dionb wrote on 2020-08-18, 12:58:

Note that Abit and Chaintech boards from this period tend to have awful capacitor issues.

That is not so good news.
The largest caps on my Chaintech are sitting around the cpu socket, 11 of them.
They are marked:
D.S.®
200uf 6.3v
L.E.S.R
and look like this:

Are these bad news ?

PARKE wrote on 2020-08-18, 17:58:

That is not so good news. The largest caps on my Chaintech are sitting around the cpu socket, 11 of them. They are marked: D.S. […]
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dionb wrote on 2020-08-18, 12:58:

Note that Abit and Chaintech boards from this period tend to have awful capacitor issues.

That is not so good news.
The largest caps on my Chaintech are sitting around the cpu socket, 11 of them.
They are marked:
D.S.®
200uf 6.3v
L.E.S.R
and look like this:
6_n.jpg
Are these bad news ?

Not familiar with "D.S.", but googling that suggests it's a Samwha product line. If so, it's not the worst out there, but not great either. Are all the caps as flat as this one? If so, it could be good news - no guarantees though as failure without bulging/leakage is also possible.

That said, I was seeing Chaintech P3 boards with multiple alkaline fountains 15 years ago. If the caps were that bad, they'd have failed long ago.

Vaudane wrote on 2020-08-18, 16:03:

got any links for the voodoo2 sli not working on AMD? I'd like to read a bit.

Only in German if that helps you.

dionb wrote on 2020-08-18, 22:30:

Not familiar with "D.S.", but googling that suggests it's a Samwha product line. If so, it's not the worst out there, but not great either. Are all the caps as flat as this one? If so, it could be good news - no guarantees though as failure without bulging/leakage is also possible.

That said, I was seeing Chaintech P3 boards with multiple alkaline fountains 15 years ago. If the caps were that bad, they'd have failed long ago.

All the caps, including the smaller ones, look immaculate - no bulging and no trace of leaking top or bottom anywhere.
I found an online (Ali) photo of caps with similar marketing design but no lead on the manufacturer.

Doornkaat wrote on 2020-08-19, 10:31:

Vaudane wrote on 2020-08-18, 16:03:

got any links for the voodoo2 sli not working on AMD? I'd like to read a bit.

Only in German if that helps you.

Mal sehen, ob sich Duolingo ausgezahlt hat

dionb wrote on 2020-08-18, 16:15:

Define "good"... […]
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Vaudane wrote on 2020-08-18, 16:03:

[...]

The only reason I was sticking with the i440BX was that it seemed to be the chipset that did what I needed. Having a look at the Via chipset now though iirc from [1] they aren't as good.

Define "good"...

If you take the 694X/D/T, it's not so bad

Three disadvantages:
- require chipset drivers not natively included in Windows 98SE, 2k or XP (it's not true Intel-based chipsets don't require drivers, they just have working drivers included in OS)
- 686B southbridge doesn't play ball with Soundblaster Live! cards
- clock-for-clock slightly slower than i440BX

Four advantages:
- native 133MHz FSB support, incl 1/4 PCI divider and 1/2 AGP divider
- AGP 2.0 (4x), so support for 1.5V cards
- native ISA support
- support for 1.5GB of RAM

The 1.5GB RAM is rather irrelevant for period correct stuff (DOS and Win98 get into trouble over 512MB...), the other three are nice, and no Intel chipset supports all three natively. Rare i815 and i820 boards with PCI-ISA bridge can deliver, but the Asus P3C-E (about the commonest board with it) is very hard to find.

No other chipset gives you this natively. Now, personally I consider P3 too new for DOS, so don't mind giving up the ISA slot if I'm only running Win98SE (which means I have SiS635T, i820 and i840 systems) - but if you want a system that can do both, you want that ApolloPro133A (694X/D/T)

So it appears the contenders are the Abit BX133 RAID vs the Abit KT7-RAID

I hope you like soldering... I once found a BX133 RAID that amazingly didn't have visibly damaged caps. Unfortunately it wasn't fully stable - turns out the caps weren't bulging but were still dying. Needed a full re-cap 🙁

That's a really good comparison actually thank you. Gives me something to mull over.

