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Reply 240 of 344, by mockingbird

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Good news!

I swapped the Barton XP-M 2400+ in my KT7A with a Barton XP-M 2500+ datecode 0336, and Flatout2 is now perfectly stable (same speed as before, 2133Mhz, 1.55~ volts)... I was able to complete the Desert Oilfield track without the game exiting suddenly... And I'm getting pretty good at it too... Scored 3/8.

I used a single-sided 256MB PC133 module... The KT7A is picky with memory modules, so find something it likes.

Yay!

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Reply 241 of 344, by mockingbird

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Well, My Biostar M7VKD Revision 1.0 does not post with anything newer than a Palomino. OTOH, I have read a report of a board working with Thoroughbred.

So maybe this was something that was fixed with Revision 1.2.

Well, that's odd!

On a hunch, I altered my pin mod on my M7VKD to reflect a change from 15x multiplier to 16x, put in my Desktop Barton 2800+, and it works perfectly... The first boot showed "unknown CPU type", but after a BIOS save, everything looks ok.

I tried Flatout2, and it ran perfectly. I finished the lap without issue.

I am quite pleased with this board. Has a lot of stuff to unhide in the BIOS editor to increase performance as well.

All-in-all, nice little board, and easiest of all to re-cap (only 7 6.3mm caps... All the rest were 10mm and 8mm).

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Reply 243 of 344, by Falcosoft

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JSO wrote on 2022-05-17, 08:31:

Any mod to bios to add lower multipliers?

2x, 2.5x, 3x, 3.5x?

SocketA Athlons have a minimum multiplier of 5x. You cannot overcome this limit with BIOS mods.

http://fab51.com/cpu/barton/athlon-e20.html

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Reply 244 of 344, by JSO

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Hmm thanks.

Just wondering.

I'm pretty happy with my Mobile Athlon 4 cpu.

Throttle, moslo and setmul are working great.

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Reply 245 of 344, by Falcosoft

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JSO wrote on 2022-05-17, 09:33:
Hmm thanks. […]
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Hmm thanks.

Just wondering.

I'm pretty happy with my Mobile Athlon 4 cpu.

Throttle, moslo and setmul are working great.

Some corrections: In case of mobile Athlons 3x and 4x multipliers also seem to be valid but they can be set only at runtime/on the fly not from desktop motherboard's BIOS.
http://fab51.com/cpu/barton/athlon-e24.html

If you want somewhat even lower CPU clock you can try VIAFSB. in case of the KT7A it can set 90MHz FSB on the fly from DOS if you set the base clock to 100/33 in BIOS.
VIAFSB - DOS FSB utility for VIA chipsets

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Reply 246 of 344, by mockingbird

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Falcosoft wrote on 2022-05-17, 09:39:

Some corrections: In case of mobile Athlons 3x and 4x multipliers also seem to be valid but they can be set only at runtime/on the fly not from desktop motherboard's BIOS.
http://fab51.com/cpu/barton/athlon-e24.html

I can confirm, 3x multiplier is definitely possible with SETMUL:

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Also, the Biostar M7VKD already has the correct register set for SETMUL adjustments in their latest BIOS.

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Reply 248 of 344, by mockingbird

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ptr1ck wrote on 2022-05-17, 22:41:

mockingbird, do you know if modbin is capable of making the adjustments for SETMUL?

Yes, I think so:

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Alt+T then select 'Chipset Regs. Default'.

Thing is, I'm pretty sure it's entry "oo55" that needs to be altered, but I don't know how to alter it (or rather - I am able to modify it, but I don't know what to modify it to).

If you care to try, I'm happy to test it for you, because I have a first-gen TL866, so a mis-flash would be inconsequential.

Oddly enough, my M7VKD BIOS has no "0055" entry here at all... Another issue I was having with the M7VKD was it not always posting, and sometimes when it posts it shows a different BIOS than the one I flashed (I know when the correct BIOS loads, because the Bios Patcher text shows... When the phantom stock Biostar BIOS loads, it shows unknown CPU... That said, when it does usually post, the system runs perfectly fine -- still, I would hesitate to use this model on a regular basis).

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Reply 249 of 344, by ptr1ck

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I've got spare BIOS for my Iwill KK266+ now. I may try this out.
I posted about it here and didn't get any bites. I will follow up in that thread if I do.

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Reply 250 of 344, by mockingbird

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ptr1ck wrote on 2022-05-18, 02:05:

I've got spare BIOS for my Iwill KK266+ now. I may try this out.
I posted about it here and didn't get any bites. I will follow up in that thread if I do.

I have a good KK266+ as well... I can test that for you if you want... Please post it in your thread.

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Reply 251 of 344, by Falcosoft

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mockingbird wrote on 2022-05-18, 01:37:

Alt+T then select 'Chipset Regs. Default'.

