The voodoo 3 is overkill for a P2. hell, even a pair of voodoo 2's can make a 333-p2 work for its money. Personally i'd go with the awe64 for the P2. And you ALWAYS max out the ram. (with a p2 dont go over 512mb)

having a k6-2 system and a p2 system is just redundant.

the 486 looks good. again i'd go with the sb 2.0 over anything else.

Awesome! Should be an interesting project!

I'm already using my Voodoo 2(a Diamond Multimedia Monster 3D II) in another computer as the Voodoo 3 in that one seems to have issues with certain games(I got two identical Voodoo 3s in one shot, so I'm trying to find some use for the second Voodoo 3). I did find a 550MHz Pentium III, but that CPU is dead, so I can't use it. The only spare Slot 1 CPU I have is a 266MHz Pentium II, so I decided to go with that. It's mainly meant as a test computer for old sound cards.

The 486/AMD K6 computer(NOTE: the CPU is NOT a K6-2 but rather a plain K6) is meant as an extra MS-DOS gaming PC for use in a little classic computing center I'm going to put together. I'll have that computer alongside a Packard Bell Legend 316SX(runs on a 25MHz AMD 386SX), an IBM Personal Computer 300PL(runs on a 500MHz Pentium III) and a few old Macintosh computers(Power Macintosh 6100/66, Macintosh Quadra 700, PowerBook 5300, Macintosh G4, eMac and a Macintosh Classic once I find one).

When I was at my local flea market last week to pick up an OPTi 82C930 sound card, the booth owner told me he had a motherboard on which a 486DX4 Overdrive was installed(I think he said it came from an old Dell computer). If I can go see him again this week, I'll pick up the motherboard, a good case and an AT power supply and get started on my 486 build. Though I would still like a motherboard on which to fit my AMD K6(it's currently sitting in a crummy PC Chips motherboard - an AMD K6 deserves better than to be installed on a motherboard made by the worst motherboard manufacturer in history).

If you're only using the 1st build as a test pc then that P2 is ok, but from personal experience the difference in performance from pairing a Voodoo3 with a 500Mhz Katmai vs a 800Mhz Coppermine is staggering.

I wouldn't bother replacing caps on a Slot 1 board, it's easier (and usually cheaper) to simply get another Slot 1 board.

The Katmai 550 may not be dead, I've found cleaning the contacts with a paper cloth and some rubbing alcohol turns "dead" Slot 1 CPU's back to life on more then 1 occasion 😉
Also with Slot 1 it's important to make sure you put it in the slot deep enough. I've found many of the newer "half open" Slot 1 CPU's are not hold down by the 2 plastic CPU thingies and basically gets all it's support by the Slot 1 motherboard connector alone, so be sure to push it all the way down 😉

I wouldn't bother using any board with even 1 bulged cap, it's not worth the trouble as trouble is all you're guaranteed to get.
(Super) Socket 7 boards are relatively common on Ebay as long as you don't buy from those sellers who hope to sell some crappy board for 200 bucks.
Btw, I presume you're looking for an AT Socket 7? Or would an ATX Socket 7 board also be alright for you?

Anyway, good luck! 😉

Tetrium wrote:

I wouldn't bother replacing caps on a Slot 1 board, it's easier (and usually cheaper) to simply get another Slot 1 board.

Capacitor replacements have always helped whenever I've had problems with any piece of electronics having some serious issues(the Sega Game Gear comes to mind, but this is a game console, and I could get different results out of recapping a computer motherboard).

Tetrium wrote:

The Katmai 550 may not be dead, I've found cleaning the contacts with a paper cloth and some rubbing alcohol turns "dead" Slot 1 CPU's back to life on more then 1 occasion 😉
Also with Slot 1 it's important to make sure you put it in the slot deep enough. I've found many of the newer "half open" Slot 1 CPU's are not hold down by the 2 plastic CPU thingies and basically gets all it's support by the Slot 1 motherboard connector alone, so be sure to push it all the way down 😉

Heh... I do the same with game console cartridges, but replace the alcohol with Windex. I find Windex works better to clean copper contacts than alcohol. I don't think I ever cleaned the 550MHz Pentium III. I'll try that out later today on my IBM Personal Computer 300PL(it's one of two Slot 1 computers I currently have working and is easier to work in that the other one, which a Personal Computer 300GL).

Tetrium wrote:

Btw, I presume you're looking for an AT Socket 7? Or would an ATX Socket 7 board also be alright for you?

AT or ATX Socket 7 for the AMD K6 doesn't matter. I would prefer something like my stupid PC Chips board and my Socket 7 motherboard with VIA chipset: both AT and ATX power connectors on the motherboard. I assume ATX Socket 7 motherboards need -5V?

I think I'll go for 3 builds if I find a good 486 motherboard and a good AT/ATX Socket 7 motherboard to fit my AMD K6. I want to use my K6 and I've been dying to get a 486 computer put together.

One last question: I have two Slot 1 motherboards with built-in Yamaha YMF740 sound cards. Who makes those boards? If I can't get the Shuttle AV61V14 to work, I'd like to get another one of those motherboards(the ones I have are dead: they turn on by themselves as soon as power is applied and don't POST).

luckybob wrote:

The voodoo 3 is overkill for a P2. hell, even a pair of voodoo 2's can make a 333-p2 work for its money. Personally i'd go with the awe64 for the P2. And you ALWAYS max out the ram. (with a p2 dont go over 512mb)

having a k6-2 system and a p2 system is just redundant.

the 486 looks good. again i'd go with the sb 2.0 over anything else.

