https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/biosta … b-8500ttd#chips

For such an old board which probably will be used with Windows 9x in mind I think best WiFi option will be something like TPLink TL-WR802n in client mode connected to ethernet card (3c905 or Intel Pro100).

For graphics card ? S3 Virge + 3dfx Voodoo II
For sound ? Something Isa soundblaster compatible (Yamaha Opl3SAx maybe ?)

I'd probably go with a Pentium MMX processor for this board (200 or 233 MHz).

For such a build, I'd use a Riva 128 PCI and 3Dfx Voodoo 1 for video cards. For sound, I'd go with a SoundBlaster compatible ISA card for native DOS support. PCI audio cards would only really be useful for Windows 95/98 and if you wanted to play around with early 3D audio options (e.g. A3D, EAX, etc).

How about AMD K6-2?

luRaichu wrote on 2025-03-26, 00:59:

How about AMD K6-2?

According to the jumper manual at Retroweb, this board only supports 2.8V to 3.2V (in dual voltage mode) for CPU voltage. For an AMD K6-2, you need something that supports 2.2V.

The only AMD processors it looks like it supports is the original K6.

Well, there is modified bios for this board on Jan Steunebrink's webpage: http://www.steunebrink.info/k6plus.htm

And note says "Apart from K6plus support, this patched BIOS has also better support for the original K6-2CXT/III and has a fix for the 32GB IDE harddisk limit to support drives upto 128GB!"

So there's good chance that officiall informations may not be complete...

zyga64 wrote on 2025-03-26, 07:08:

Well, there is modified bios for this board on Jan Steunebrink's webpage: http://www.steunebrink.info/k6plus.htm

And note says "Apart from K6plus support, this patched BIOS has also better support for the original K6-2CXT/III and has a fix for the 32GB IDE harddisk limit to support drives upto 128GB!"

So there's good chance that officiall informations may not be complete...

Long time Vogons member feipoa did a complete write-up of all documented and undocumented settings on this board:
Re: mb-8500ttd manual needed

He even got a K6-III+ running at 500MHz on this board! 😀

Cheers, Jan

Are there special cooling requirements for a 500MHz K6-2 on this board or can I use any old heatsink & fan from fleabay? Silicone grease?
For graphics I currently have my eyes on a 4MB ATI 3D Rage II.

luRaichu wrote on 2025-03-25, 16:09:

[...]

Should I use one of my ISA sound cards or get a PCI sound card?

What OS do you want to use? If DOS, almost certainly ISA would be better. Otherwise: depends.

What are the options for Wi-Fi networking?

Again, depends on OS.

dionb wrote on 2025-03-28, 00:24:

Again, depends on OS.

For most games and general use either Windows 98 or 2000 will do for me. KolibriOS seems slick. I don’t expect much use of DOS but I’d rather keep DOS compatibility in case I want to play a specific DOS game.

Also, this board has integrated USB 1.0.
Is a USB 2.0 card worth it?

luRaichu wrote on 2025-03-28, 02:43:

dionb wrote on 2025-03-28, 00:24:

Again, depends on OS.

For most games and general use either Windows 98 or 2000 will do for me. KolibriOS seems slick. I don’t expect much use of DOS but I’d rather keep DOS compatibility in case I want to play a specific DOS game.

If DOS is required, generally an ISA sound card is best. Which do you have?

As for WiFi, that is very, very challenging under DOS. There are a handful of WiFi adapters that actually have DOS drivers, things like the old Orinoco cards. However they are 802.11b only with no better encryption than WEP (which is arguably worse than no encryption at all). So to get them to communicate over WiFi you would need to have an open (or with WEP: for all intents and purposes open) network. MAC whitelisting and hidden SSID's are pointless too from a security perspective.

A far better idea is to use an old router or AP as a wireless bridge, so it connects to your WiFi and you connect the DOS machine to it via Ethernet. Alternately, you can get ESP32 Arduinos that connect to WiFi and pretend to be a serial modem to your DOS machine.