The main thing I'm seeing against the boards you recommend is $$$ more than anything 😀 Just because this is an "unlimited budget" build, my budget is sadly not as unlimited.

May end up taking inspiration from your multiple builds and doing a 486 for DOS based games with ISA sound card, and then go full i815e for win2000/win98. (while 820 sounds interesting, the rdram just doesn't sell it for me, aside from the technical novelty of it.)

SPBHM wrote on 2020-08-18, 17:16:

regarding the IDE controller, the boot is still fast, it feels like it takes a couple of seconds additional with it enabled whic […]
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dionb wrote on 2020-08-18, 11:49:

CUBX is a nice board, one of the few So370 FPGA i440BX boards. I had one around 2000 (after my AOpen AX6BC died on me, in retros […]
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CUBX is a nice board, one of the few So370 FPGA i440BX boards. I had one around 2000 (after my AOpen AX6BC died on me, in retrospect probaby of capacitor plague). I initally ran it on my Celeron 366 (@456MHz), later when I could afford it, upgraded to P3-700E. Tried clocking to 933MHz but failed. Probably CPU limitation as it was a very early stepping.

In any event, I'd say it's an excellent choice for any 100MHz FSB P3, and a potentially decent choice for 133MHz too. Don't worry too much about AGP overclocking, most of the cards you would want to use can handle the higher speed easily. Also note that the VGA core/GPU has its own clock, so you're not overclocking that.

But... is it any better than any similar Slot 1 board with a slocket? Not really. Asus used good caps in CUBX, but apart from that it's hardly different to say the P3B-F. The extra IDE controller is a bit of a gimmick, and using it increases boot times. With much newer HDDs it would speed up transfers, but it does nothing for latency, so it's not like you'll really notice the faster performance.

If you can get one cheap, by all means do, but don't overspend.

regarding the IDE controller, the boot is still fast, it feels like it takes a couple of seconds additional with it enabled which is pretty fast as far as these sort of thing go and the overall boot time,
the benefit I agree is in reality questionable at best, ata33 is plenty for windows98, but it works, I'm using a 5400RPM HD from 2003 right now with it and it exceeds 33MB/s (at least on the fastest part of the drive), and it can do over 75MB/s buffered read

edit: test result on aida, it's the same hard drive and software just using the Promise ata 100 port and the chipset ata 33 one, clear advantage IMO, and it would be even better with a 7200RPM drive,

ata100.JPG
ata33.JPG

Thanks for the tests, that's interesting actually, I'd expect it to be the other way around but I guess not.

I do find on-board solutions a bit gimmicky 99% of the time so I'd rather have a dedicated add-in card that I "know" will have proper driver support instead of on the whims of the motherboard manufacturer.

Lol glad that you came to your senses. When I read the thread I was like wow. This guy going to spend a lot of money for this build, and refuse sensible advice, becasue he wants it period correct. Thats why I came off that way.

Foreals tho, get voodoo 3 if you can, they are way more reasonable than a 5500, and they can run any glide game with good FPS. Get a reasonable 440BX board. It doesn't have to be the most famous BX board. Just check that it can run a 1ghz cpu. Not all of them have the multipliers and the Bios. Put 512 Megs of ram in it. And find yourself a couple sound cards. It does not have to be a AWE64 gold. I would recommend an AWE32 a certain model can be flashed to a awe64. Read up on that. And get yourself a Audigy on the side for windows or somthing. Alternatively. Get a geforce 2-3-4 and a Voodoo 2 on the side for the couple glide games you might play.

As far as add on cards for the HDD. There is particular Silicon image sata cards that support 98se. Dont be a fool and trying to be period correct with your storage. And then plug a SSD into it. If you are intrested Ill find the thread that gives the bios and drivers for those cards and help you find the right one.

