From my experience I can say that it seems to work with asynchronous L2 cache. I tested two socket 5 boards (TMC PAT54PV and Intel Plato) and the cache works well.

Is it possible to change the mode of the cache in the BIOS from pipelined burst to async?

No, it is not possible. It depends on the cache memory installed on board. There are some boards out there which can be equipped with either async or pb cache. They usually have the 430FX chipset. I don't have one, but trying to run the tillamook cpu with the different cache types on the same board and to look if it works will bring some light into this mystery.

I got one working with L2 cache in a Jetway TX board:

Tillamook

Uh, isn't the Jetway TX98B actually based on an SiS chipset?

I would think that it is highly unlikely that I could get my hands on a 430FX motherboard with async cache that also has support for voltages down to 1.9V. The only way that would happen is with CPU adapter that I don't have.

You're right!

It has "Super TX" printed on the chipset heatsink, I just kinda assumed! 😖

Never-the-less, it works well and it's a desktop board.

Running 266 MHz Tillamook chip with working L2 cache on Intel Premiere/PCI II a.k.a "Plato"

Advantech PCA-6751 Single Board Computer (aka CPU Card).

Got one working on a Lucky Tech P5MVP3 board - cache and all - as a matter of fact I didn't know these CPUs had this issue until I read this thread... I've never tried it in anything other than that MVP3 board either since I was trying to get it running at 100MHz FSB...

How did that go? I got a 200mmx stable at 3x100, can that one go higher? Is it cherry picked or actually a smaller process?

I got a regular 233MMX run at 315MHz, also posts at 330MHz at 3V. This was only one cpu tested on one board (Gigabyte 5AX). When I get the time I'll try the rest of my 200-233MMX how far can they reach.

I have one Tillamook 233MHz in a notebook. But I don't think I'll dismantle it 🤣

Tillamooks are rated for very low voltage at 1.9v vcore and 2.5v vio. according to intel datasheet, the absolute voltage that would fry it is 2.8v vcore and 3.2v vio.
the best bet for tillamook is ali5 board with adjustable vio(many boards have vio fixed at 3.3 or 3.5), because ali5 has so superb sdram performance that disabling onboard cache has almost no impact. besides, why would you bother with tillamook if you don't overclock it to 100fsb?

and for regular mmx(p55c), its not very good at overclocking. i tested 3 mmx233 at 100*3, all booted at 3.1v but two are very unstable, the best one is partially stable and managed to finish some benchmarks, but failed in 3dmark01.

I remember seeing some screen shots and general chat somewhere of people overclocking Tillamooks even without the cache but found them to overclock well over 300mhz without much of a fuss. Might be possible to do 400 but I can't back that up so someone will have to try for themselves.

meljor wrote:

How did that go? I got a 200mmx stable at 3x100, can that one go higher? Is it cherry picked or actually a smaller process?

how much voltage did you need to get it stable and pass all benchmarks?
tillamook is a smaller process, and also modified to be incapable of coping with most motherboards onboard cache.

It was on an Asus p5a rev. 1.04, 128mb sdram (1 stick pc100) 200mmx@300mhz 100fsb 3.2v, tested only with everest and 3dmark99 with 98se. It had a copper based socket A cooler.
The goal was to test at 250mhz actually but i played around a bit and it worked fine at 300.

I was testing to compare against other cpu's that could reach the same settings and my cyrix wasn't getting 300mhz so i settled at 250mhz (2,5x100). Don't know the numbers anymore but i wasn't impressed about the speed bump the 100mhz setting gave the intel.

noshutdown wrote:

meljor wrote:

How did that go? I got a 200mmx stable at 3x100, can that one go higher? Is it cherry picked or actually a smaller process?

how much voltage did you need to get it stable and pass all benchmarks?
tillamook is a smaller process, and also modified to be incapable of coping with most motherboards onboard cache.

I have found that this depends on the motherboard aswell as the CPU. I have 5 really good Pentium 233MMX as I bought 30 at the same time from the Swedish scrapper that posted in the Ebay thread and I picked the 5 that would post at 350 MHz with 2.8V for further testing.

At 3x100 MHz on my PC Chips M577 MVP3 board it seemed to take 3.0V - 3.3V for stability but on my Gigabyte GA-5AX the 2 CPUs I tested seemed stable with stock 2.8V. I did not Prime but PC Mark 2002 is usually rather sensitive to stability issues and it ran fine so did all other benchmarks I tried.

These 5 Pentium 233MMX are rock solid at 292MHz with 2.8V with every 83MHz FSB capable board I have tried so far which is more important. For SS7 boards there are faster CPUs available but many older boards wont do lower voltage than 2.8V making K6-2s infeasible. I think the extra 17 MHz FSB creates more stress for the CPU at 300MHz than the extra 8 MHz core speed and the Gigabyte GA-5AX probably has very good signal quality.

Okay, good to know about the Plato board.

I tried a tillamook in my VL/EISA system but the L2 cache wasn't functional. However, that was also the case for the P166, 166MMX and 200MMX chips I tried using my Powerleap socket4 adapter. I suspect it's a BIOS related issue.

I got mine stable enough for benchmarks and games at 350MHz @ 2.4 volts, and didn't want to push my luck any further.

noshutdown wrote:

the best bet for tillamook is ali5 board with adjustable vio(many boards have vio fixed at 3.3 or 3.5), because ali5 has so superb sdram performance that disabling onboard cache has almost no impact. besides, why would you bother with tillamook if you don't overclock it to 100fsb

The Aopen AX59pro allows voltage adjustments from 1.3 to 3.5v in 0.5v increments and the MVP3 chipset seems to run fine with a 266MMx, L2 cache and all. Bios string will not ID the CPU correctly - it reads "Intel P55MMX" at Post.

Regarding memory speed - My Asus P5A (Ali V) won't go over 250MB/sec unless I raise FSB speeds to 112MHz. That result is on par with my AX59pro (MVP3).

kanecvr wrote:

The Aopen AX59pro allows voltage adjustments from 1.3 to 3.5v in 0.5v increments and the MVP3 chipset seems to run fine with a 266MMx, L2 cache and all. Bios string will not ID the CPU correctly - it reads "Intel P55MMX" at Post.

Regarding memory speed - My Asus P5A (Ali V) won't go over 250MB/sec unless I raise FSB speeds to 112MHz. That result is on par with my AX59pro (MVP3).

this is on the total opposite of my experience. not sure which utility you used to check memory performance, but i ran following 3 benchmarks with k6-2+550:

sisoft(average of several operations including add, multiply, assign and so on)
ali5 ~210mb, mvp3 ~185mb

everest(read/write/copy)
ali5 340/140/210, mvp3 260/145/190

superpi
onboard cache disabled: ali5 timed at 5:45, mvp3 timed at 6:36.
onboard cache enabled: ali5 timed at 5:41, mvp3 timed at 5:17.

conclusion: ali5 has superior memory performance which eliminates the need of onboard cache(it has a little impact on cpus without integrated l2 though, but is still the best no-onboard-cache performance you can get). mvp3 on the other hand, relies heavily on large onboard cache and performance would suck if its disabled.