I'm finally in the possession of an XT (clone) (again).

Philips P3105:
Intel 8088
Paradise EGA card
MiniScribe 8425 XT drive

Cool. That EGA card fits exactly to the memory of the one I had in the 90s. It was that one I was able to get a mono signal out of into a PAL security monitor that had plenty of vertical hold range.

I think i've gotten myself now the "perfect testbench" motherboard: ASUS P2B-VM - https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/asus-p … -vm-3d-rage-pro

• SLOT 1
• 440BX
• 133MHz FSB supported (Tested with Pentium III 866MHz which has 133MHz FSB)
• No FSB auto-detect - just jumpers, full control
• ESS Solo-1 integrated sound - really good one for DOS, too
• mATx - small and nice, while still having AGP, PCI and ISA to play with
• Updates bios to the latest from RetroWeb (1014 beta) + added Bios Patcher 4.23 fixes on top. (Submitted that bios to RetroWeb)

133MHz will push the AGP out of spec quite a bit. Therefore I'm running it with Celeron 800MHz with 100MHz FSB. 3DMark2001 shows a tiny edge on 800MHz Celeron over 650MHz P3. (866MHz P3 downclocked to 100MHz FSB)

I absolutely love it!

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-01-16, 04:40:

Also grabbed a 1.6v K6-2+400 for 19 bucks which should overclock much better and might be able to be modded into a full K6-3+, good thing the entire process is here on Vogons.

Just received mine, probably bought from the same vendor.
Does 550Mhz at 2.0V easy. Crashes if I go 600Mhz, I haven't tried anything above 2.0V yet.

I just removed the lid on my other K6-2+, a 500 model, will try the mod this weekend once I receive my new magnifying glasses 😀, I'm too old for SMD components

Jccwu wrote on 2025-01-17, 15:34:

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-01-17, 08:06:

PcBytes wrote on 2025-01-17, 07:57:

And another win - ABIT BX133-RAID. Should fit nicely in the case I posted earlier.

Truly a beast of a board, one I consider to be the pinnacle of the BX chipset.

not so beast. AGP2x, no support Tualatin default. Compared to this board, Chaintech 6AJAT and Gigabyte GA-6VTXE boards look much better. The only advantage here is the additional IDE channel, but who needs it?
Here is Universal AGP and ISA slot with Tualatin support.

Yeah Im not fan of VIA chipsets unless its the Apollo Pro 133T or the Apollo Pro 266T both are exceptional but to be expected being the last of their respective families, the 266T is one of the few chipsets that supported both DDR and Tualatin but finding it on boards is difficult as it was released right at the tail end of Tualatin, I would say its almost as rare as getting the SiS 635T chipset which also supports Tualatin and DDR.

I have several SiS 635T boards and they are exceptionally fast right out of the box and allow some stupidly fast FSB overclocks. I dont yet have any 266T boards ..mostly due to them being silly expensive when they do show up on Evilbay.

But for the BX chipset the BX133-Raid is right at the top, its a highly compatible rock solid board that will support Tualatin with a little work and if looked after will run solid for years on end, I have one I use for an AGP test bench because itll pretty much work with any old AGP 2X/4X card and if a card doesnt work in that board then I can safely throw it into the spares/repairs box knowing its almost certain to be dead.

Is DDR even useful for a Tualatin? Am I thinking about this correctly? You double the memory pipe, but the CPU has half the bandwidth, so you have twice the memory bandwidth that the CPU can handle. You ideal scenario is that you saturate the FSB AND you have some room for DMA operations?

smtkr wrote on 2025-01-17, 23:47:

Is DDR even useful for a Tualatin? Am I thinking about this correctly? You double the memory pipe, but the CPU has half the bandwidth, so you have twice the memory bandwidth that the CPU can handle. You ideal scenario is that you saturate the FSB AND you have some room for DMA operations?

In day to day use I would say no, its not needed.

But for overclocking which both these chipsets cater to I would say its very nice to have and the Tually scales pretty well once you start increasing the FSB, 160+ FSB isn't impossible, but at the end of the day it'll still be at max DDR 266 you are using not DDR400.

The other point is that the 266T chipset is usually found on dual CPU server boards where DDR can be an advantage.

One day I will get my hands on a QDI Advance 12T and complete my Tualatin board collection !

There's this chinese socket 370 board bundled with a CPU, RAM and AGP card on ebay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/235608712940

Anyone used a CYSMBD-694X motherboard before?

I got hold of two Celeron 300A's including coolers, for a decent price:

They certainly live up to their reputation for being legendary overclockers- both are fully stable at 450MHz (4.5x100) on stock voltages. The one with the black heatsink will boot into Windows at 504MHz (4.5x112) and even runs 3DMark 2000 for a minute or two before it crashes. I think I'll try it again with a little voltage boost 😀

Duffman wrote on 2025-01-18, 11:36:

There's this chinese socket 370 board bundled with a CPU, RAM and AGP card on ebay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/235608712940

Anyone used a CYSMBD-694X motherboard before?

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/cys-tech-cysmbd-694x

Might be a gigabyte clone

Well....!!! Found me a little treat inside a Getaway Select tower 😁

I'm scared to take it out! don't want to damage anything.. 😳

myne wrote on 2025-01-18, 14:59:

Duffman wrote on 2025-01-18, 11:36:

There's this chinese socket 370 board bundled with a CPU, RAM and AGP card on ebay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/235608712940

Anyone used a CYSMBD-694X motherboard before?

