VOGONS


First post, by Twisted Six

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I've been in search of one of these for quite a while; the illusive Tyan S1834D. The 1833 and 1832 are not hard to come by; they're both BX boards....however the 1834 is a VIA 694 chipset. Far friendlier to 133FSB processors.

Rewind back to ~2001 or so.....I was determined to make my Asus P2B-D v1.06 run better than its SL4KL processors...so I bought a pair of upgradeware slot-t slotkets (back then they were maybe $40); which have voltage & hardwiring for the upcoming Tualatin CPU's. Long story short, the project was a belly flop; as was pretty much every mod project I did with the P2B-DS; no matter how hard I tried it was just never usably reliable @ 133FSB. I grew to hate these boards even though I still have several of them; with a slightly different flavor of modding....but maybe I'll share that in another thread some day.

I then tried Tualatin modding an Abit VP6. This also was a failure; as I could never get it to run right with 2 CPU's (although I did get it to run rock solid on a single Tualatin). I then bought an iWill DVD266u-RN to run the pair of Tualatin CPU's I had previously bought and went on with life. The DVD266u-RN (which I still have) had demons of its own, but was overall very stable. My other Tualatin system in the collection is a Supermicro P3TDDE....but I had this pair of upgradeware slot-t's I didn't really know what to do with until I realized that Tyan made a slot based dual board (if nobody has noticed yet, dual CPU's has been my thing going all the way back to the P-Classic days) based on the VIA 694 (Apollo 133a) chipset...and the hunt began.

I finally found one a few months ago on ebay with 1.5GB RAM and a pair of 800EB's in it for $50 shipped - working condition unknown / untested. For $50, I'll take a gamble. I did POST test it when I got it with its installed hardware just to see if it worked, and it did. Today I finally got around to the Tualatin test; as theoretically nothing should need to be modified.....but historically running dual with slotkets can be a crapshoot.

Here it is, in all its dual CPU glory!!

file.php?mode=view&id=237191

file.php?mode=view&id=237192

Next up is selecting a case for this little marvel. CPU's are 1.26GHz Tualatin-S's. I didn't have any spare 1.4's and seeing they now got for nearly $100ea, I'll just use what I have in the bin for now.

If you tolerate this, then your children will be next.

Reply 1 of 3, by Angus.Young

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That looks like quite the test rig... any more info on that I don't think I have ever seen one of those

Reply 2 of 3, by Unknown_K

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Cool, I wouldn't mind a board like that. I have a bunch of dual socket 370 that support native Tualatin chips but no AGP (Serverworks boards).

Collector of old computers, hardware, and software

Reply 3 of 3, by Twisted Six

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Angus.Young wrote on 2026-02-26, 00:59:

That looks like quite the test rig... any more info on that I don't think I have ever seen one of those

I engineered that several years ago. I do have a build log for it on another forum....but I'm not sure if the owners of this site would appreciate the crosslinking.

At the end of the day, it can test any form factor board (I made adapters for every imaginable connector), monitor current draws on key rails, and of course voltages. Current draws are amazingly useful for diagnosing POST issues and of course pairing power supplies to motherboards (especially with retro gear).

When I started with the idea, someone told me "that can't be done"....words I laugh at!

If you tolerate this, then your children will be next.