1. the original cap is trash and you should replace it first. I remember that one cap between pci slot having silkscreen print wrong so take note of the original cap orientation
2. the board only support 1Ghz unless you are mod the socket or using the interposer for 1.4

that board is pretty much the bog standard via 694 mainboard i guess.

Dual 1GHZ PIII in XP would be faster than many P4 SKUs.

I built up a similar board from Gigabyte just to try running things on a Pentium 3 that don't make sense. Dual CPUs and 2GB RAM helped with that. So it was fine for screwing around awhile, but I didn't keep using it long.
For an actual practical system, yeah it might be redundant to run WinXP if you already have an AthlonXP for that.
You could use Win2k if you'll only be running things that do make sense on a Pentium 3. Win2k doesn't make it more useful, just more different.

The choice of video and sound cards could give it more distinct purpose from your later system. I notice it has a Universal AGP slot, so a Voodoo3/4/5 could work. I don't know if Voodoo works well on Win2K or XP though. I don't have any experience with them, I just perceive them as being focused on Win9x.
If your later system has a Creative EAX sound card, you could put an Aureal Vortex that supports A3D in this one. But that would also call for Win9x because I don't think they had Win2k drivers.
Alternatively you could use a sound card that has some decent chance of being usable in DOS. ISA is much better for that though, and unfortunately this board doesn't have that.

If you don't already have a Win98 system then this would be very powerful for that, and you could spec the whole build around that period of games. It's just unfortunate that you couldn't use the dual CPU in that case.

There are several (probably identical) caps that appear bulged, probably all of the caps of that type are faulty (even though a few still look normal they might also be bad and shouldn't be trusted).

Its a bit on the basic side as far as dualies go for the P3 but it runs ok.
The socket orientation is one of the best things about it, you can use most coolers on it because they dont overhang each other.

This system isnt for XP/Vista. Win2k/XP if you push it but Win2k will run smooth.
The 1400 P3 wont run on it, they made a different board after the update to Tualatin core.

a paid of 1GHz P3s will run well, I have some running as servers on the "retro" side of my LAN... Its Retro in that its all old hardware that only does hobby related stuff, nothing modern or to do with my business etc, but its still reliable after all these years.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-03-16, 22:54:

Its a bit on the basic side as far as dualies go for the P3 but it runs ok. The socket orientation is one of the best things abo […]
Show full quote

Its a bit on the basic side as far as dualies go for the P3 but it runs ok.
The socket orientation is one of the best things about it, you can use most coolers on it because they dont overhang each other.

This system isnt for XP/Vista. Win2k/XP if you push it but Win2k will run smooth.
The 1400 P3 wont run on it, they made a different board after the update to Tualatin core.

a paid of 1GHz P3s will run well, I have some running as servers on the "retro" side of my LAN... Its Retro in that its all old hardware that only does hobby related stuff, nothing modern or to do with my business etc, but its still reliable after all these years.

XP will run just fine.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-03-16, 22:54:

Its a bit on the basic side as far as dualies go for the P3 but it runs ok. The socket orientation is one of the best things abo […]
Show full quote

Its a bit on the basic side as far as dualies go for the P3 but it runs ok.
The socket orientation is one of the best things about it, you can use most coolers on it because they dont overhang each other.

This system isnt for XP/Vista. Win2k/XP if you push it but Win2k will run smooth.
The 1400 P3 wont run on it, they made a different board after the update to Tualatin core.

a paid of 1GHz P3s will run well, I have some running as servers on the "retro" side of my LAN... Its Retro in that its all old hardware that only does hobby related stuff, nothing modern or to do with my business etc, but its still reliable after all these years.

As @kingcake said, XP runs just fine.
I have the 694D Pro-AR (which is what the board design for the Pro2 seems to have been based off) w/ 2x 1GHz Coppermines, a 9600 Pro 128MB and 2x 10K HDDs (74GB Raptor SATA2IDE + 36GB Cheetah), as well as 1.5GB RAM.
That thing runs on par with my ABIT NF7 + Athlon XP 2800+ w/ 160GB Seagate HDD - the only issue is if I want to replace the GPU - a 9700 Pro will crash on it, but run just fine on the NF7.

I also have 2x ABIT VP6s on the way, and might test them out against the 694D Pro-AR, assuming I can get both VP6s to POST.

XP (SP2) run just fine on this board.

my friend did use this board + dual 1Ghz p3 in 2005 until we graduate and it served us well
the graphics card is geforce 256, it not super fast but good enough to play some light game

It flies with a Radeon 9600 as well - just watch out on the IRQs, as I've had quite a big headache with them.

kingcake wrote on 2024-03-16, 23:01:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-03-16, 22:54:

Its a bit on the basic side as far as dualies go for the P3 but it runs ok. The socket orientation is one of the best things abo […]
Show full quote

Its a bit on the basic side as far as dualies go for the P3 but it runs ok.
The socket orientation is one of the best things about it, you can use most coolers on it because they dont overhang each other.

