RJRC wrote on 2022-06-11, 10:27:

Hello everyone, […]
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Hello everyone,

I got a very clean looking Celeron 300A (SL2WM) off greedbay this week and I was planning to do the overclocking with a piece of tape business. So first I plug it into my board, which is an SE440BX-2 so should support this processor, without the tape, and... nothing. Power supply fan goes round, but no video output and both power and HDD LEDs on on the case. CPU fan silent. Nothing from anywhere else. This happens in both maintenance mode and "normal" mode.

Put the old Pentium 2 Klamath back in, starts no problem. So I know the board works.

I don't have any other Slot 1 boards and in any event the processor I was previously using works every time with that board. So the board is fine.

Have I been sold a bill of goods here?

Without being able to test the Celeron on another board, it's going to be hard to tell.

Maybe someone got carried away with overclocking this legend and it died prematurely?

RJRC wrote on 2022-06-11, 10:27:

Hello everyone, […]
Show full quote

Hello everyone,

I got a very clean looking Celeron 300A (SL2WM) off greedbay this week and I was planning to do the overclocking with a piece of tape business. So first I plug it into my board, which is an SE440BX-2 so should support this processor, without the tape, and... nothing. Power supply fan goes round, but no video output and both power and HDD LEDs on on the case. CPU fan silent. Nothing from anywhere else. This happens in both maintenance mode and "normal" mode.

Put the old Pentium 2 Klamath back in, starts no problem. So I know the board works.

I don't have any other Slot 1 boards and in any event the processor I was previously using works every time with that board. So the board is fine.

Have I been sold a bill of goods here?

Just checking - does the Klamath allow you to select the correct processor speed for the Celeron whilst in the BIOS (in maintenance mode) before you swap processors?

I don't see how that would help. The Klamath is at 300 MHz / 66MHz bus stock, as is the Celeron A prior to the pin taping. So it should drop right in if that was the issue, surely?

I think I've been sold a bill of goods. Negative feedback time.

RJRC wrote on 2022-06-11, 14:43:

I don't see how that would help. The Klamath is at 300 MHz / 66MHz bus stock, as is the Celeron A prior to the pin taping. So it should drop right in if that was the issue, surely?

I think I've been sold a bill of goods. Negative feedback time.

kitten.may.cry wrote on 2022-06-11, 14:47:

RJRC wrote on 2022-06-11, 14:43:

I don't see how that would help. The Klamath is at 300 MHz / 66MHz bus stock, as is the Celeron A prior to the pin taping. So it should drop right in if that was the issue, surely?

I think I've been sold a bill of goods. Negative feedback time.

Spoiler

It's Miller time, my dude.

Ugh. American beer. Like making love in a canoe.

RJRC wrote on 2022-06-11, 16:37:

kitten.may.cry wrote on 2022-06-11, 14:47:

RJRC wrote on 2022-06-11, 14:43:

I don't see how that would help. The Klamath is at 300 MHz / 66MHz bus stock, as is the Celeron A prior to the pin taping. So it should drop right in if that was the issue, surely?

I think I've been sold a bill of goods. Negative feedback time.

Spoiler

It's Miller time, my dude.

Ugh. American beer. Like making love in a canoe.

I would make sure the contacts are 100% clean. I had an Asus 370DL slocket I picked up cheap that didnt want to work at all, I looked closely at the slot 1 contact pins on it and they looked clean. I tried my other 370DL in that board and it worked fine... I tried a regular slot 1 processor and it also worked fine. I cleaned the 1st 370DL slot 1 contact pins with 99% alcohol and it still didnt work, I then cleaned the same pins with contact cleaner and it still wouldnt work. I got annoyed and was just about to ask for a refund and then I decided to try cleaning the contacts with a quality soft art eraser and magically it started working perfectly.

Just like making love in a canoe sometimes it just takes the proper rubbing in all the right places to get things going magically.....

I will give that a go. However I had such a faff changing it all back over to the Klamath and my Rage 128 deciding to give beepcodes (that was fixed by taking it out and putting it back in again) and then the monitor having a foldover (which corrected self after a few power cycles) I'll leave it for today.

And American beer is like making love in a canoe because it's fucking close to water.

Speaking of 300A, are these things getting pretty hard to find? I spent months trying to find a boxed version of it (SL32A). I finally found one from an Australian seller, and the S-code wasn't indicated in the listing--it was just a come-along-with on a motherboard and I guessed correctly that is was SL32A.

Yes they are getting hard to find OR those that have them want rediculous price for them

RJRC wrote on 2022-06-11, 18:33:

And American beer is like making love in a canoe because it's fucking close to water.

