Just to follow up on this:

The machine is still running fine. I ended up removing the SCSI HDD, it was causing major system instabilities, loud & slow. I installed a 80gb Seagate, very well made HDD, even has ESD protection built in & is very quite, was a good model, had it lying around.

I also installed an old LG DVD writer which is giving the system that little bit more usability. I got an old IBM keyboard & mouse from a friend then found matching speakers at a garage sale for $2! Winamp 2.85 is rocking it!

Everything is stable except when Windows is logging in the system there is a stutter, the login sound stutters, everything is unresponsive for 2-3 seconds. I suspect it might be the SCSI CD-ROM drives, I will try different drivers & then completely remove the SCSI card if that doesn't help. It may just not be compatible with the motherboard.

I have a great game collection installed & even got a game port controller! Daytona USA is looking sweet! The latest game I got running for those wondering is Call of Duty, it is playable & the rare times it slows down it's for about a second, 640x480, with medium graphics, Geforce 2.

Unreal Tournament is more responsive with the V2's, more like an arcade game however the Geforce 2 displays Unreal Tournament with more eye candy. I use the V2's because I feel it's more action packed.

Today I made an all black theme for the machine which looks quite nice.

I'm very happy with it!

Nice machine. I love PIII's. In the last 12 years I've gone from MMX's to K6's, PIII's, P4's, Athlon 64s and Phenoms currently. But I always have a PIII running around despite retiring the later P4 and Athlon machines.

You might want to check out jtLeon's machine too. It's really quite incredible.
http://www.techpowerup.com/gallery/1480.html

sgt76 wrote:

Nice machine. I love PIII's. In the last 12 years I've gone from MMX's to K6's, PIII's, P4's, Athlon 64s and Phenoms currently. But I always have a PIII running around despite retiring the later P4 and Athlon machines.

You might want to check out jtLeon's machine too. It's really quite incredible.
http://www.techpowerup.com/gallery/1480.html

Yeah that's a diffrent kind of beast but very nice, the Pentium III-S's where underrated for thier time.

They weren't underrated. Nobody went around saying that Tualatin sucked! They were significantly better than Coppermine but not quite as fast as Tbird.

The main issues were 1) intentionally overpriced 2) incompatible with existing P3 mobos. The Intel push was for you to buy into the RDRAM+Willamette/Northwood regime. They made sure that the interesting Tualatin (512K L2) was very expensive. Although really the chip had no future because of how limited its FSB was and how it couldn't clock higher than about 1500 MHz. Pentium M is basically a revamped Tualatin.

And when you figure in the extra cost for either an adapter or a new motherboard, they were really a waste of money. Better off heading to Athlon XP for sure.

MartinC, I notice you are using this hardware: GA-6BXC Slot-1 440BX with a 1GHz P3 CPU. I'm currently testing a GA-6BXC (PCB Rev 2.0), with a 800MHz P3 CPU, code SL3XR. I think my board's dip-switches can accomodate a CPU speed of up to 950MHz, but I've not been able to find a P3 CPU with a speed faster than 800MHz that has a FSB bus speed of 100. The faster CPUs seem to be for a bus speed of 133. Please can you tell me what 5 digit CPU code your 1GHz CPU is? Thanks a lot.

I've not been able to find a P3 CPU with a speed faster than 800MHz that has a FSB bus speed of 100.

They're out there, they're just not that common. The S370 versions are considerably easier to find than the Slot1 variants, though, so perhaps consider getting a slotket adapter.

Regarding a slotket adapter, would this be a Powerleap adapter? If so, an ebay seller has 6 of them here -

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/POWERLEAP-PL-IP3-T-V-2- … id=p3286.c0.m14

These items appear to include a 1.4GHz Tualulin CPU, but the price is high at $100, excluding the shipping charge. (There are cheaper alternatives on ebay, it's just this one look kinda nice!)

A Powerleap adapter or one of the similar ones from Upgradeware would work, and allow you to use Tualatin CPUs. You'd want to stick with Tualatin Celerons in a 100FSB board, though, and $100 is too much money for it... they can be had for $30-40 if you watch.

If you're just looking for an adapter to work with a 100FSB Coppermine chip, though, there are considerably cheaper options. You have to be careful with the cheap ones, as there are some that only support PPGA Celerons, but here's a cheapy that lists PIII Coppermine support.

Thanks a lot for the info! I've got 1 question remaining before I buy that cheap Coppermine adapter on ebay, and also a socket 370 P3 CPU - if my board's dip-switches go up to 950mhz, does that mean the CPU's speed needs to be approximately the same? I checked cpu-world's Pentium III page, and the closest 100FSB models were 933MHz and 1GHz. Would either work?

sgt76 wrote:

You might want to check out jtLeon's machine too. It's really quite incredible. http://www.techpowerup.com/gallery/1480.html

That's awesome. I love how the guy put plastic cowling around video card to run it quiet, but has three fans stacked on top of each other as the rear vent.