Warlord wrote on 2020-08-19, 13:59:

Lol glad that you came to your senses. When I read the thread I was like wow. This guy going to spend a lot of money for this build, and refuse sensible advice, becasue he wants it period correct. Thats why I came off that way.

Foreals tho, get voodoo 3 if you can, they are way more reasonable than a 5500, and they can run any glide game with good FPS. Get a reasonable 440BX board. It doesn't have to be the most famous BX board. Just check that it can run a 1ghz cpu. Not all of them have the multipliers and the Bios. Put 512 Megs of ram in it. And find yourself a couple sound cards. It does not have to be a AWE64 gold. I would recommend an AWE32 a certain model can be flashed to a awe64. Read up on that. And get yourself a Audigy on the side for windows or somthing. Alternatively. Get a geforce 2-3-4 and a Voodoo 2 on the side for the couple glide games you might play.

As far as add on cards for the HDD. There is particular Silicon image sata cards that support 98se. Dont be a fool and trying to be period correct with your storage. And then plug a SSD into it. If you are intrested Ill find the thread that gives the bios and drivers for those cards and help you find the right one.

Ah fair enough, no I was taking all the advice in but I wanted to form a full picture before I pulled the trigger on anything. I noticed for example the CUBX-E is going for ~£450 on ebay and I had a minor heart attack. There was a CUBX-L with ethernet card, gpu, sound card, memory, and cpu going for £120 though and I wanted to see if that was a good deal before buying it. Apparently it was as it sold 8 hours after I put a "watch" on it. There is another one for £150 but that's just a bit outside my price range when the GPU and CPU is unlikely to be something I'd want and would be selling anyway.

While I like the idea of a voodoo 5, you're right. the price is totally off putting considering I'd want to tinker with it. Probably polymod and remove the coolers to use better rated ones with actual TIM instead of the shitey glue they used. The GF2 + voodoo2 is the way I'm leaning now. (SLI if i can fit it too 😉 ). They're still expensive, but not AS so. I can't find a GF2 Ultra for love nor money at the moment though, so I've ordered a GF2 MX as a stand in until I find something better. £9.98 with free shipping.

Don't go period correct storage? Why? SSD feels wrong and I'm not gonna lie, I quite like the wait times. Part of the reason I still game on my 386 Compaq is the noises it makes, and it feels a bit more... zen? Need to wait. Nothing is instant. It's been off for a while though as I don't trust the 30 year old caps in the PSU and I want to recap it before turning it on again. Or is it just the life of the HDDs isn't trustable? And if you recommend Silicon Image over Adaptec, why? I'd like the link to that thread though please.

Here's the REAL Sil3512 Win98 Driver, BIOS and flasher.
flash it as ide
The card I used was a syba 3512 I believe and the bios from the very last comment on the 2nd page b4384.bin, with the driver that vetz linked on the 1st page. Anyways theres 3 types of these kinda cards. Some have internal and e-sata ports, others have 4 ports, but one u want to look for are the ones with only 2 internal sata ports.

Btw I have Adaptec scsi 29160 cards and 29320 etc and plenty of 10k and 15k cheetehs in my stash. And I used them for years, I just wouldn't recommend building with them now. There is reliability issues with spinners, and I getting replacement drives are hard. plus they just are not as fast, cheap, or reliable as sata + ssd.

The good one looks exactly like that picture.

I just had a check, the ebay prices for the motherboard are pure insanity,

Warlord wrote on 2020-08-19, 13:59:

... I would recommend an AWE32 a certain model can be flashed to a awe64. Read up on that. ...

That would be the CT3670...

Vaudane wrote on 2020-08-19, 14:22:

I can't find a GF2 Ultra for love nor money at the moment though, so I've ordered a GF2 MX as a stand in until I find something better. £9.98 with free shipping.

there's one on up for auction on ebay that was listed today. i wont' direct link to it but, if you search for ELSA GLADIAC ULTRA that should do the trick.