not comprehending...I feel like I should already know this by now! Is it Celerons?)

The CPU has pins called VID. They tell the VRM on the main board what voltage it wants. The jumpers on the slokets serve only to OVERRIDE the VID pins from the CPU. As long as you can set the slocket to "CPU Default" as you mentioned, it will simply pass through the original VID values from the CPU and VCore will be set appropriately. If you do the mod, it will work.

The slocket you have is for early Celerons yes, specifically Mendocino core ones. They look like socket 7 Pentium MMX chips with a slightly larger IHS.

How much RAM are you attempting to install. Windows 98 will start doing bad things if you have more that 512meg installed

Dochartaigh wrote on 2020-01-19, 01:42:

dionb, I would LOVE to buy my way out of this...but I can't find a way too 🤣. And Max, yeah, the kicker is that 100mhz bus speed - just don't seem to be easily/currently available.

Well, no, they were niche 20 years ago and haven't exactly gotten any more common.

But my main point is you seem to be fixated on getting the absolute max specs for this system before you're even able to install an OS on it yourself, regardless of CPU. Maybe, just maybe, it would be better to focus on one thing at a time. First get it running as-is and get a feel for how this old crap works and doesn't work, and only when you're confident with that start modding and upgrading. There really is very little that will run acceptably on a P3-1000E that will not run on a P3-700E.

See it a bit like project management: you can try to do a massive waterfall thing that has to be absolutely perfect in every aspect, but then ends up getting bogged-down in unforseen bugs, delivered late and somehow still doesn't make the stakeholders happy. Or you can approach it from a more agile perspective: define a minimum viable product, get that running, then do everything else in small iterations based on priorities set after the last iteration was finished.

If you have a P3-700E system up and running, everything works fine, but speed is just a bit too slow in the games you are playing - that's the time to do the CPU upgrade. Don't let getting your system to the point where you can actually do stuff with it be delayed by things not necessarily on that critical path.

So guys, I really can solder just fine. This mod actually seems pretty simple. What isn't simple for me, and is over my head, is quantifying if doing this mod will work on my ASUS S370 adapter. There has to be several different versions of the S370 (and I'm not talking about the S370 -D, -DL, and -L versions...but this exact "S370" no-suffix one). Both these guys say theirs can be set to 1.65v through the jumpers...but mine only goes to 1.80v. Think I should still try it? I still need to cross-reference more but I think they're doing the same exact thing (hell, it could be the same guy posting in multiple places). ...if I screw it up it's not like I can use this adapter for anything else, right?

If it's a PPGA-only adapter, it has very little value indeed in its current state, so you're not exactly losing anything by giving it a shot. Apart from that, there are 1001 versions of these adapters, but basically they all do exactly the same thing: do the minimal changes necessary to support FC-PGA.

On top of that, many have:
- voltage jumpers to override the CPU's own pins. This is for overclocking/overvolting on motherboards without voltage jumpers. If you don't want to do that, it's irrelevant for you, regardless of available settings.
- multiplier jumpers to override CPU's own pins. All retail and OEM Celeron and P3 CPUs are multiplier-locked. This is only relevant for unlocked engineering samples.
- voltage regulators to run CPUs with different voltage requirements on older boards. Not relevant here as your slocket doesn't have it and your motherboard doesn't need it.
- circuitry to allow SMP (dual CPU), as on the MS-6905 Dual. Not relevant as you only have a single CPU slot.

In other words, it really just comes down to the pin mod described in that link, and that would be the same for any adapter. The rest is just irrelevant fluff at this point.

Oh, also wanted to ask, so what processors are actually meant to go with this Asus S370 if it doesn't work for Coppermine? Any of them up to around 1ghz by chance? (see, this is what I'm just not comprehending...I feel like I should already know this by now! Is it Celerons?)

Didn't I just list that? If it's a PPGA adapter it only supports PPGA CPUs, i.e. Celerons up to 533MHz. Absolutely great in their time, but that was vs Deschutes-core P2 and Katmai-core P3. Coppermine is basically a modified Mendocino that can clock higher, so is superior in all respects.

Dochartaigh wrote on 2020-01-19, 01:42:

I found the MSI MS-6905 "Dual" adapter, not the "Master" version. If this one will let me buy my way out of this PLEASE let me know 🤣.

don't buy that - it will have the same problem as the one you already have

If the box doesn't explicitly mention coppermine support, it most likely does not have it. There were way more slockets released for mendocino celerons than for coppermines.

dionb wrote on 2020-01-19, 11:20:

Well, no, they were niche 20 years ago and haven't exactly gotten any more common.

But my main point is you seem to be fixated on getting the absolute max specs for this system before you're even able to install an OS on it yourself, regardless of CPU. Maybe, just maybe, it would be better to focus on one thing at a time. First get it running as-is and get a feel for how this old crap works and doesn't work, and only when you're confident with that start modding and upgrading. There really is very little that will run acceptably on a P3-1000E that will not run on a P3-700E.

Good advice, and I think my problem (until recently), is I couldn't comprehend that something on a computer wasn't plug and play hardware-wise (i.e. having to physically mod hardware to get it to work - never, ever, heard of that in 30+ years since my first IBM PS/2 in 1988!). So I think that's very much so why I've been trying to 'buy my way out' of this and just get something off the shelf. I didn't know how niche these were/are.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2020-01-19, 02:10:

The CPU has pins called VID. They tell the VRM on the main board what voltage it wants. The jumpers on the slokets serve only to OVERRIDE the VID pins from the CPU. As long as you can set the slocket to "CPU Default" as you mentioned, it will simply pass through the original VID values from the CPU and VCore will be set appropriately. If you do the mod, it will work.