Also note the upside down hard disk chillin' at the bottom, of the case.. yet another memory... *sigh*

retro games 100 wrote:

Thanks a lot for the info! I've got 1 question remaining before I buy that cheap Coppermine adapter on ebay, and also a socket 370 P3 CPU - if my board's dip-switches go up to 950mhz, does that mean the CPU's speed needs to be approximately the same? I checked cpu-world's Pentium III page, and the closest 100FSB models were 933MHz and 1GHz. Would either work?

Your board multiplier dip switch settings are ignored when using any retail Pentium III, it uses its factory pre-defined multiplier anyway. So it doesn't matter what you plug in in that regard. What matters is that the mainboard is equipped with flexible CPU power regulation components that can supply enough Amps. I currently use a Tualatin-S 1266/133MHz 512kB, but at 100MHz FSB and 1.3 Volt, so it is at 950MHz and stays very cool still, whilst outperforming a hot 1000MHz coppermine.

Thanks very much for the info. I will buy one of those cheap adapters, and either get a 933mhz or a 1ghz socket 370 CPU to go with it. For something faster, I will use my 2 ISA slot Athlon T-Bird system - the AMD chipset-based GA-7IXE4 mobo.

what case did you use it looks aluminum.

That's an Antec SX-1040, or one of the similar variants. Those things were sold under a bunch of different brands, so I don't know specifically which one the OP has.

There was an aluminum version of those things available at one point, but the majority of 'em were heavy-gauge steel. They weigh about 35lbs empty, but they're about the sturdiest case you're gonna find. I'm still using one for my main machine, never found anything I liked better.

retro games 100 wrote:

MartinC, I notice you are using this hardware: GA-6BXC Slot-1 440BX with a 1GHz P3 CPU. I'm currently testing a GA-6BXC (PCB Rev 2.0), with a 800MHz P3 CPU, code SL3XR. I think my board's dip-switches can accomodate a CPU speed of up to 950MHz, but I've not been able to find a P3 CPU with a speed faster than 800MHz that has a FSB bus speed of 100. The faster CPUs seem to be for a bus speed of 133. Please can you tell me what 5 digit CPU code your 1GHz CPU is? Thanks a lot.

The 440BX would run at 133MHz, there is no combination of DIP switches, update the BIOS & it will ignore & auto detect the CPU.

If you hunt around in eBay you can find a 1GHz Slot-1 CPU for about the price of 370 + adapter. I got mine for like AU$10 + shipping.

You can also get a hacked BIOS to support the PIII-S processors if you want to go with a 370 & the 1.4GHz's are cheap on eBay.

My really cheap slotket adapter thingy arrived this morning, but I have yet to get a 370 CPU for it. However, I will also keep a look out for a slot 1 1GHz CPU. I think I'll stick to 1GHz as my max speed in this 440BX Gigabyte mobo. Thanks.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/PENTIUM-3-1GHZ-100FSB- … id=p3286.c0.m14

i use the tutulian or what ever it is adapter and put that on the slocket adapter and slap that in there my dell r450 ran world of warcraft at 25-30fps.

I just got a slot 1 1GHz 100FSB CPU. I removed my existing slot 1 800mhz 100FSB CPU, and plugged the 1GHz CPU in to a Gigabyte GA-6BXC mobo (Intel 440), PCB Rev 2.0, with a BIOS of F4b (I'm not sure if this is the latest). The BIOS POST screen recognised the new CPU as a Pentium III 1000mhz - so far so good. (Well the CPU fan wouldn't spin, so I just prized off the top black plastic cover section with this fan on it, and propped up another fan to act as a replacement.)

The other bits of hardware for the following tests are RAM: 256mb (value ram), GFX: nVidia 440 MX AGP, and HDD: win98. So, here are some 800mhz and 1000mhz side-by-side benchies -

800mhz first:

speedsys 4.78 (run using F8 safe command prompt only) = 930.20
quake 1.06 shareware (win98 -> restart in MS-DOS mode, 320x200 software mode, timedemo demo2) = 130.0 FPS
SiSoftware Sandra CPU arithmetic benchmark - ALU: 2133, FPU: 1071

Then, the only change made: removed 800mhz CPU, replaced with 1 GHz CPU.

speedsys = 1162.71 (25% faster, I think!)
quake = 143.8 FPS (about 10.6% faster)
SiSoftware Sandra CPU arithmetic ALU: 2670, FPU: 1341. (About 25% faster)