The board supports 4 DIMMs and 256MB per DIMM max. so in total it's 1GB. I have some SDRAM sticks from my friend and I decided to use a single 256MB DIMM.

I have another 256MB stick, it works fine but both CPU-Z and AIDA64 reported 128MB for the specific stick. CPU-Z, AIDA64, BIOS and Windows reported 512MB in total. MemTest86 says 512MB total too. Maybe something is wrong with that stick, but SDRAM is cheap and 256MB is enough, I don't mind buying some more but it's pointless if I use Windows 98 / MS-DOS.

I bought a WD Silicon Drive II 8GB CF card for hard drive, as it uses SLC NAND and is stong enough to run Windows on it. And a CF to IDE (2.5), IDE (2.5) to IDE (3.5) adapter, ￥79 (US $12) in total.

I got this GeForce4 MX 440 AGP8X card for ￥29 (US $4.3), a Realtek RTL8139D 100Mbps network adapter and a ISA soundcard with Crystal CX4235-XQ3 codec (PnP though) from my friend for free.

I hated the Crystal driver. It was way too buggy! I have to disable it in device manager and re-enable it to get correct sound. I've ordered a FIC soundcard with ESS AudioDrive ES1868F, which according to other posts in vogons, worked fine under both DOS and Windows.

This is what I've ordered (photo from the seller). Spent ￥50 (US $7.4) on it. Nice to have an IDE port and a wavetable header! 😀

A nice, almost new floppy drive, Samsung SFD-321B. Worked smoothly and quietly. ￥50 (US $7.4) for two with cable. I'll install the other one into my Socket 754 build.

The PSU, Huntkey HK450-51APS1, which was made in 2015, is a 350W power supply unit. I got this from my friend for ￥15 (US $2.2). A small bonus, it comes with a 4-pin floppy power connector which was rarely found in other PSUs!

And the most strange thing maybe... A VGA to HDMI adapter, for my Dell U2415H monitor doesn't have a VGA port. It couldn't get 1920x1200 resolution, but 1920x1080 max. The video quality is mediocre.

It's actually more exciting when I see the POST screen. The mobo itself was made in 2000, but in general the 440BX platform is even older than me! Maybe I'm too young to play around with these old stuff, but I'm happy to explore more and may want an older machine.

There was a -5V error, I wonder if this may cause any bad effect to my hardware?
EDIT: Thanks canthearu, this shouldn't be a problem.

I installed a modified Windows 98 SE on it, because I have USB keyboard and mouse only in the school dormitory. I haven't got a case yet, maybe after moving to another campus in late June I'll consider to get one. One more question here, how can I connect front panel USB and headphone jack to this motherboard? I can't find USB headers on the motherboard, neither in the manual. The soundcard seems not having front panel connectors either. If front panel USB / headphone jack weren't present at that time, then how do you make it?

Your PSU doesn't actually supply -5V, so that voltage is floating, probably influenced by a -12V trace nearby.

Shouldn't affect anything with your hardware choices. Only a few ISA cards need -5V/.\\.

Funny you should post about your system, im thinking about building something similar soon... i just need the hdd, cdrom and psu.

Asus P3B-F v1.04
Kinston 256mb pc133 cl3
3DFX VooDoo3 3000 16mb agp2x
WD 8.4gb 5400rpm pata
SB PCI128
32x ide cdrom
3.5'' floppy drive
Enermax 350w psu
Windows98se

My goal here is to recreate a period correct 1999 machine.

Can't run Asus P3B-F at 133 MHz for your memory problem.

Got this Coppermine Pentium III 1100 (100FSB/SL5QW) from my friend for ￥12 (US $1.8, shipping only, and the CPU itself is free)!

And, received this soundcard and had a quick test.

I have some problems with it. When using WDM driver shipped with Windows 98 SE, the ESFM sounded not good. Missing notes, wrong notes... Then I downloaded a VXD driver version 4.04.00.1129, the ESFM sounded great but I noticed that the computer became really slow when trying to make sounds. That should be a driver bug.
I went to archive.org and hoped to find newer driver on the official website, however, ESS used a FTP server (which can't be archived by archive.org) to provide downloads and the FTP server is down. The latest driver for ES1868 is v1207 and the filename is 1868_v1207.zip. If someone happened to have that file please send it to me! Thanks a lot!
The noise of the card is bad. 🙁
EDIT: Thanks canthearu again, will test tomorrow.
Also I found the latest driver with google searching the file name, however actually I looked into that link before and thought nothing was there...

To reduce noise, change JP1 to pins 1-3 and 2-4. This will disable the onboard amp and provide much better sound quality (ESS1868 sounds pretty good, but the onboard amps are typically awful)

canthearu wrote:

To reduce noise, change JP1 to pins 1-3 and 2-4. This will disable the onboard amp and provide much better sound quality (ESS1868 sounds pretty good, but the onboard amps are typically awful)

It did work but the sound was then too small to hear. I use a cheap Sony MDR-XB55 earphone. When enabled onboard amplifier, the sound was too loud and the noise was loud, too. But when disabled it the sound was small even turned the volume to max. I wonder if there's some way to increase the volume of line out with onboard amplifier disabled?