Under Windows 98, you have a more options, but you'll need to find something that supports WPA2 security and AES encryption with Win98 drivers. Some WiFi-g cards fit the bill, but most won't (either no Win98 drivers or no WPA2/AES support). Here again, the AP as wireless bridge is an easier option. The ESP32 modem less so, unless you are nostalgic for old dial-up internet speeds.

Also, this board has integrated USB 1.0.
Is a USB 2.0 card worth it?

What do you want to do with USB under Windows 98? Assuming the system is networked you don't need USB for file transfer and USB 2.0 doesn't offer any advantage for HID (keyboards, mice), so I don't really see the use case.

Note that if you want to go down this route, this motherboard doesn't offer 3.3V on the PCI bus, and most USB 2.0 cards require 3.3V to function. This depends on card design, not chipset, so it's not possible to give a conclusive chipset advice, other than that older chips are more likely to be on cards that will work in PCI 2.0 or 2.1 boards without 3.3V. Sitecom cards with NEC chipsets have been a safe bet for me.

dionb wrote on 2025-03-28, 16:22:

If DOS is required, generally an ISA sound card is best. Which do you have?

MediaVision Pro Sonic 16 SCSI

dionb wrote on 2025-03-28, 16:22:

What do you want to do with USB under Windows 98? Assuming the system is networked you don't need USB for file transfer and USB 2.0 doesn't offer any advantage for HID (keyboards, mice), so I don't really see the use case.

USB sticks. Sneakernet is the best net when you haven’t setup Ethernet yet.
(Should I use an ISA or PCI Ethernet card? I might want to use the same ISA card in my 386 for testing)

dionb wrote on 2025-03-28, 16:22:

Note that if you want to go down this route, this motherboard doesn't offer 3.3V on the PCI bus, and most USB 2.0 cards require 3.3V to function. This depends on card design, not chipset, so it's not possible to give a conclusive chipset advice, other than that older chips are more likely to be on cards that will work in PCI 2.0 or 2.1 boards without 3.3V. Sitecom cards with NEC chipsets have been a safe bet for me.

Easy, just break out 3.3v power on the USB card and connect it to 3.3v on the motherboard.

As for memory, SIMMs are ‘xpensive. How about two 128MB DIMMs? I’m looking at Samsung KMM372V1680CS3-6S which’re FPM-DRAM

Members of Vogons have discovered that USB 2.0 cards often have a noticeable CPU load which becomes apparent when used on Socket 7 and Super Socket 7 systems. I have one of these Biostar boards, and with Win98 SE using the mass storage driver you can get right here on Vogons, I had no issue with the onboard USB.
Which USB 2.0 cards for old motherboards

Be careful of the CPU's voltage regulator if you use a K6-2 CPU as it does get hot. Feipoa mentions in one of his threads on this board that he added a very small fan to blow on the heatsink.

I had some odd issues with memory on this board, but I eventually found a 256 megabyte stick of PC133 that worked fine.

luRaichu wrote on 2025-03-28, 18:21:

[...]

MediaVision Pro Sonic 16 SCSI

Ah, a Jazz 16 card. Check the mixer chip. If it's the MVA508, you might have Sound Blaster Pro compatibility issues, if it's the MVA514, it's a pretty good generic card for DOS & Win 3.x.

USB sticks. Sneakernet is the best net when you haven’t setup Ethernet yet.

For me getting Ethernet up & running is a lot easier than convincing legacy OS to do anything other than HID with USB. For sneakernet with first install, I prefer a spare IDE HDD. Much faster and less fuss.

(Should I use an ISA or PCI Ethernet card? I might want to use the same ISA card in my 386 for testing)

If you want to use the same card in a 386, ISA is a better idea. The 3Com 3C509B is probably the safest bet, but almost all ISA cards will work under DOS. I particularly like SMC cards, which feel faster and have less fussy setup than the 3Coms.

Easy, just break out 3.3v power on the USB card and connect it to 3.3v on the motherboard.

But how is the USB card going to get 3.3V if it's not fed it from the board?

