Never experienced it and I use ME 99% of the times when i build Win9X systems. If you have tested different mobos with different install of WinME then by logic, the issue is following your Voodoo 3 card? What happens if you use another GPU or a PCI NIC?

Well, Windows Millennium introduced Universal Plug&Play,
a set of protocols intended for making configuration of network device more user-friendly.

https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/html_single/Plug-a … y-HOWTO/#ss11.1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Plug_and_Play

Maybe that's causing some auto-probing in background which in turn might be causing the frame drops, not sure.
Perhaps it's also related to the differences of the network stack itself..
Windows 98 had a more traditional network stack, whereas Windows Me got some upgrades from Windows 2000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Me#Netw … ng_technologies
Edit: Typos fixed.

Interesting. I'll try to disable upnp and other network features that i don't need

You may also try to switch the 3COM 3C905-TX-M LAN to another PCI slot for on your mainboard.
Maybe the network card shares some system resources with the AGP card or the Sound Blaser Live! Value.

(It is worth mentioning, that the issue could also be caused by the Sound Blaser Live! Card and the Network card just "suffers" from it.
Try to remove the Sound Blaser Live! temporarily and see if the FPS drops still occur.)

My BF6 has quite problematic PCI slots. Some general things though - you should not use the PCI slot below AGP unless you are not using AGP (it shares resources with AGP), and the 6th PCI slot can not busmaster so is only good for some cards like a Voodoo1/2 (this is a 440BX limitation).

Strangely I seem to have the best luck with sound cards by putting them in the PCI slot that shares IRQ with USB. 3rd or 4th slot down.

Another thing - you might find that Win2k/XP work with a certain card order while Win9x OSs freeze or BSOD.

Really you are just experiencing the "good old days" of more flaky buses, chipsets, cards, OSs, and drivers.

Your BF6 is also almost certainly loaded with defective capacitors. I recapped mine.

Jo22 wrote:

Well, Windows Millennium introduced Universal Plug&Play, a set of protocols intended for making configuration of network device […]
Show full quote

Well, Windows Millennium introduced Universal Plug&Play,
a set of protocols intended for making configuration of network device more user-friendly.

https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/html_single/Plug-a … y-HOWTO/#ss11.1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Plug_and_Play

Maybe that's causing some auto-probing in background which in turn might be causing the frame drops, not sure.
Perhaps it's also related to the differences of the network stack itself..
Windows 98 had a more traditional network stack, whereas Windows Me got some upgrades from Windows 2000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Me#Netw … ng_technologies
Edit: Typos fixed.

Thanks, the problem was the Upnp. I've uninstalled and all goes perfect.
Thanks to all however for support and useful tips.
!!

swaaye wrote:

My BF6 has quite problematic PCI slots. Some general things though - you should not use the PCI slot below AGP unless you are no […]
Show full quote

My BF6 has quite problematic PCI slots. Some general things though - you should not use the PCI slot below AGP unless you are not using AGP (it shares resources with AGP), and the 6th PCI slot can not busmaster so is only good for some cards like a Voodoo1/2 (this is a 440BX limitation).

Strangely I seem to have the best luck with sound cards by putting them in the PCI slot that shares IRQ with USB. 3rd or 4th slot down.

Another thing - you might find that Win2k/XP work with a certain card order while Win9x OSs freeze or BSOD.

Really you are just experiencing the "good old days" of more flaky buses, chipsets, cards, OSs, and drivers.

Your BF6 is also almost certainly loaded with defective capacitors. I recapped mine.

Slave slot cause me problems with every card...me too had SBLive share IRQ with USB, HPT370A and LAN with nothing. AGP nothing. All works well. Capicitors aren't a problem, motherboard is new, was a old stock in storage ebay (luck, only 20€ for a new BF6!!)
When i was very young i had a BE6 1st revision, and i wait 20 years to buy a similar

ME does seem to work better with networking.

Do you remember that company that made a network card with a CPU and OS to remove the CPU overhead on game machines? PCI network cards were around a long time and some off brand ones probably had shitty chips and bad drivers causing more overhead then good cards. You could also have PCI network issues between two cards fighting over bandwidth (it is shared).