For StarCraft, avoid installing patches which can slow down the game. There is an option to adjust the speed thru a slider.

BTW, looking only at releases dates doesn't represent the computers that consumers actually had in the 90s. Budget-oriented ones didn't have a Pentium II CPU as they were too pricey.

nd22 wrote on 2023-01-27, 07:17:

It entered in my possession a long time ago a socket 7 board - Abit AX5 - which is in ATX form factor, has an Intel 430tx chipse […]
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It entered in my possession a long time ago a socket 7 board - Abit AX5 - which is in ATX form factor, has an Intel 430tx chipset and runs early Pentium up to 233mmx and first generation K6, so no, this is not a super socket 7 board!
Up until this year I did not have the time to test it or to build a system around it but I finally got the time so here it is:
1. Pentium 133 because that is all I could find to test the board as I was unsure if it was working or not.
2. 64mb of RAM on a double sided stick that I was lucky to have - the board is very picky with the ram!
3. Abit AX5
4. matrox millenium 2 8mb wram with very good VGA output but limited to 1280*1024 max resolution
5. WD 6.4gb hdd that is dead slow!
6. creative live sb0060 because all I have are different revisions of Live cards and nothing else.
7. corsair PSU
8. IDE CDROM
9. Intel stock cooler that is incredible noisy!
10. realtek 8139 NIC
I installed Windows 98SE from cd, chipset drivers from www.soggi.org, matrox drivers form the official website, creative drivers from Phils website and realtek drivers from www.soggi.org, however the performance was very poor, it took ages to run simple games such as Panzer General 2 - scrolling on the map was atrocius, same in Age of empires 1. I reinstalled everything with the same results; changed the HDD to a CF card and got the same results. I came to the conclusion that either the platform; the CPU, the ram or a combination of them is a bottleneck!
Formatted everything last night and installed Windows 95 OSR2.5; installed all the drivers but the realtek ones which I can not find. Performance is outstanding, system is very responsive, games run fine! The only problem remaining are the realtek 8139 drivers: I tried installing the drivers provided by Soggi however they did not installed! I have to mention that in 98SE USB ports are functional however in 95 despite having drivers installed there is no USB support!
This is my first socket 7 build so have mercy pls 😀

web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm
Re: Diy modding support for k6+And 120gb hard drives into bios roms

I was curious if your board supported k6-3+
Apparently the voltage is unstable on this board around 2.0v
It seems that it probably would using a interposer though if you contacted jan for a patched bios

With a 3/2+/3+ you could install 256mb of ram on that mobo.

Anyway, nice build 😀

I am interested in building dream machines representing the best available hardware of the era and not budget ones; but indeed few people could afford the Pentium II back in the day. The advances even for people purchasing the best of the best were phenomenal! I still use today 2600k as my daily driver after 12 years - this would have been unthinkable back in 1995-2000!

Sphere478 wrote on 2023-02-20, 19:21:

web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm Re: Diy modding support for k6+And 120gb hard drives into bios roms […]
Show full quote

nd22 wrote on 2023-01-27, 07:17:

It entered in my possession a long time ago a socket 7 board - Abit AX5 - which is in ATX form factor, has an Intel 430tx chipse […]
Show full quote