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/cys-tech-cysmbd-694x

Might be a gigabyte clone

It certainly looks like one.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-01-18, 23:18:

myne wrote on 2025-01-18, 14:59:

Duffman wrote on 2025-01-18, 11:36:

There's this chinese socket 370 board bundled with a CPU, RAM and AGP card on ebay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/235608712940

Anyone used a CYSMBD-694X motherboard before?

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/cys-tech-cysmbd-694x

Might be a gigabyte clone

It certainly looks like one.

It is, exact replica of Gigabyte GA-6VXC7-4X-P, except they traded AMR slot for onboard audio (a good choice since nobody uses AMR anyways), and it uses Award BIOS instead of AMI.

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2025-01-18, 22:27:

Well....!!! Found me a little treat inside a Getaway Select tower 😁

I'm scared to take it out! don't want to damage anything.. 😳

The attachment PXL_20250118_222303580.jpg is no longer available

Welp, guess I know what my next CPU to buy will be, after the K6-III+ arrives.

I didn't even have a crappy PCIe soundcard in case I needed one, so now I've got a crappy PCIe soundcard in case I needed one. A SB1570 turned up in a thrift for like 10% new price, so it came home with me. Just the Audigy FX, HDA and software EAX. Might end up in a Core2 Quad Vista box or something, if it will work there. Then hopefully can assign affinity of EAX stuffs to 4th core, since that will tend to get barely loaded with anything.

Also there for pocket change were a couple of ATX2ATX-N03 adapter for synching power up of dual PSU. You plug primary 5.25 molex into it and uses a relay to kick in the the powergood of the secondary ATX psu. Could be handy at some point or I could tag P8 P9 connectors to back and misuse them as converters, or when I'm running out of decent AT PSUs, I might use a weakass one of those as primary, and a weakass ATX as secondary to power all the drives or something.

PcBytes wrote on 2025-01-19, 00:02:

It is, exact replica of Gigabyte GA-6VXC7-4X-P, except they traded AMR slot for onboard audio (a good choice since nobody uses A […]
Show full quote

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-01-18, 23:18:

myne wrote on 2025-01-18, 14:59:

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/cys-tech-cysmbd-694x

Might be a gigabyte clone

It certainly looks like one.

It is, exact replica of Gigabyte GA-6VXC7-4X-P, except they traded AMR slot for onboard audio (a good choice since nobody uses AMR anyways), and it uses Award BIOS instead of AMI.

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2025-01-18, 22:27:

Well....!!! Found me a little treat inside a Getaway Select tower 😁

I'm scared to take it out! don't want to damage anything.. 😳

The attachment PXL_20250118_222303580.jpg is no longer available

Welp, guess I know what my next CPU to buy will be, after the K6-III+ arrives.

hehe you know you want one, the 950 is pretty damn hard to get though almost as hard as the 1000. Plenty of 700s and 850s around though.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-01-19, 00:23:

PcBytes wrote on 2025-01-19, 00:02:

It is, exact replica of Gigabyte GA-6VXC7-4X-P, except they traded AMR slot for onboard audio (a good choice since nobody uses A […]
Show full quote

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-01-18, 23:18:

It certainly looks like one.

It is, exact replica of Gigabyte GA-6VXC7-4X-P, except they traded AMR slot for onboard audio (a good choice since nobody uses AMR anyways), and it uses Award BIOS instead of AMI.

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2025-01-18, 22:27:

Well....!!! Found me a little treat inside a Getaway Select tower 😁

I'm scared to take it out! don't want to damage anything.. 😳

The attachment PXL_20250118_222303580.jpg is no longer available

Welp, guess I know what my next CPU to buy will be, after the K6-III+ arrives.

hehe you know you want one, the 950 is pretty damn hard to get though almost as hard as the 1000. Plenty of 700s and 850s around though.

700s are cockroaches. You open a drawer and one is there. 🤣

Nexxen wrote on 2025-01-19, 00:30:

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-01-19, 00:23:

PcBytes wrote on 2025-01-19, 00:02:

It is, exact replica of Gigabyte GA-6VXC7-4X-P, except they traded AMR slot for onboard audio (a good choice since nobody uses AMR anyways), and it uses Award BIOS instead of AMI.

Welp, guess I know what my next CPU to buy will be, after the K6-III+ arrives.

hehe you know you want one, the 950 is pretty damn hard to get though almost as hard as the 1000. Plenty of 700s and 850s around though.

700s are cockroaches. You open a drawer and one is there. 🤣

950s and 1000 are like that spider you know is watching but you cant find it ...but its there silently watching and waiting from the dark.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-01-19, 00:34:

950s and 1000 are like that spider you know is watching but you cant find it ...but its there silently watching and waiting from the dark.

🤣 🤣 Good one!
1000 I never even saw one live. Just have some socket A Thunderbird + SDRAM mobo and that's how close I'll ever get unless a miracle happens.

Nexxen wrote on 2025-01-19, 00:46:

🤣 🤣 Good one!
1000 I never even saw one live. Just have some socket A Thunderbird + SDRAM mobo and that's how close I'll ever get unless a miracle happens.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-01-19, 00:34:

950s and 1000 are like that spider you know is watching but you cant find it ...but its there silently watching and waiting from the dark.

One snuck up and bit me a few years ago. 😁

As a wise man once said: "Good thing I brought my axe-cane."

Spiders or roaches, abandon hope all ye who dare oppose me!