Thing is, I'm pretty sure it's entry "oo55" that needs to be altered, but I don't know how to alter it (or rather - I am able to modify it, but I don't know what to modify it to).
...

I do not know the reason but according to your modbin screenshot the proper bit cannot be edited.
Based on this description
(https://web.archive.org/web/20170822100906/ht … html/Tweaks.htm)
you should set "reg. 55, bit 2 = 1".
Since there is also a part where it mentions that for AMD chipsets you should set "reg. 44, bit 0 = 1" we can be sure that it counts the bits of a register from 0 to 7. Which means that bit 2 is at the 3rd position counting from right. But there is a big "X" there (that means it"s not editable I think).

I have just checked and you can freely modify reg. 55, bit 2 at run time on KT133A

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Reply 252 of 344, by mockingbird

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Falcosoft wrote on 2022-05-18, 07:21:

I do not know the reason but according to your modbin screenshot the proper bit cannot be edited.
<snip>

AWDBEDIT seems to be able to make this modification:

registers2.png
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But I can't figure out the correct Register Mask and Value combination that would get me 0000 0100 0000 0100 or "0000 1101" in short form...

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Reply 253 of 344, by Radical Vision

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Interesting choice of motherboard.. ON + side you can use any ISA audio card you want.. Better board will be one of the dual socket 462 boards, but they lack the ISA slot sadly.
The system look nice, but the case and PSU are too new for my personal taste, id pick some older black case like the ones IBM have Intellistation, and for PSU some EnermaX or older SeaSonic.

looking4awayout wrote on 2019-06-19, 15:25:
Why using an outdated version of Firefox (48) when you can use Roytam1's Firefox 45 ESR SSE which has better support, it has TLS […]
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cde- wrote:

At first I thought browsing the web with this machine would be impossible, but in fact it is possible with the trick of using an old version of Firefox that does not require SSE2 (48 or below I believe) plus the noscript and ublock origin add-ons. addons.mozilla.org does not keep versions of addons that are more that a couple years since they made changes to the addon API. Fortunately old add-ons versions can be found on legacycollector.org (I presently use noscript-2.9.0.14.xpi and ublock-origin-1.9.16.xpi). As a matter of fact, I'm posting this on the very PC I'm describing.

In conclusion, this was a triumph. I'm making a note here, huge success! It's hard to overstate my satisfaction 😀

Why using an outdated version of Firefox (48) when you can use Roytam1's Firefox 45 ESR SSE which has better support, it has TLS 1.3 and webp implementations and has several more updates backported from newer versions of Firefox? I use an overclocked P3 Tualatin as my main machine and I can tell you that 45 ESR SSE coupled with uBlock Origin 1.10.0, NoScript 2.9.0.1 RC1, Bluhell Firewall, Classic Theme Restorer 1.2.9 and the UOC Patch, make it very fast and usable. With the YT2Player plugin, you can even watch Youtube videos in VLC.

If you haven't heard about it, the UOC Patch is a patch I made myself to optimize Firefox and other Mozilla based browsers in order to run as good as possible on old machines. You can find more info about the patch here:

https://msfn.org/board/topic/178306-experimen … r-old-machines/

While you can find more info about Firefox 45 ESR SSE here:

https://msfn.org/board/topic/177125-my-build- … -targetting-xp/

If I can use a Tualatin as a daily driver, you can too... Although if you want your system to perform as fast as possible with the UOC Patch, you'll need a DirectX 9 capable graphics card, such as the Geforce 6800GT.

Hmmm i find what u say very very interesting... I did use for some time my Barton system for daily driver back in 2017, it did work fine with some special programs. Like K-melon browser, and some old chromium chrome based browser patched one i think.. Overall using old systems such as urs or mine needs special software.. I did use VLC by putting URLs into the player some did work others no. I guess if i put enough time into looking for softwares i will find many that will work on these old systems. https://valid.x86.fr/9s6qlr ____ https://valid.x86.fr/j8sxn1
Some stuff like skype even patched dont work very well, as for daily driver you need to have some chat program that works.. Or maybe use facebook messenger, but that site did not work very good on the K-Melon or the patched chromium..

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W3680 4.5/ GA-x58 UD7/ R9 280x
K7 2.6/ NF7-S/ HD3850
IBM x2 P3 933/ GA-6VXD7/ Voodoo V 5.5K
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Reply 254 of 344, by ptr1ck

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mockingbird wrote on 2022-05-18, 15:24:
AWDBEDIT seems to be able to make this modification: […]
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Falcosoft wrote on 2022-05-18, 07:21:

I do not know the reason but according to your modbin screenshot the proper bit cannot be edited.
<snip>

AWDBEDIT seems to be able to make this modification:

registers2.png

But I can't figure out the correct Register Mask and Value combination that would get me 0000 0100 0000 0100 or "0000 1101" in short form...