As for memory, SIMMs are ‘xpensive. How about two 128MB DIMMs? I’m looking at Samsung KMM372V1680CS3-6S which’re FPM-DRAM

That is a buffered DIMM, your board needs 3.3V unbuffered DIMMs. And it's not exactly cheap either. I see plain old SDRAM DIMMs for a fraction of that price. This thing accepts pretty much any JEDEC-compliant unbuffered memory and is fastest with SDRAM.

Also, the i430TX chipset can't cache over 64MB. You actually lose performance if you go over that - although if your software (Win2k...) actually uses more, uncached RAM is still faster than thrashing to disk. For DOS compatibility vast amounts of memory aren't great either, some games have memory detection routines that fail if you have too much.

Given your hardware and requirements, I'd say stick to 64MB PC100 SDRAM (which should cost less than USD/EUR 5 even on eBay) - so long as it's at least 8 chips (i.e. 64Mb chips) it will work. Then stick to Win98SE+DOS, leave Win2k for faster machines. Or drop the DOS requirement.

Dug out this heatsink & fan from a previous machine. Is it alright? The one feipoa used is denser/thicker.
For VRM cooling I think a 25mm x 25mm fan will work. Looks like it was screwed onto the VRM heatsink in feipoa’s build.

I suppose "best" is a matter of opinion. I think the AMD K6-3+ is the best Socket 7 CPU. There is a lot of good info about them here on the forum.

It is the fastest, it is not very expensive, it is not chipzilla, it is speed/power adaptable in software, it is low power, it is a pretty color and smells nice, etc. The K6-2+ is nearly the same thing, and with some effort it can often be converted to a 3+. In older motherboards these low-voltage mobile CPUs can require BIOS updates or power supply updates to provide a lower (or even separate) core voltage. There are/were a variety of ways to accomplish this with different degrees of DIY or aftermarket support. There is a lot of good info about that here too. But maybe expedient is “best” and whatever you already have working is it.

I got one of these working in an old motherboard and I'm very pleased with it:

Connected fans to 12v fan header on the motherboard. I still need to find a looong screw to mount the VRM fan onto the heatsink - I ended up choosing a 30mm x 30mm fan and it’s a centimeter thick.
I did buy a 256MB stick of PC100 (as pictured) we’ll see how well that works. I don’t actually own any other suitable SIMMs/DIMMs so I still don’t know if this board is functional. The AMD K6-2 is heating up though, no beeps on PC speaker

luRaichu wrote on 2025-04-13, 02:45:

[...]
I did buy a 256MB stick of PC100 (as pictured) we’ll see how well that works.

256MB could be one of three things:
- 16 16Mx8 chips. Officially unsupported by i430TX (max officially supported is 8Mx8 64Mb) but will probably work (although 192MB of it uncached)
- 8 32Mx8 chips. 512Mb chips will only be addressed for 50% so that will give you 128MB, again with only 64MB cached.
- 16 32Mx4 chips. Non-JEDEC, not supported, won't work at all.

The potatocam pic is too fuzzy to make out chip markings so can't tell which. The chips seem relabeled though which generally isn't a good sign.

Here’s a better pic of the chips used in that stick

luRaichu wrote on 2025-04-14, 01:05:

Here’s a better pic of the chips used in that stick

OK, better pic - but awful typeface 😜 That first character really looks like a 5, but eventually I was able to make S80016LK7TW-8A out of it, which gets me this datasheet. Spectek doesn't make their own chips; they're Micron's budget label but use chips from all kind of manufacturers and relabel them, so no indication of the quality. However it's clear enough on the specs: 16Mx8. So assuming you have 16 of those chips on this DIMM, that makes this the best-case for 256MB for a TX motherboard: it will probably work at full capacity. Only caveat is that that depends on the motherboard.

However if running DOS, Win95, most Win98 stuff that would run acceptably on this platform or indeed anything that uses less than 64MB of RAM, it will be significantly slower than a 64MB DIMM as the chipset can only cache the first 64MB (and DOS tends to hang around in the uncached part).