That's weird, I have a PC Partner with i440LX and in the modded slotket1 (Gigabyte) runs any Coppermine (Both Celeron and Pentium) even without the BIOS update. On the opposite, after editing the BIOS and adding microcode for Coppermines, I have only the black screen, although the board booted in the background. I had to return the original BIOS, so Coppermine CPU doesn't identify correctly and runs at a lower frequency (multiplier x 66-75-83 FSB max), but Windows work and can be installed.

Ydee wrote on 2022-07-31, 09:37:

That's weird, I have a PC Partner with i440LX and in the modded slotket1 (Gigabyte) runs any Coppermine (Both Celeron and Pentium) even without the BIOS update. On the opposite, after editing the BIOS and adding microcode for Coppermines, I have only the black screen, although the board booted in the background. I had to return the original BIOS, so Coppermine CPU doesn't identify correctly and runs at a lower frequency (multiplier x 66-75-83 FSB max), but Windows work and can be installed.

Well, that's reassuring, then it's at least possible to use Coppermines with 440LX 😀

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Tried booting with a POST card installed. It stops at Award POST code 18, "Test 8259 Interrupt Functionality". Guess I'm off trying to figure out if there are any reasons the interrupt controller wouldn't like the Celeron 😜

I am sorry, I have no time for extended testing and now is this mobo in paper box, but quick test I can make. Here you can see, how it boot up with P!!! 800 at 75 MHz FSB (slotket is Gigabyte GA-A7 simple passive slot1 to PPGA adapter, modded for Coppermine core) right now. Some months before I tested it with installation W98SE onto HDD too and it works like charm, but I dont have case for this mobo and HDD is used in another build. So, I can say, that on some mobos with i440LX can Coppermine cores sure work, but as you see, not on every.

In this case, the problem lies in the CPU's detection routine, which simply halts the further progress of POST.

You can use a program called "BIOS patcher", which would insert new CPU detection routines into the original BIOS or you could look for compatible BIOS from other manufacturers, that support coppermine CPUs, or in the worst case, disassemble BIOS and manually include/exclude mentioned routines.

Though I had encountered two major drawbacks when pairing 440LX chipset with coppermine CPUs, first one - incompatibility with Windows NT 5.X OSes (WIn 2k, XP), due to the lack of 440LX SSE support and second - real AGP cards will stop functioning properly, not sure why, though cards which ignore AGP features works fine.

I would just get a Mendocino Celeron 433 and run it at 6.5 x 83 = 540Mhz.

Ydee wrote on 2022-07-31, 13:03:

I am sorry, I have no time for extended testing and now is this mobo in paper box, but quick test I can make. Here you can see, how it boot up with P!!! 800 at 75 MHz FSB (slotket is Gigabyte GA-A7 simple passive slot1 to PPGA adapter, modded for Coppermine core) right now. Some months before I tested it with installation W98SE onto HDD too and it works like charm, but I dont have case for this mobo and HDD is used in another build. So, I can say, that on some mobos with i440LX can Coppermine cores sure work, but as you see, not on every.

Now it works on mine too, see below. Thanks for your effort 😀

SSTV2 wrote on 2022-07-31, 13:06:

In this case, the problem lies in the CPU's detection routine, which simply halts the further progress of POST.

You can use a program called "BIOS patcher", which would insert new CPU detection routines into the original BIOS or you could look for compatible BIOS from other manufacturers, that support coppermine CPUs, or in the worst case, disassemble BIOS and manually include/exclude mentioned routines.

Though I had encountered two major drawbacks when pairing 440LX chipset with coppermine CPUs, first one - incompatibility with Windows NT 5.X OSes (WIn 2k, XP), due to the lack of 440LX SSE support and second - real AGP cards will stop functioning properly, not sure why, though cards which ignore AGP features works fine.

BIOS patcher did the trick! Took a few tries though. The auto patched BIOS wouldn't work, the computer would just reboot after initializing the GPU. Some hotflashing etc involved, and also general hair pulling caused by crashes due to the PII CPU I used when working with this not being properly seated. Thought it was the PLCC BIOS chip first, those can be quite sensitive to deformed/bent pins etc. Finally found a working set of patches by doing it manually, omitting the fixes I didn't explicitly need.

CPU-z reports everything correctly too.

Looks like you were right about the CPU detection routines 😀

The GPU is a Diamond Viper 550, Nvidia TNT. Not sure if it's using any AGP features, or if it's just one of those glorified PCI cards. Seems to work perfectly in any case. Might try with something more recent at some point and see what happens.

AlexZ wrote on 2022-07-31, 13:21:

I would just get a Mendocino Celeron 433 and run it at 6.5 x 83 = 540Mhz.

Oh, well, just playing around some, to see what's possible with this board, and hopefully learn something along the way. Already sorted when it comes to PIII era stuff 😀

It's great to see you got Coppermine Celeron working. In that case I would get a PIII 900E (9x100) and run it at 750Mhz (9x83.3). PIII is much faster than Coppermine Celeron in games, although not so much in synthetic benchmarks.

There exists a 766MHz celeron at 11,5x66, if you want to get very high multiplier and then push the FSB. 😉
I have one and love it.

AlexZ wrote on 2022-07-31, 18:07:

It's great to see you got Coppermine Celeron working. In that case I would get a PIII 900E (9x100) and run it at 750Mhz (9x83.3). PIII is much faster than Coppermine Celeron in games, although not so much in synthetic benchmarks.

GigAHerZ wrote on 2022-07-31, 18:21:

There exists a 766MHz celeron at 11,5x66, if you want to get very high multiplier and then push the FSB. 😉
I have one and love it.

Got a 1.1GHz Coppermine PIII (100*11) I could try out at some point, just for the hell of it 😀

kaputnik wrote on 2022-07-31, 08:55:

Trying to get a FIC VL-601 440LX board to work with a 667MHz Coppermine Celeron

Hello. As there are not reviews of FIC VL-601 over net (at least didn't find any, including Anandtech and Tomshardware, that used to review FIC boards a lot)
I want to ask, how do you set FIC VL-601 FSB, and what overclocking options it has.

I guess, it doesn't have CPU voltage adjustment, as only best Slot 1 boards had that?
Can you set FSB to 75 or 83, through jumpers, or directly in BIOS?