Pentium II build in progress. \ VOGONS

Pentium II build in progress.

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First post, by Darkman

Posted on 2015-07-07, 19:58

Darkman Offline

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So I recently got a Supermicro Super P6DGU. A 440GX dual Slot 1 motherboard, and Ive decided to put together a spare retro build. Right now Im not quite sure what parts to actually use in it, . Right now it has a single Pentium II 400Mhz , 256MB PC133 SDRAM , a Voodoo Banshee , 120GB IDE hard drive. But these parts could easily change.

Right now its sitting in my Cooler Master Wave case , which is a pretty hefty Aluminium case, although that might get changed eventually to something a bit more era appropriate.

a little mod I did was add a small fan to the Northbridge. does it do much? probably not ,but I had the fan laying around). I tried to be relatively tidy with the cables, though given its a work in progress , it will be tidied up further (the PSU is a 350W Enermax , which is nice but has a bundle of unnecessary cables)

Motherboard - a very nice Super P6DGU , upgraded to the latest BIOS and running the 440GX chipset, very nice motherboard indeed.

CPU - went with a Pentium II 400 as a fast PII, I did try just for curiosity, putting a PIII 1GHz/133Mhz CPU in there, but it gave me a blank screen and refused to boot (apparently its possible, it just wont work over here for whatever reason) . I may decide to add in a 2nd 400Mhz PII , or swap it out for a 350Mhz PII (which I doubt I will)

256MB - should be more than enough for now, the 440GX does allow for up to 2GB apparently, but it would cause problems with Windows 98.

120GB IDE - This board does have Ultra2 SCSI ports on it , which is very nice but unfortunately I do not own a large enough SCSI HDD (I have 2 of them at 4GB each , and both are older SCSI drives too). I may try and get a SCSI drive and use it as a boot drive , while running games and such on the IDE drive which has plenty of space.

Voodoo Banshee - Alot of people would say I need to get a Voodoo2 SLI setup. In theory they are right, but sadly I dont own a Voodoo 2 (well I do , but its broken) , I may or may not keep the banshee and may decide to go with a Rendition based Diamond Stealth S220 or a Rage128 card. Another option being a Matrox G400/450 card, which would be interesting.

Sound - This one Ive yet to decide too . The 2 logical choices are a Sound Blaster Live , or an Aureal Vortex 2 based card both have their merits but Im not sure how the Aureal would work in a WinNT4/Win2K enviroment, as Im not sure about Aureal's drivers (and if I do decide to add a 2nd CPU , a WinNT4/2K install isnt far off)

the CD drive a standard DVD drive I had laying around , This case doesnt have a floppy drive yet, though one will be added in the future.

Id be happy to hear suggestions from the Vogons community as to what configuration this machine should have.

Reply 1 of 7, by Skyscraper

Posted on 2015-07-08, 05:51

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Nice system 😀

For a PII 400 the Voodoo Banshee or a single Voodoo2 is perfect. If you upgrade to a Voodoo2 SLI setup then a faster CPU like a Katmai 600 makes sense.

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 2 of 7, by i386

Posted on 2015-07-08, 17:57

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Excellent board!

But I afraid that little fan on the Northbridge will interfere in the case if you'll install second CPU.
I think, the fan is unnecessary.

CPU - went with a Pentium II 400 as a fast PII, I did try just for curiosity, putting a PIII 1GHz/133Mhz CPU in there, but it gave me a blank screen and refused to boot (apparently its possible, it just wont work over here for whatever reason) . I may decide to add in a 2nd 400Mhz PII , or swap it out for a 350Mhz PII (which I doubt I will)

i440GX chipset doesn't support FSB133(i440GX like i440BX, but with extended memory size
support).

Reply 3 of 7, by Darkman

Posted on 2015-07-08, 18:04

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i386 wrote:
Excellent board! […]
Show full quote
Excellent board!

But I afraid that little fan on the Northbridge will interfere in the case if you'll install second CPU.
I think, the fan is unnecessary.

CPU - went with a Pentium II 400 as a fast PII, I did try just for curiosity, putting a PIII 1GHz/133Mhz CPU in there, but it gave me a blank screen and refused to boot (apparently its possible, it just wont work over here for whatever reason) . I may decide to add in a 2nd 400Mhz PII , or swap it out for a 350Mhz PII (which I doubt I will)

i440GX chipset doesn't support FSB133(i440GX like i440BX, but with extended memory size
support).

actually it does support 133Mhz FSB in the BIOS at least, and I know for a fact people have ran such CPUs on this board.

Reply 4 of 7, by chinny22

Posted on 2015-07-09, 14:11

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Not familiar with that board but my early revision P2B-DS maxes out at the Katmai 600 due to the VRM where later boards are fine with newer CPU's maybe its the same with yours?

I say P2 400's are cheap do it! however I was surprised how many games worked fine in Win2k on my duel Katmai 600 PC. I'm not denying a single CPU system with a faster CPU would run games better, but that's boring 😜

I also recommend Audigy 2 ZS over SB live if your not worried about being period correct, the drivers are a bit nicer, cleaner sound and works in Win9x

Reply 5 of 7, by Darkman

Posted on 2015-07-09, 14:32

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chinny22 wrote:
Not familiar with that board but my early revision P2B-DS maxes out at the Katmai 600 due to the VRM where later boards are fine with newer CPU's maybe its the same with yours?

I say P2 400's are cheap do it! however I was surprised how many games worked fine in Win2k on my duel Katmai 600 PC. I'm not denying a single CPU system with a faster CPU would run games better, but that's boring 😜

I also recommend Audigy 2 ZS over SB live if your not worried about being period correct, the drivers are a bit nicer, cleaner sound and works in Win9x

well I did try running an SL4BS 1Ghz/133 PIII and the machine did start at 100mhz FSB , once I upped the FSB to 133Mhz, I got a blank screen and the machine refused to boot, There is another 112Mhz setting which I could try, but we will see, as Id rather keep this is a PII machine of some kind.

the Audigy2 works in Win9x? I thought the drivers were very difficult to get running in Win98.

Reply 6 of 7, by candle_86

Posted on 2015-07-09, 22:52

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could be the video card not liking running the AGP that far out of spec?

Creative offically only supports the Audigy 1 in 9x

Reply 7 of 7, by i386

Posted on 2015-07-10, 15:33

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well I did try running an SL4BS 1Ghz/133 PIII and the machine did start at 100mhz FSB , once I upped the FSB to 133Mhz, I got a blank screen and the machine refused to boot, There is another 112Mhz setting which I could try, but we will see, as Id rather keep this is a PII machine of some kind.

Probably your board has not FSB/PCI=4 divider and when you set FSB 133MHz, PCI get
~44MHz. Non-standard PCI clock might be produce a lot of problems with PCI devices(and also
PCI devices that built in PIIX4).

Anyhow even with right divider, you will get AGP clock ~89MHz if FSB 133MHz is set.

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