It entered in my possession a long time ago a socket 7 board - Abit AX5 - which is in ATX form factor, has an Intel 430tx chipset and runs early Pentium up to 233mmx and first generation K6, so no, this is not a super socket 7 board!
Up until this year I did not have the time to test it or to build a system around it but I finally got the time so here it is:
1. Pentium 133 because that is all I could find to test the board as I was unsure if it was working or not.
2. 64mb of RAM on a double sided stick that I was lucky to have - the board is very picky with the ram!
3. Abit AX5
4. matrox millenium 2 8mb wram with very good VGA output but limited to 1280*1024 max resolution
5. WD 6.4gb hdd that is dead slow!
6. creative live sb0060 because all I have are different revisions of Live cards and nothing else.
7. corsair PSU
8. IDE CDROM
9. Intel stock cooler that is incredible noisy!
10. realtek 8139 NIC
I installed Windows 98SE from cd, chipset drivers from www.soggi.org, matrox drivers form the official website, creative drivers from Phils website and realtek drivers from www.soggi.org, however the performance was very poor, it took ages to run simple games such as Panzer General 2 - scrolling on the map was atrocius, same in Age of empires 1. I reinstalled everything with the same results; changed the HDD to a CF card and got the same results. I came to the conclusion that either the platform; the CPU, the ram or a combination of them is a bottleneck!
Formatted everything last night and installed Windows 95 OSR2.5; installed all the drivers but the realtek ones which I can not find. Performance is outstanding, system is very responsive, games run fine! The only problem remaining are the realtek 8139 drivers: I tried installing the drivers provided by Soggi however they did not installed! I have to mention that in 98SE USB ports are functional however in 95 despite having drivers installed there is no USB support!
This is my first socket 7 build so have mercy pls 😀

web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm
Re: Diy modding support for k6+And 120gb hard drives into bios roms

I was curious if your board supported k6-3+
Apparently the voltage is unstable on this board around 2.0v
It seems that it probably would using a interposer though if you contacted jan for a patched bios

With a 3/2+/3+ you could install 256mb of ram on that mobo.

Anyway, nice build 😀

Thank you very much sir! Very interesting the modifications suggested in your link however I do not think I will use a modified BIOS or physically alter the board/use interposer because of the rarity of it - it is highly unlikely I will ever get another one so I prefer to keep it as safe as possible for many, many years.

Quick question about you Abit AX5. I have one also, and I cant get it to move through POST with more than 2GB of HDD. I can get the auto detect to recognize it as 4GB, but when it gets past RAM counting and shows the synopsis screen, it only shows 2?

update the BIOS to the latest one, changelog says that >10gb support was added.

Sadly, I have the latest 4.51 PG (or at least thats what The Retro Web shows).

The old Wim's BIOS page has a BIOS for the AX5 that is patched to support up to 128 GB had drives. https://web.archive.org/web/20051105011452/ht … ex.php?count=-1

So I just tried that BIOS. It definitely is installed as it shows the "w bp patch" on the BIOS screen, but no dice on getting it to recognize greater than 2 GB. Is it possibly something to do with the fact that I am trying to use a CF card? The OP said he got a CF to work at greater than 2GB.

One thing I didn't see mentioned here - a search shows this board could come either with 256 or 512 kb of L2 cache. In the event that you only have 256 that could be the reason for mediocre performance with windows98. 256 would only cache 32mb (likely fine for 95) but once you use 64 you would be using memory outside of the cacheable range which will slow things down.

Edit: I've also found boards with these chipsets often perform better overclocked with fast EDO ram then SDram, so if you plan to try to push the FSB higher (to like 75, why not) definitely give that a try

trumpetlicks wrote on 2024-10-27, 14:52:

So I just tried that BIOS. It definitely is installed as it shows the "w bp patch" on the BIOS screen, but no dice on getting it to recognize greater than 2 GB. Is it possibly something to do with the fact that I am trying to use a CF card? The OP said he got a CF to work at greater than 2GB.

There have been many reported issues with incompatibilities between CF cards and IDE adapters, so I would begin searching for known issues with your particular adapter and card.

Finally got it, don't completely understand how. I used the auto detect by itself, saved, and this didn't work. I did the auto detect, then went into the screen where you can define it yourself, THEN saved, and that seemed to work 🤣.

From one problem to the next 🤣. So it recognizes the 4GB, and I can "install" DOS 6.22, but when rebooted, it somehow isn't recognizing the C: drive to allow it to boot from the HDD (CF card). Anybody seen this?