The binary map looks like the same values as modbin with the bit showing X. I also want to make it clear that I'm not sure what I'm looking at. 🤓

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Reply 255 of 344, by JSO

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I tried the Japanese modded bioses.

With the first one ACPI always gets IRQ 7 and I have issues with the Orpheus Soundcard, with the other patched, always works as the latest official, I will check the modded one by mockingbird user and the ACPI disabling selection.

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Reply 256 of 344, by JSO

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mockingbird wrote on 2022-01-23, 20:46:
cde wrote on 2022-01-23, 11:20:
mockingbird wrote on 2022-01-23, 04:36:

Look for "kt7_3c.bin" on that page, he refers to it as "last low temperature official BIOS", that means to say, the last BIOS that reports the temperature correctly and does not have Abit's ACPI "fix". To expose enabling/disabling ACPI, you need to open the file in a bios editor and unhide the option. I may be able to upload this if you can't do it yourself.

Many thanks! Could you kindly share your BIOS patcher? So, this will only work with KT7A 1.1 or 1.3?

Yes, this is for the 1.0-1.2, he also has the 1.3 BIOS there... I don't know the intricacies so much of that board revision, though I will attach my modified version of his BIOS to unhide APM (disable ACPI). I did this with modbin63, and I can't share that here, you will have to find it yourself. As for which patcher he uses, he just ran it through BP 4.23, which adds microcode and some other fixes (but removes 8x8 pixel support, or something like that, according to the report of a user here).

Thanks for the modification!!!

Now with ACPI disabled I have one IRQ resource more free!!!

DOS IS THE POWER OF OUR CHILDHOOD MEMORIES!

Reply 257 of 344, by mockingbird

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mockingbird wrote on 2022-05-15, 17:03:
Good news! […]
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Good news!

I swapped the Barton XP-M 2400+ in my KT7A with a Barton XP-M 2500+ datecode 0336, and Flatout2 is now perfectly stable (same speed as before, 2133Mhz, 1.55~ volts)... I was able to complete the Desert Oilfield track without the game exiting suddenly... And I'm getting pretty good at it too... Scored 3/8.

I used a single-sided 256MB PC133 module... The KT7A is picky with memory modules, so find something it likes.

Yay!

I'm pretty sure I've traced down the Flatout2 instability to a setting in the KT7A's BIOS called "Enhance Chip Performance" under the "Softmenu III" category... I had to clear the CMOS on this board recently because I was experimenting with different heatsinks and CPUs, and the problem came back. So I started experimenting by enabling/disabling the performance enhancements in the BIOS. With this setting disabled, I completed the Desert Oil Field course without issue.

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Reply 258 of 344, by SETBLASTER

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i own a Abit KT7A, also a Abit KT7 , and also an msi k7t turbo2

im glad i found this thread, only played with the MSI for now. i also have some xp-m processors to play but very little time.
but so far i played only with MSI k7t turbo 2 adding an ISA slot by soldering. SB16 worked fine, can´t remember why i was having problems with setblaster A220 but games worked with A260
i like the msi board because as it has the P4 power connector.

the abit boards are something i will not be touching untill i Recap them with very good cap replacements of quality brand.

Reply 259 of 344, by cde

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mockingbird wrote on 2022-07-15, 01:39:

I'm pretty sure I've traced down the Flatout2 instability to a setting in the KT7A's BIOS called "Enhance Chip Performance" under the "Softmenu III" category... I had to clear the CMOS on this board recently because I was experimenting with different heatsinks and CPUs, and the problem came back. So I started experimenting by enabling/disabling the performance enhancements in the BIOS. With this setting disabled, I completed the Desert Oil Field course without issue.

Very good news! I did not have issues with Flatout2 with the defaults, but I'll turn it off nonetheless.

SETBLASTER wrote on 2022-07-24, 01:45:
i own a Abit KT7A, also a Abit KT7 , and also an msi k7t turbo2 […]
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i own a Abit KT7A, also a Abit KT7 , and also an msi k7t turbo2

im glad i found this thread, only played with the MSI for now. i also have some xp-m processors to play but very little time.
but so far i played only with MSI k7t turbo 2 adding an ISA slot by soldering. SB16 worked fine, can´t remember why i was having problems with setblaster A220 but games worked with A260
i like the msi board because as it has the P4 power connector.

the abit boards are something i will not be touching untill i Recap them with very good cap replacements of quality brand.

All of the abit boards I tested (Athlon but also Pentium III) had some defective capacitors. Due to the electronics supply issue, it was sometimes difficult to source replacements. You either have to wait for digikey/mouser/farnell resupply, go to the eBay route (with a higher chance of subpar capacitors) or buy from a 3rd party like badcaps.net