xjas wrote:

Did some digging in my stash of parts and found a few handy upgrades for this thing. Firstly 3x128MB PC-133 for a total of 384MB - max this board can support. They're not matching SIMMs but I don't care, I did try to pick ones with the same stepping (3-2-2) but AFAIK that's kind of irrelevant when massively underclocking PC133.

It's possible to use double sided 256MB sticks on the 440LX chipset, I maxed out my Abit LX6 with 1GB. 😈 Be aware that Klamath doesn't cache more than 512MB.

Update time! I had this system in my office, running Linux. I did what I needed to with it (ran some old programs that wouldn't compile on 64-bit distros) and then it sat there for a few months.

It was too cool a system to be so underused. So naturally I had to repurpose it.

For this purpose. Oh yes, it had a calling.

But first it needed some updates. I wasn't overly happy with the P2/400 running at 266/300. It did the job, but to me, Slot 1 hit its sweet spot in the 400-600MHz range. You can get a Celeron 433 for Slot 1, or use a slocket, but I like using stuff I have on hand. I did discover that despite my earlier failed attempt, the P2L97 would boot a P3 quite happily after all - I must not have had it seated in right the first time, or the contacts were dirty, or something. With that sorted out, I had a couple options:

With a 66 or 75MHz FSB naturally you want a high multiplier. The one on the left is a 500 (5x) and a 550 (5.5x) on the right. Of course I was gonna go with the 550. Problem was it was pulled from a Dell XPS which used a plastic shroud to direct air over it straight from the rear case fan, so outside of that environment it's "passively" cooled.

Which... would have been fine, honestly, but I'm picky.

And anyway, the cooler on the left one turned out to be a SWEET Coolermaster setup so naturally I wanted to swap it over.

It was dead easy to remove, just slide the clip off and the job was done.

I'd read horror stories about getting Dell's "push through" type off, but it was pretty painless as well; I just needed the right tool. Or rather, the wrong tool applied in the right way.

Easy!

I don't know if all P3 dies are this blue or why these ones are, but it is stunning. This photo doesn't do it justice. I wish my eyes were that color. Or my hair.

I put both CPUs back together with a little Arctic Silver and stuck the 500 back into the XPS. The 550 settled nicely into its new home:

Better brain and cooler cooler in action!

It happily POSTed at 5.5x66=366MHz but that wasn't quite hitting the mark. After some discussion I decided it would be perfectly fine to run it at 75MHz, so I swapped one jumper and bumped it into high gear.

5.5x75 gave me the delightfully odd clock speed of 412.5MHz, just nudging into my target zone. Perfect.

Internet wisdom says you can usually get away with 75MHz on an LX and that's been my experience as well. It happily booted Linux & seemed totally stable at that speed. To be honest, my main concern was not to overclock the ISA, but it doesn't do that anyway.

...And speaking of the ISA, that was actually my reason for grabbing this machine when I needed one. It has two perfectly good slots, and here they were sitting unused. That seemed rude.

I wanted some DOS compatibility, so first up was a choice of sound card. Incidentally you guys have NO IDEA how long it took me to find these damn things, despite the fact that I knew exactly what box they were in and which closet to look through. They were in their box, inside another box, that was also full of IDE & SCSI cables, stuffed in the back... etc. You get the idea.

I arbitrarily chose the one on the right (CT4520) for no real reason. They'd both work fine. I still think the 4500 is a better looking card though.

Now for video. The Radeon 9200SE was doing its job fine but that's boring and I needed a VESA feature connector. Yeah that thing, that no one's ever needed in the history of video cards. I needed it. Anyway this seemed like it would do nicely:

Oh helo.

I've had this Banshee from brand freaking new. It travelled all over North America with me during my competitive LAN party days, and then was just stashed away like a photo album of an ex. Damn near twenty years of ownership, probably 3/4 of those years sitting in a box. No more.

Id want to put a heat sink on that Banshee. Nice looking card by the way.

EDIT:
What do you need the VESA feature connector for?

^^ the Forte VFX1 ISA card connects to it. It gets its video passthrough that way (as opposed to an analog passthrough like a Voodoo 1/2.)

Heat sinking the Banshee will be the topic of the next post. 😀 (It actually had one on there but I took it off to re-do the thermal paste.)

**necromancy**

Hey there, how was/is that P2L97 liking the Phoenix? Just picked a Phoenix up, and I have a non-S P2L97 around somewhere, so was thinking it might lead to a similar build. Does it leave you badly wishing the GPU had a better CPU or vice versa? Probably a little imbalance is unavoidable when I'm matching AGP cards I've got to AGP boards I've got.

Looked for that thread about heatsinking it, couldn't turn it up, did it happen? I have been reading elsewhere that these things get a bit toasty.