What country are you from ? Not all American beer is like water, that is why the "micro brewers" here have become quite popular though any beer with ABV of greater than around 8% by most brewers including those from the Euro market (we have some good import markets with beers from all over the world in my area) taste nasty and smell like the ISO alcohol I use to clean my computer parts 🤣 ...just my opinion ;p
added: If you drink things like this: https://manofmany.com/lifestyle/snake-venom-w … st-beer-675-abv then either you are an alcoholic or just dumb, sorry just my opinion again Hahaaa.

Horun wrote on 2022-06-12, 03:29:

Yes they are getting hard to find OR those that have them want rediculous price for them […]
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Yes they are getting hard to find OR those that have them want rediculous price for them

RJRC wrote on 2022-06-11, 18:33:

And American beer is like making love in a canoe because it's fucking close to water.

What country are you from ? Not all American beer is like water, that is why the "micro brewers" here have become quite popular though any beer with ABV of greater than around 8% by most brewers including those from the Euro market (we have some good import markets with beers from all over the world in my area) taste nasty and smell like the ISO alcohol I use to clean my computer parts 🤣 ...just my opinion ;p
added: If you drink things like this: https://manofmany.com/lifestyle/snake-venom-w … st-beer-675-abv then either you are an alcoholic or just dumb, sorry just my opinion again Hahaaa.

Not strictly American, but North American : https://www.unibroue.com/en-ca/beers/classics … la-fin-du-monde

This is one of my favorites .

It definitely does not taste like water and I do not (yet) consider myself an alcoholic.

The 67.5% stuff, however, is, IMHO, taking it a few steps too far.

More on topic, the 300A was nice at the time. I had one and actually had a plain 300 before that (and even a DOA 266 with defective L1 cache before that). Both of the 300Mhz ones were stable at 450Mhz.

IMHO, nowadays, there isn't much of a point in hunting fown a 300A as there are much cheaper, faster and reliable (as in haven't been overclocked to hell and back 20 years ago) slot 1 and socket 370 CPUs. The 300A ship sailed a long time ago, you just had to be there at the time (I will never see a live Beatles or Queen concert or Monty Python show, but I mostly got over it).

Just my 2 cents worth of an opinion.

darry wrote on 2022-06-12, 04:05:

Not strictly American, but North American : https://www.unibroue.com/en-ca/beers/classics … la-fin-du-monde […]
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Not strictly American, but North American : https://www.unibroue.com/en-ca/beers/classics … la-fin-du-monde

This is one of my favorites .

It definitely does not taste like water and I do not (yet) consider myself an alcoholic.

The 67.5% stuff, however, is, IMHO, taking it a few steps too far.

More on topic, the 300A was nice at the time. I had one and actually had a plain 300 before that (and even a DOA 266 with defective L1 cache before that). Both of the 300Mhz ones were stable at 450Mhz.

IMHO, nowadays, there isn't much of a point in hunting fown a 300A as there are much cheaper, faster and reliable (as in haven't been overclocked to hell and back 20 years ago) slot 1 and socket 370 CPUs. The 300A ship sailed a long time ago, you just had to be there at the time (I will never see a live Beatles or Queen concert or Monty Python show, but I mostly got over it).

Just my 2 cents worth of an opinion.

That sounds good ! I know Canada does make some very good beers. Am more partial to something like Labatts or St Paulie Girl just because with something like spicy pizza or hispanic foods is nice to wash down with a lessor alcohol content so do not have to grab water to kill the heat ;p. I did see Queen on their Bicycle tour in Portland, Oregon decades ago (1982), was one of the best concerts for the money ever saw. They played for near 3 hours by them selves. Long time ago...back when live concerts were really good ! Went with my GF of the time, my sis and her husband. Thanks for bringing back some good memories ! Wish you could have seen them back then, they were truly awesum !
Yeah gave up on buying certain CPU's just because of the OC factor because as you said there are much cheaper and better cpu's out there...sorry for going OT but sometimes we have experiences that transcend and/or explain our vintage curiosity 😀

Horun wrote on 2022-06-12, 03:29:

Yes they are getting hard to find OR those that have them want rediculous price for them […]
Show full quote

Yes they are getting hard to find OR those that have them want rediculous price for them

RJRC wrote on 2022-06-11, 18:33:

And American beer is like making love in a canoe because it's fucking close to water.

What country are you from ? Not all American beer is like water, that is why the "micro brewers" here have become quite popular though any beer with ABV of greater than around 8% by most brewers including those from the Euro market (we have some good import markets with beers from all over the world in my area) taste nasty and smell like the ISO alcohol I use to clean my computer parts 🤣 ...just my opinion ;p
added: If you drink things like this: https://manofmany.com/lifestyle/snake-venom-w … st-beer-675-abv then either you are an alcoholic or just dumb, sorry just my opinion again Hahaaa.

