First post, by pentiumspeed
I have picked up a Dell XPS T500 motherboard and tested it before building DOS/98SE machine but discovered couple things that I needed to ask:
Bios is A09. Using three 128MB PC100 OEM Micron (Micron offical stickers) memory.
Only way I can do is use PCI video cards in order to work.
I tried few AGP cards even TNT2 16MB ASUS card on this, no image even board initializes the keyboard no problem as part of POST sequence. Seems this is bit odd AGP compatibility going on with this oddball motherboard.
I'll get a P3B-F some day.
When going through POST screen, draws Dell logo slowly then tests memory slowly. Even PIII 500 is displayed correctly as 500Mhz. Is it not best one to have that slow?
I have many choices of motherboards choices from oldest to newest:
Socket 5 Pentium 200 board works great HX chipset.
Slot 1 PIII 500 (this)
Socket 370 coppermine 1GHz works great.
Athlon XP 1800+ AGP based on nforce 220 (uses 12V 3 phase VRM) from a HP computer. Athlon 2000+ CPU coming.
P4P800 (working) or P5P800 (socket 775 working) both are AGP.
I was thinking about keeping Pentium 200 for mostly DOS use and use socket 370 1GHz setup for mid end gaming win98 (this socket 370 815 chipset) board does have SB-link connector which is very rare and have to test that, would that sufficiently overlap for most games. Is the 1GHz PIII is too fast for very few yet Pentium 200 is too slow for some? If so, better get P3B-F board and use it for the middle to go in between both?
Anything old I have with PCIe is destined for XP and is not part of discussion.
I have yet to purchase number of sound cards, I was thinking about YMF7xx and also recommend decent sound card that works that are not creative? Also I wanted to use DSDMA for the nforce 220 and P4P800.
Thanks and cheers, pentiumspeed.
Great Northern aka Canada.