Thanks. And I WILL mod it, but want to get the OS, sound cards, and games up and running first. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Which FYI, IT WORKS! I switched in a SanDisk 240gb SSD, deleted the partition with fdisk the first time I tried, then when I ran Win98 setup it prompted me to (slow) format the SSD (to ~127gb) and Windows installed correctly. Thought it might have been the Crucial (original 120gb I was trying) SSD brand which the adapter or whatever didn't like... so I almost gave up on that one (which speaking of giving up, I did give up on the 4k partition alignment - it does NOT like those, and/or the MBR, or something on them).

So anyway, after failing with the 4k partition alignment, and knowing that a SSD does in fact work on this computer with the Startech adapter, I tried another half dozen times to delete the partition on the 120GB with fdisk - it would NOT let me do it time after time for some reason (I was reformatting in-between on my Windows 10, both 4K and regular FAT32, so maybe there was some incompatibility there?) but as soon as I was able to delete the partition when I ran Win98se setup on it, it likewise prompted me to format the 120GB just like it did for the 240gb, and from then on it was able to run ScanDisk and install Windows properly. I'm now in the midst of trying to setup that ES1869F card for DOS sound.

Dochartaigh wrote on 2020-01-19, 18:29:

[...]

Good advice, and I think my problem (until recently), is I couldn't comprehend that something on a computer wasn't plug and play hardware-wise (i.e. having to physically mod hardware to get it to work - never, ever, heard of that in 30+ years since my first IBM PS/2 in 1988!). So I think that's very much so why I've been trying to 'buy my way out' of this and just get something off the shelf. I didn't know how niche these were/are.

The only reason it's so hard is that you're trying to shoehorn together hardware from different eras. Your PPGA slocket is a generation older than your motherboard, your FC-PGA CPU is a generation newer. That SSD is of course from a completely different era. If you'd gone to a shop in mid 2000 and said you wanted to upgrade your Slot 1 P3-700E to 1GHz, you would have been given the choice of an expensive Slot 1 CPU or a cheaper FC-PGA CPU and FC-PGA slocket. That would just have worked. Back then the only people having to mod stuff would have been poor buggers with more technical knowledge than ready funds, re-using their PPGA slockets for Coppermine CPUs.

In fact the only reason it went wrong now is that you bought stuff while unaware of the differences between So370 revisions (PPGA, FC-PGA and FC-PGA2). That could easily have happened to you back in 2000 as well if ordering stuff yourself instead of paying someone else to do it for you. I should know, it happened to me back then too 😉

Note that different, incompatible revisions of sockets were by no means unique to So370- right now there's exactly the same thing going on between revisions 1 and 2 of So1151. As the Romans used to say: caveat emptor.

Yay! your first win!
Feels good doesn't it? It's why a lot of us here have more then one PC. Playing games is only 1/2 the fun! Overcoming these challenges is a rewarding game in itself.

dionb wrote on 2020-01-19, 18:45:

The only reason it's so hard is that you're trying to shoehorn together hardware from different eras. Your PPGA slocket is a generation older than your motherboard, your FC-PGA CPU is a generation newer.

It also doesn't help that I'm going for a certain aesthetic for my setup too, so wanted a certain type of name-brand manufacturer case as well - which just adds another level to all this.

chinny22 wrote on 2020-01-19, 20:53:

Yay! your first win!
Feels good doesn't it? It's why a lot of us here have more then one PC. Playing games is only 1/2 the fun! Overcoming these challenges is a rewarding game in itself.

Yup! Definitely does. Still have a LOT more learning to do (and harassing you guys...going to do some more research on a bunch of things then make another post with my questions and document the software aspect of things for setting up games and their settings and all that).

For more than one PC....maybe. I really only have interest in playing computer games from the era I initially did - which was roughly 1991-2002...which this computer suite pretty well so I don't know what else I would need. Outside of that I've been consoles ever since.

You might well find that separate DOS and Windows computers work better, less compromises. Particularly if you go down the DOS soundcard rabbit hole. Consider that absolutely no software from 2002 would run on a 1991 machine, and conversely that a lot of 1991 software would be almost unusable on a 2002 machine (speed/timing issues, unsupported hardware etc). It's possible to get something that can handle 2002 software and clock back enough to run old stuff, but it's making life more difficult than it needs to be.

Of course, once you get into aesthetics the fun really starts. I have multiple systems and components I have no practical use for, but that I keep purely because of how they look or what historical relevance they have.

dionb wrote on 2020-01-19, 00:59:

Two models that definitely support FC-PGA are the MSI MS-6905 Master and the Abit Slotket III. But there are many, many more out there.

Thanks again for the heads-up! Looks like this guy recently turned on international shipping for these MSI MS-6905 Master's (since it sure wasn't showing up on search last time I looked). I ordered. Specifically mentions P3 Coppermine, and 100mhz and 256k which should match my 1ghz Coppermine Pentium III SL5QV perfectly. These are the Master "V2" as well. I don't believe the V1 works with my exact FC-PGA Coppermine, but from what I've googled the V2 (and 2.x models) do - or I'm crossing my fingers at least as I already ordered 😉