Here's my story and I'm sticking to it!

A few years ago I attempted to resurrect what was my first build and didn't have the time or patience to get it running stable. Fast forward to a few months ago and the bug bit me again so I pulled it out of storage and noticed that the caps for the vrm had made a slight mess. So off to mouser for replacements for all the caps I could read the ratings on (all but the tiny caps). Well after cleaning up the pcb in the sink with some soap and water and a good rinse with distilled water followed by some electronics cleaner I gave it a go and got frustrated, again (back in the closet it went). Man how I forgot what a PIA this board is to get set up right.

I started with the following and had issues getting it stable under 3d loads:
1. K6 3+ 450
2. 256MB in slot 1
3. CL 3D blaster TNT
4. AWE 64 (4520) (bottom isa slot)
5. 3com 3c905b (bottom pci slot)

So over the last week I figured I would try and troubleshoot the board and while messing around I found out that the USB ports were not working, tested the resisters and one of them was bad, broken in fact when I went to remove it. Found a replacement from a dead plexwriter 8/4/32 of all things and it now works again. Also figured for 15 bucks on fleabay I would pick up a creative blaster tnt2 32mb card And while at first I had some issues I dug back into the bios and with some google foo I think I'm onto something.

I now have the following config looping crusher and massive q2 demos:
1. K6 3+ 450 @55
2. 256MB in slot 1
3. CL 3D blaster TNT2
4. AWE 64 (4520) (bottom isa slot)
5. 3com 3c905b (2nd from bottom pci slot)
6. Windows 98se with only the IE6 update, dx9 update and 4in1 4.35 drivers installed (which is an issue unto itself as the installer installs does not update the VIA objects in the device manager, this has to be done manually) I also installed Windows 2k sp4 and patched it fully and it seems to be stable as well.

What I find interesting is that I get about 2 more fps in q2 timedemo when I put the AWE64 in the upper isa slot (more about that in a minute) and that when putting the nic in the bottom pci slot it shares an irq with the TNT2 card so by moving it up one pci slot it leave the video card with it's own irq.

Now, if I can get this thing stable, I would like to buy a couple of voodoo ii cards to complete the build. When I built my first rig with this mobo i started with the tnt card and shortly after picked up a voodoo ii card (at comp usa) for some glide loving. (Unfortunately at some point I gave it to my ex's cousin). So my thinking is that by using the bottom isa for the awe64 I hope to leave a slot below the agp slot for better cooling (assuming I get a pair of voodoo ii's).

All I need now is an era appropriate case and a floppy drive.....