Yeah, that will happen if you disable the onboard amplifier.

You will need powered speakers, or an external amplifier for headphones.

Onboard amplifiers on ISA sound cards are almost universally terrible, it won't matter too much what card you use. Maybe a PAS16 would be better.

I actually prefer the large passive heat sinks, As your talking about front panel connectors I'm guessing you are using a modern case. As long as you have good airflow you don't need to worry.

Re the front USB and Audio connectors, they didn't exist back then.
You can get PCI USB cards with an internal USB connector and most likely it'll be USB 2 vs USB 1 on the motherboard. Just make sure the card has Win98 drivers. Although with Floppy, CD and Network I doublt you'll need USB, it isn't reliable.

Sound Blaster Live and Audigy cards don't really support the front Audio connector but a hack cable can be made, but again not really worth the trouble IMHO.

This link gives really detailed information on Asus Slot 1 motherboards.
http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheidegger/p2b_p … pgrade_faq.html

I also like the Slot 1 CPUs with larger passive heatsinks, if only because they are easy to cool with some added cooling.
Regarding the fan, you can try to strap it to the heatsink without using any screws (be sure to not bend anything or put too much stress onto something).

256MB should be enough ( 😜 )

And regarding the power connectors on your PSU, you can get adapters for the molex and the smaller power connectors, changing them both ways. I used them before and they work just fine.

Your PSU should be up to the task. Huntkey is not the best manufacturer though, but several of them have worked fine for a couple years for a couple rigs a friend of mine used (these were sA).

A quick small update:
Bought 2 off-brand Slockets from IdleFish and received them today. Both of them are dusty but after a quick cleaning with bursh they looked pretty good. But one of them won't boot, and the other only could boot with 66MHz FSB. It didn't like my Tualatin Celeron 1000A and won't boot with it. I could only get 733 (66x11) with a Coppermine Celeron 1100 and a Coppermine Pentium III 1100. It stuck at code 08 with Celeron 1100 set to 100 FSB and CB with the Pentium. However, it was still much faster than the Pentium II 450 I used before. It's very hard to find a good working Slocket here (even off-brands) and I guess I'll have to live with 733. Not too bad though. The retention mechanism of this motherboard can't hold the card and I can't find universal retention mechanism anywhere (in China).
Will upload some photos and some other hardwares I got soon.

Update 5/6/2019:
Good news first.
Get 3 brand new optical drives for ￥40 (US ~$6). Give away two of them to my friends. Samsung TS-H652H DVD±RW DL writer with IDE connection and audio out. It's nice to play CDs with it.

The Celeron 333 worked again! Noticeablely slower than Pentium II 450 but still nice to have it working. I just figured out that the retention mechanism of this board wasn't able to hold a Celeron properly. But I didn't manage to find a good one anywhere.

Also there's a good news along with a bad one from my slockets. One of them worked well and the other just can't boot with 100MHz FSB but 66MHz was fine. I think these two cards are the same, but don't know why one of them could only run at 66MHz. Both of them won't work with Tualatin though being manufactured in week 11, 2002.

Then a bad news about the graphic card. I really couldn't bare the low resolution and heavy distortion of the image with a VGA to HDMI adapter. So I picked up an FX5200 with DVI port which was made by Soltek for ￥38 (US ~$6). However, the DVI port didn't seem to work normally. The image was very bad and the system can't go any further than 640x480 at 4 bit. The available resolution settings are incorrect too. There were only 640x480 and 65536x65536 to choose... The VGA port worked well. I'm not sure whether the DVI port or the DVI to HDMI adapter was to blame.

As for the case... I don't have a case at this time as I'm living in the student dormitory. Maybe pick up a modern case in July after moving to another campus.

th1r5bvn23 wrote:

The Celeron 333 worked again! Noticeablely slower than Pentium II 450 but still nice to have it working. I just figured out that the retention mechanism of this board wasn't able to hold a Celeron properly.

Look like you are missing two small flat black pieces that go in the corners. Back in the day I had a box full of them. Im sure you could 3d print something now, ur even use sugru.

You don't really need retention clips for the CPU on a slot 1 board, as long as you are not throwing the thing around, it will be fine.

The slot itself and the CPU card probably need their contacts cleaned. Use a pencil eraser on the CPU card contacts to clean them to a shine, and maybe some contact cleaner in the slot to help there as well.

Too bad about the DVI out on that FX5200 card. For VGA, you can probably still get reasonably good results though with an LCD monitor that has proper VGA input. But the FX5200 is a pretty crummy card anyway, I wouldn't spend much time trying to fix one.