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Asus P2B-DS dual CPU

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First post, by Cesora

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Hey guys I'm new to this forum and hope this is in the right place. I have recently got the retro bug and have gotten into building old PCs. Yesterday I found by the side of the road a rather filthy but complete system with a Asus p2b-ds. After much cleaning and work I got it to post and it seems to be working fine! It has a Pentium 3 550 (sl3fj) installed, but I noticed it has 2 CPU slots! After looking through my parts bin I found I had 2 other slot 1 Pentium 3s (500mhz sl37d and 450mhz sl37c). Can I install these CPUs and have a dual setup or do they have to be the same? Cheers!

Reply 5 of 44, by PARKE

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You can not set those to the same speed because their multipliers are locked and as far as I know the cpu's have to be identical in regard to fsb & multiplier.
Ideally you should use two cpu's with identical production numbers but it seems you can use matched pairs out of the following three sets of production numbers:
for 450Mhz // SL35D, SL364, SL38E, SL35D, SL37C, SL3CC
for 500Mhz // SL35E, SL365, SL38F, SL37D, SL3CD
for 550Mhz // SL3F7, SL3FJ

There is at least one Intel SL3FJ Pentium III 550 MHz on offer on Ebay for 10 dollars. Good luck.

Reply 8 of 44, by chinny22

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That's a real nice board, but it does have some restrictions depending on which revision.
You can find out more here: http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheidegger/p2b_p … pgrade_faq.html
Many years ago I installed to P2 400's I had spare, Every boot Win2k would log an error in event log about mismatched pairs but it worked fine.

oh, and here is my PC if you want some inspiration 😉
Asus P2B-DS Build

Reply 10 of 44, by Cesora

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Rev 1.03
Thanks for that I'll check it out 😀

I was very lucky to have found it! It was filthy and full of leaves and dirt, but no water or rust damage which was surprising. Only negative is that one ram slot has a clip broken off. Is there a way to replace that?

Reply 11 of 44, by PARKE

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Cesora wrote:

Rev 1.03
Thanks for that I'll check it out 😀
I was very lucky to have found it! It was filthy and full of leaves and dirt, but no water or rust damage which was surprising. Only negative is that one ram slot has a clip broken off. Is there a way to replace that?

With revision 1.03 you are probably limited to cpu's up to+including 600Mhz but you would have to check the numbers on the VRM chips [HIP60xxx etc.] to be sure. There is a section on this subject on the Scheidegger website that chinny22 posted.
But before you go chasing rainbows this: there is very little gain in having dual processors for regular use (Windows 9x does not support dual cpu's) and if you have a motherboard that supports SECC cpu's up to 1Ghz it will be next to impossible to find these high-end versions. Dual boards are just Cool [with capital C] 😉

Replacing a broken ramslot clip is not really straightforward I think, at least you need a donor board for a replacement and with some careful fiddleing it -may- be possible to put in another clip (?).

Reply 12 of 44, by chinny22

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Thanks, its my 2nd favourite PC (after my 1st PC from my childhood) but probably the most used one.
Don't listen to Parke, chase that rainbow! even though he is 100% correct.

First off you can get away with using one of your single CPU's and testing everything out, it doesn't need the CPU blanking plate or whatever it was called.
Once you know the board is ok you can decide if you want to have a duel CPU system.

Re RAM, smaller sizes aren't that uncommon, I still haven't maxed mine out to the full 1GB but am waiting on matching sticks (not needed I just want matching).
256 or 512MB will actually do for gaming so you may not even need all 4 slots.

Also should be mentioned for completeness Dos/Windows 9x cant use the 2nd CPU. Only versions based on NT.
It's not end of the world though, mine spends a lot of time in Dos or Win98, the 2nd CPU is just ignored, and for the majority of Win9x games that do work in Win2k they work very well and the CPU is recognised again, sure as Parke said it doesn't really improve performance or anything, but hey everyone knows more is better right?

The one acceptation to this is Quake 3 where you can post your results here
quake3 SMP-scaling thread…

Reply 13 of 44, by PARKE

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chinny22 wrote:

Don't listen to Parke, chase that rainbow! even though he is 100% correct.

Ehehehe...

Btw, probably one of the reasons why these ASUS P2B-DS boards are not common today is their original price tag. Here a scan from a dutch catalogue january 2000 where it is listed for Fl. 1.175 => +3x what you would need to lay out for an ASUS P3B-F.

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Reply 14 of 44, by Cesora

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I really want to chase the rainbow hahaha. I've never had a dual motherboard before and I think it would just be really cool! The system currently works and has the blanking plate thing is already installed. Seeing as I have rev 1.03 and a 550mhz p3 should I just get another matching p3? Thanks for all the help guys 😀

Reply 16 of 44, by PARKE

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For evaluation of what the board can do with dual cpu's your best/cheapest shot is finding a second 450 Mhz locally. They are quite common and they usually come complete with sink +fan (some of the cheaper 550's on Ebay do not come with sink/fan). If the board works ok with 2x450 you can check if the VRAM chips support Coppermine voltages below 1.8v. The three cpu's that you have are of the Katmai generation and work at 2 volt - the fastest of that generation is 600Mhz. The next generation Coppermine cpu's work at 1.65v/1.7v and their speeds range from 600Mhz => 1Ghz -but- your board needs to be able to produce those low voltages. The 1Ghz version is extremely rare and therefore quite expensive so realistically you could eventually aim at getting a set of 800Mhz or 850Mhz cpu's (repeat if the board supports the low voltages needed for those cpu's)

Reply 19 of 44, by Cesora

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OK so I didn't realise that postage from the US to Australia would be so expensive, so it may be a while before I get a matching CPU. However in the meantime ive been getting this error "hardware monitor found an error, enter POWER MANAGEMENT SETUP for details"
Upon entering the errors are as follows: "chassis fan speed xxxrpm error" (probably because I don't have a case fan), and "vcore voltage 2.0v error", this one I'm concerned about, or is that normal?