Have you partitioned the drives? Dos 6.22 (or more specifically FAT16) doesn't support drives larger then 2GB
My "upgrade" version of Dos 6.22 also doesn't set the drive up to boot as part of the install, easily fixed by running the command:
sys a: c:
This will copy the boot files from a:\ drive onto c:\ you can replace a:\ with any location of bootable media,

bertrammatrix wrote on 2024-10-27, 15:47:

One thing I didn't see mentioned here - a search shows this board could come either with 256 or 512 kb of L2 cache. In the event that you only have 256 that could be the reason for mediocre performance with windows98. 256 would only cache 32mb (likely fine for 95) but once you use 64 you would be using memory outside of the cacheable range which will slow things down.

that is perhaps true for some 486 chipsets, but i've not seen any indication of this for intel's pentium chipsets. every source indicates a static cacheable limit regardless of how much cache is installed.

Partition the drive first! Before installing it in the system with the AX5 board.
Also, I know this is going to get lots of Boo's from forum members, but maybe try using a real hard drive - jumpered to limit the capacity to minimum!
I have been using the system with hard drives and it sees al the way up to 32gb.

auron wrote on 2024-10-27, 23:41:

bertrammatrix wrote on 2024-10-27, 15:47:

One thing I didn't see mentioned here - a search shows this board could come either with 256 or 512 kb of L2 cache. In the event that you only have 256 that could be the reason for mediocre performance with windows98. 256 would only cache 32mb (likely fine for 95) but once you use 64 you would be using memory outside of the cacheable range which will slow things down.

that is perhaps true for some 486 chipsets, but i've not seen any indication of this for intel's pentium chipsets. every source indicates a static cacheable limit regardless of how much cache is installed.

This is a well known chipset limitation deliberately implemented by intel, likely so low end boards wouldn't compete with it's higher end chipsets. It applies to ALL vx/tx/hx based boards, though some hx could supposedly cache up to 512mb with an additional tag ram.

The maximum supported ram you see in board documentation has nothing to do with how much is actually cacheable. Some will take up 128-256mb, but rest assured, they will only cache the first (or last actually?) 64mb of that. I have ran cachecheck on several of these boards and the results confirm this.

none of that is new to me, the fact that 430HX will cache 512 MB with a tag upgrade is also well known, this is not just hearsay but written clearly in the 82439HX specsheet. in your last post you made a different point though, that 256 vs. 512 KB of installed cache would change the cacheable area as with some 486 chipsets. if you look up said specsheet, the table on page 35 makes it clear this is not the case and that 256 KB is enough to cache 512 MB of RAM with the appropriate tag RAM chip.

the only part that's not 100% clear to me is whether an existing 8K tag on the board would be used in combination with another 8K on a COASt upgrade, because it does seem to read like the 16K for 512 KB of cache has to be in a single IC. but a 256 KB COASt i have comes with just an 8K tag and works as 512 KB total so it does seem that the boards can use two chips as well.

bertrammatrix wrote on 2024-10-28, 18:39:

The maximum supported ram you see in board documentation has nothing to do with how much is actually cacheable. Some will take up 128-256mb, but rest assured, they will only cache the first (or last actually?) 64mb of that. I have ran cachecheck on several of these boards and the results confirm this.

I think it actually is the first 64 megs that is cached, however win9x utilizes the memory from last till first, ie, un-cached memory will be used first ... For NT based OS, the cached is used first and thus not as big an issue ...

Yes sir, I actually did partition and format at the commandline prior to install. That sadly didnt work. I am also noticing an issue with my GOTEK floppy where certain .img files will show a listing after a dir, but then the contents are completely incorrect. Going to keep trying. I WAS able to write an image using PowerISO to the CF card from my normal win10 PC, and that does indeed boot. May just leave it that way, but Im just trying to get to a point where I solidly KNOW this board 😀 I am a software, electrical, and systems engineer, but it's been a while since Ive touched hardware and OSs this retro 😀 Thoroughly enjoying though!!!