What's wrong with going over 512MB? Is there a chipset limitation? I know the 440BX chipset can support 1GB (but that usually works out to 768MB if the board only has 3 dimm slots. The OP is going with a VIA chipset though so it could support less.

For the Pentium II, unless you're running Windows 9x, put in all the RAM you want though after 512mb, you might have plenty of RAM going to waste.

Windows 98SE, aside from not having much use for more than 512mb, tends to not like running with more than 512k.

If you're speaking from a cache standpoint, if I'm not mistaken, if you have more RAM than the mobo can cache, you still have a portion of ram cached and the uncached portion will still be faster than the swap file.

I believe the pentium 2 only had a cacaheable area of 512MB. So going over 512MB may actually reduce performance.
This is a processor limitation since the L2 cache and its controller are located on the processor - whereas with the previous generation Pentium the L2 cache was on the motherboard and the controller was part of the chipset, so cacheable area was a chipset limitation.

I believe the Pentium Pro could cache up to 4GB of memory so it was better for server configurations with huge (for the time) amounts of RAM.

EDIT: I just googled it and apparently the 512MB limitation is only for Klamath (66MHz bus) versions, while Deschutes and later could cache up to 4GB.
Apparently there are chipset limitations as well, 440LX is 512MB while 440BX is 1GB.
http://forums.anandtech.com/archive/index.php/t-397589.html

Also apparently Coppermine and later P3's could cache up to 64GB of memory, which seems strange as being a 32-bit processor they could only address 4GB of main memory???

GXL750 wrote:

Windows 98SE, aside from not having much use for more than 512mb, tends to not like running with more than 512k.

In my experience, 98SE has stability problems even at 512MB of RAM. The Unofficial Service Pack that's floating around fixes it.

SavantStrike wrote:

What's wrong with going over 512MB? Is there a chipset limitation? I know the 440BX chipset can support 1GB (but that usually works out to 768MB if the board only has 3 dimm slots. The OP is going with a VIA chipset though so it could support less.

I will only go for VIA if the motherboard I found will work after being recapped and after it gets a new BIOS ROM. I'd like to use a motherboard with an Intel 440BX chipset, but if the Shuttle motherboard works fine after being recapped, I'll stick to that. If the motherboard's dead, I'd like to find a motherboard with an Intel 440BX chipset, an SB-LINK connector and a built-in Yamaha YMF740. Since I have access to those motherboards, I'm gonna look them up.

Win 9x has stability problems, period. Read about the "resource memory" limitation because that's one of my favorites. 😀

DonutKing wrote:

I believe the pentium 2 only had a cacaheable area of 512MB. So going over 512MB may actually reduce performance.

Will it reduce performance for all of the memory or just memory above 512mb? Either way, then if you actually fill over 512mb of ram, your system would still run better than if it had to spill over into page file. If the latter, then would you really notice?

Only the 1st P2's had the 512MB limit. Later ones had the cacheable area go up to 4GB

Clicky here, then do a search for "Pentium II 233 MMX"

Seems Klamath had the 512MB limitation while Deschutes went up to 4GB

Edit:Theres 1 reason not to just put some random PC-133 memory in a board. It might cause inexplicable problems if for some reason different modules don't work together well.

Personally I tend to stick to using memory of only 1 type of density in order to avoid potential problems.

DonutKing wrote:

Apparently there are chipset limitations as well, 440LX is 512MB while 440BX is 1GB.

I have a feeling that the LX and BX limits might be exactly the same.
Officially LX only supports up to 128MB per memory module while BX supports 256MB memory modules, but from my own experience LX works with 256MB memory modules just fine 😉.
I'm not 100% positive about the 512MB limit LX officially has, but seeing it's half of the BX limit, perhaps it's double the official number as well?

And 512MB is more then enough for 9x. Even 256MB is plentyfull 😉

GXL750 wrote:

DonutKing wrote:

I believe the pentium 2 only had a cacaheable area of 512MB. So going over 512MB may actually reduce performance.

Will it reduce performance for all of the memory or just memory above 512mb? Either way, then if you actually fill over 512mb of ram, your system would still run better than if it had to spill over into page file. If the latter, then would you really notice?

There wasa thread about this in Marvin recently, basically yes going over your cachable area reduces performance across the board. You are better off with the lesser amount of cahed RAM than a larger amount of partly uncached RAM. Windows tends to allocate memory from the top down so it will hit the uncached area first.

I learn something new everyday.

Good point about the Win9x memory limits.

Oddly enough, I've never run into stability issues at 768MB of SDRAM or 1GB of DDR, even with 256mb video cards (so yeah, I've gone asking for trouble and had none that I could detect). But then again I have only been using the systems for gaming, and none of the chips has been slower than an 800mhz Coppermine.

Reading about the 4GB cacheable memory limit on the later PII's makes me want to try that though, but only on 2k or above as 9x is limited to 2GB 😀. 64GB for the PPro and the Xeons is really impressive.

Tetrium wrote:

Even 256MB is plentyfull 😉

I know. Outdoing the RAM is overrated especially since you're never going to utilize it all at once anyway. 512MB won't make XP smooth.