This system isnt for XP/Vista. Win2k/XP if you push it but Win2k will run smooth.
The 1400 P3 wont run on it, they made a different board after the update to Tualatin core.

a paid of 1GHz P3s will run well, I have some running as servers on the "retro" side of my LAN... Its Retro in that its all old hardware that only does hobby related stuff, nothing modern or to do with my business etc, but its still reliable after all these years.

XP will run just fine.

I did mean more Vista than XP but the hardware is suited to XP of course, I much prefer to run Win2k on my dual P3 systems. I run NT4 on one of them and that is solid as a rock. Its uptime was only interrupted because of energy costs last year.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-03-16, 23:19:

As @kingcake said, XP runs just fine. I have the 694D Pro-AR (which is what the board design for the Pro2 seems to have been ba […]
Show full quote

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-03-16, 22:54:

Its a bit on the basic side as far as dualies go for the P3 but it runs ok. The socket orientation is one of the best things abo […]
Show full quote

Its a bit on the basic side as far as dualies go for the P3 but it runs ok.
The socket orientation is one of the best things about it, you can use most coolers on it because they dont overhang each other.

This system isnt for XP/Vista. Win2k/XP if you push it but Win2k will run smooth.
The 1400 P3 wont run on it, they made a different board after the update to Tualatin core.

a paid of 1GHz P3s will run well, I have some running as servers on the "retro" side of my LAN... Its Retro in that its all old hardware that only does hobby related stuff, nothing modern or to do with my business etc, but its still reliable after all these years.

As @kingcake said, XP runs just fine.
I have the 694D Pro-AR (which is what the board design for the Pro2 seems to have been based off) w/ 2x 1GHz Coppermines, a 9600 Pro 128MB and 2x 10K HDDs (74GB Raptor SATA2IDE + 36GB Cheetah), as well as 1.5GB RAM.
That thing runs on par with my ABIT NF7 + Athlon XP 2800+ w/ 160GB Seagate HDD - the only issue is if I want to replace the GPU - a 9700 Pro will crash on it, but run just fine on the NF7.

I also have 2x ABIT VP6s on the way, and might test them out against the 694D Pro-AR, assuming I can get both VP6s to POST.

See above.

What is the IO for that Raptor without the IDE adapter on it? and how does it rate to the Cheetah?

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-03-17, 18:39:

What is the IO for that Raptor without the IDE adapter on it? and how does it rate to the Cheetah?

Ran it for a few months on a Manchester core A64 X2 4600+ 939. Slow and sluggish for whatever reason, even a 160GB Caviar of that period outperformed it.

It runs on par with the Cheetah speed wise when paired with the IDE adapter.

Yeah that was my impression of the Raptors as well.
I didnt think the performance was all that great considering the massive cost at the time.

I did have two of them but Im not quite sure what I ended up doing with them. I think they went as the boot drive in a dual Nocona core Xeon system I sold a few years ago. Which just goes to show what I thought it them really 🙁

That is a cool board! Great for XP or Win2k. It would be a shame to run 1 cpu with Win98 on it

Really interesting board! It seems to have the same chipset as my Abit VH6T which is rock-solid and one of my favorite boards.
There was one of these on eBay for 100€, so I just ordered that one! 😀

I wonder if it'll work with my Tualatin 1.4GHz with a coppermine adapter. I only have one of them, though...

The universal, non-keyed AGP slot is certainly a plus. I have a few AGP cards that won't fit on my VH6T.

I finally got this board today. It took a month to arrive and the package was soaked by rain - never use Mondial Relay to ship something to Germany.
It miraculously survived, only the vertical battery holder broke off and I'm currently looking for a replacement that will fit.

The first thing I did was measure all of the capacitors. Only two of them were bad. They were 2700uf/6.3V Teapo ("Cheapo") caps which were wildly out of spec:

I replaced them with 3300uf/6.3V ones and they seem to work well. The majority of capacitors are those 4700uF/6.3V ones which all measure in the 5000uf range - the ESR is good though, so I guess on this board they just used capacitors with a very high tolerance:

I also modded a second Tualatin PIII-S 1.4GHz and the board just takes those two CPU's without any problems, even the detection by the BIOS just works.

None of these boards seem to come with backplates (at least the ones currently on eBay all don't). To my surprise, the backplate from an Abit VH6T fits very well, it just has a few more holes because this board doesn't have audio or a Gameport.

Time to run some benchmarks now, I guess!