Well since I now have an open 3rd slot this system is back on.

Some parts to get for it since the parts I ordered originally are running in my Slot 1 now.

USB PCI 2.0 card
USB front panel 10 pin to USB Male
Something faster than a TNT2 M64 (the Voodoo 3 started going bonkers and my Geforce2 Ultra feels to OP)

I do however have the K6-3+ 450 I ordered in the system, it posts at 600mhz with 2V. It is a 1.7V K6-3+ and it appears stable at 600mhz so far.

Well since my original Banshee died on me, I just ordered a replacement from ebay, along with a few other goodies

ATA to SATA Adapater (I have a 120gb SATA drive doing nothing) I just hope my ATA33 ports detect a 120gb drive, its below the 137gb limit so fingers crossed
PCI USB 2.0 with interal USb 2.0 port
10pin USB Header adapter to Male USB so I can connect the front panel USB
4x256mb PC133 (half of these are for my P3 to bring it to 512)
USB PCI Slot connector is split into 2x4 blocks instead of one molded 10 pin block (think its a USB 1.0 but it will tie into the boards built in USB and then I can use USB from DOS/Bios tested with a jerry rig connection.

So computer specs will look like this.

Epox MVP3C2M
AMD K6-3+ @ 550mhz Stable 2V
512mb PC133 @ hopefully 112 if not 100mhz at CAS 2
Ensoniq Banshee 3d
Western Digital Cavier 120gb SATA
SATA to ATA converter
VIA USB 2.0 Card for faster file Transfers
SoundBlaster AWE64
Windows 98 SE

How does it look? Should be alright I think for what I intend. Should pull double duty with the Pentium 3.

So I have the USB 1.0 on the board working, it supports USB keyboard so I dont have to hook up the AT keyboard now to go into Bios, only If i want to install an OS 🤣.

Looks great man!

big disappointment, the ram I ordered did not list it was ECC/Registered, but guess what I got?

Yea its a no go on my K6-3. It works on my P3 but only seems half of it which means its 16x4 instead of the 16x8 it was advertised as. Well time to look for more SD-Ram maybe next time it wont be server crap.

Why not a via 6421 sata card?
They work out of the box with hdd's in both dos and 9x. Nt needs drivers and you'll need one for a cd drive.
It's a lot faster then an pata to sata adaptor.

That and there cheap to own.

Also there should be a setting in the bios to set the usb support. Change it to bios from OS. If That's missing do an bios update.

I never had much luck with these PCI SATA cards 😢 . The do work, but the actual performance was always way below the on-board IDE. It also adds latency and can cause resources drama.

So for me it's SATA to IDE converters all the way 😀

Must be doing something wrong if a pci sata card is way slower then on board pata.
That or your using junk cards or maybe you need newer/right firmware for the card.
Most pci sata cards come with crap for firmware and often have raid firmware on them.
I know sil pcix cards can be really good with the right firmware too. I had used a few with older motherboards with sata, there much faster then even the onboard sata.
Pci sata cards tend to be on par with ata133 from my experience. Just be sure to get a good card.

That all aside I have used countless sata cards in all sorts of systems and only ever have problems with older crappy firmware on older cards. Might be worth looking back into sata cards if you did not try different firmware on any.

Yea I've got all the SIL cards, Promise also. Tried the IDE firmware of course. If you're using a Roland MPU401 card, there are also issues with these cards and ACPI if the BIOS doesn't let you disable it. I wrote this up ages ago, it's somewhere on VOGONS 😊

Could you be more specific regarding "decent" card and "right" firmware? So others can have a go at it and see if it works for them? You can attach files too.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Could you be more specific regarding "decent" card and "right" firmware? So others can have a go at it and see if it works for them? You can attach files too.

As far as firmware goes it's different for etch user and card. One might want ide, others raid. Then there are folks like me that use ahci firmware even although most chipset lack ahci. Then there is different versions of each firmware for etch card. typically the newest version of the firmware you want is best. And most off e time cards come with older crummy firmware.

As for a decent card, don't by a piece of junk from China for 3 to 5$ and get a card with a well supported chipset
It's tempting to buy a 5$ sata card off a site like eBay, but they often army the best regardless of the chipset. The chipset can even be fake. Your best bet is to buy a higher quality card with a well know/used chipset.

A few things to note, most pci sata cards user old sata1 chipsets witch is not much faster then pata133
I find that most sata1 card perform around ata100 or ata133 depending on he card and setup. A sata 2 chipset card such as the SiL3124 will not give you sata2 speeds on a pci bus do to pci lower speed. If your system supports it, get a 66mhz supported card. Get a card with bios extensions if you want to boot from a hdd attached to it.

I have always had good luck with via 6421 and SiL3124 chipset cards, but sil firmware is all over the place and knowing witch one to use is a bit of a nightmare, but at least they have every version available on there site.

Server cards are usually good, but not always what you want in a retro home computer.
Off the top of my head I'm only knowledgeable with the via 6421 and SiL3124. Other the that I'm only experienced with newer server cards.

In summary: for best results.
Buy a good quality card with a well supported chipset and put the newest firmware on it. If you want a raid setup used the raid firmware if kit used ide, if available use ahci.
And be sure to install the newist drivers for the card. Without them sata cards are über slow.
Sometimes although rear, older firmware is better. Try different firmware and find out.

I'll take a look at my cards and see witch firmware version I'm using and get back with you.
I know I get about 90-100mbs reads with my via 6421 card in my via c3 setup with 2k, 98 is obliviously slower but I have yet to test it.

Jade Falcon wrote:

I'll take a look at my cards and see witch firmware version I'm using and get back with you.
I know I get about 90-100mbs reads with my via 6421 card in my via c3 setup with 2k, 98 is obliviously slower but I have yet to test it.

That would be awesome!

Under XP all the cheap ones work well for me, but Windows 98 SE is a different story.

Well my VIA sata card is missing the bios chip that was shown in the ebay listing for the card. I wanted one with a bios specifically so I could use my SATA drives.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Jade Falcon wrote:

I'll take a look at my cards and see witch firmware version I'm using and get back with you.
I know I get about 90-100mbs reads with my via 6421 card in my via c3 setup with 2k, 98 is obliviously slower but I have yet to test it.

That would be awesome!

Under XP all the cheap ones work well for me, but Windows 98 SE is a different story.

Yeah I did not know why 98 is so much slower with sata cards. Must be in some sort of fall back mode or something.
I have a nice test bench setup I'll install hdtune on it and post some bench scores when I get the time.

If you can, please also test with ATTO: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/hdd-benchmarks.html