I paid £23.50 + postage for mine. Had a cooler on it. From a Polish seller called Apress. Well packed and in a static bag, and with a very clean looking board and cooler on it. Described as "seller refurbished." Which was explained as being tested and working.

The reason I want to get hold of one is because I've got this Youtube channel that I want to do planned about retro stuff and one thing I want to do is a retrospective on the 300A. The plan was, benchmark it at stock clocks against the Klamath 300 and then against a Pentium III Katmai at 450MHz. This is the reason I went with a Win95 build for my retro battlestation, because I can do stuff comfortably up to 2000 or so in Win9x while at the same time having enough backward compatibility to run DOS stuff as well. And I always found Win98 very bloated when using it round a friend's who had it.

When I had such a system the first time round I had to share it with my parents and they get very angry if I was accused of "fiddling" with the hardware to make stuff work and had to fix it by boot disking or safe moding. And of course if something broke just because, like once when I was playing Torment and it crashed and the crash took out a key Windows file somehow, it was of course my fault for "fiddling." This meant there were several games that I never got working at the time for various reasons and only played later when Dosbox came along.

(I am rediscovering that hell is a game that requires 590KB conventional memory plus EMS, but it is a strangely enjoyable hell. Step forward, Darklands. I've got it to the point where I can double click Darkland.exe in Windows and it'll work but the digital sound won't.)

As for beer, I'm from the UK. Regrettably (shudder) lager is everywhere but most towns have their own breweries and local stuff. Just like France has 500 types of cheese, we have 500 types of beer. Though I don't really drink any more to be fair because addictive personality, ex who was an alcoholic and it ruined her life, and on reflection I was on the cusp of being a problem drinker during my student days. I would drink alone in my room and only alcoholics drink alone.

I never bothered with the Celeron 300A. All the jerks who worked in the shops would overclock the CPUs to find out which ones were good, and keep the best ones for themselves (leaving the crap for suckers like me to buy). I also never had good luck overclocking in general. I had a friend who bought one though, and his didn't do 450 reliably.

Horun wrote on 2022-06-12, 03:29:

What country are you from ? Not all American beer is like water, that is why the "micro brewers" here have become quite popular...

Perhaps American micro brews are not water, but they're also not very refined. Big thumbs down to unconventional flavour infusions.
This topic probably deserves its own thread. Of course, it'll become a flame war, and I'll probably get kicked off VOGONS.

What BIOS version are you running on your SE440BX-2 ? I remember some having problems with certain cpu's on certain Intel boards that were running the latest bios... doubt that is the problem but could be...

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2022-06-12, 13:42:

I never bothered with the Celeron 300A. All the jerks who worked in the shops would overclock the CPUs to find out which ones were good, and keep the best ones for themselves (leaving the crap for suckers like me to buy). I also never had good luck overclocking in general. I had a friend who bought one though, and his didn't do 450 reliably.

Ha. That's why I was so hell-bent on getting the SL32A version. Probably just an old wives tale, but back in the day, people said the retail versions got better/cherry-picked silicon vs. the tray versions. It's kind of silly to think they would do that on the budget Celeron line, but it's always been in the back of my mind.

Personally, I’ve never encountered a Celeron 300A that doesn’t do 450 MHz. Some might need a slight voltage bump, though (in which case the motherboard is also important, since not all motherboards offer voltage fine tuning).

Another thing to keep in mind regarding overclocking (which is not specific to the Celeron 300A, but I’ve also seen this behavior with it as well): some CPUs will be unstable when overclocked on certain motherboards, while also being completely stable on others. The reason for this is that some motherboards provide a slightly lower or higher default voltage. Like, in the case of the 300A, one motherboard might provide somewhere around 1.98V, while another one might go as high as 2.03V by default (which might be enough for a certain CPU to become stable when overclocked, without actually needing to manually raise the voltage).
This behavior might even be linked to aging motherboard VRM capacitors having increased ESR and voltage drop.

Horun wrote on 2022-06-12, 13:51:

What BIOS version are you running on your SE440BX-2 ? I remember some having problems with certain cpu's on certain Intel boards that were running the latest bios... doubt that is the problem but could be...

POST screen says it's Phoenix BIOS 4.0 Release 6.0.

Uhhh what I need is the code when you enter the BIOS (F2) look for 4S4EB2X0.86A and below it there should be something like 0024 with a P## (## = 1 thru 17)

There's nothing in the latest P17 BIOS release notes re. issues with this cpu - infact it was supported literally out of the (first) box with version P01 so cant see that having changed.