I am feeling temptet to buy this (Iwill KK266+) board.

My 1.4Ghz Thunderbird is currently on a ASUS A7N266-VM and everything runs nice and smooth. But it feels a bit not period correct.
How has been your experience with the Iwill KK266+?

It's been ok. It doesn't like any processor newer than a palomino. It's stable at 150mhz FSB all day long. There are nuances caused by the VIA chipset but the PCI latency patch fixes a lot. My Geforce4 (8x) is a pain in the ass on it but Voodoo 3 is flawless so far.

One of the rear USB ports may have killed two of my mice. I've decided to not use the onboard USB at all and added in a USB 2.0 card. Even if it worked properly I wouldn't use it as USB 1.0 is terrible.

Oh before I forget, it was a major recap job. I may not have selected the perfect new caps but couldn't find any data on the junk that was bad on it, hermei (iirc). I bet all of the boards you find will need new caps. I didn't touch the smallest caps, which may be why the USB wasn't right.

Hermei, ew. I'd replace the small buggers if your USB kills mices. These Hermei caps are as bad as GSC, Chhsi, Choyo (this one is incredibly popular on retro Gigabyte mobos up to early SDR-based i845 mobos. Haven't seen Choyos beyond those, just bad batches of Nichicon HM/HN on anything 848P onwards until late 2005 to early 2006) and G-Luxons.

Otherwise, looks like a solid board, slightly similar in design to ABIT's KT7/KT7A.
Also how do you get Mobile Athlons to work on a desktop board? I slightly remember pulling a 400FSB 2600 from some trashed NEC laptop and couldn't use it anywhere. nF2 boards refused it, and so did KT600, KT133A and a SiS 730 as well.

ptr1ck wrote on 2022-04-26, 21:59:

It's been ok. It doesn't like any processor newer than a palomino. It's stable at 150mhz FSB all day long. There are nuances caused by the VIA chipset but the PCI latency patch fixes a lot. My Geforce4 (8x) is a pain in the ass on it but Voodoo 3 is flawless so far.

One of the rear USB ports may have killed two of my mice. I've decided to not use the onboard USB at all and added in a USB 2.0 card. Even if it worked properly I wouldn't use it as USB 1.0 is terrible.

Oh before I forget, it was a major recap job. I may not have selected the perfect new caps but couldn't find any data on the junk that was bad on it, hermei (iirc). I bet all of the boards you find will need new caps. I didn't touch the smallest caps, which may be why the USB wasn't right.

Thank you.
I´ve read reviews about it and it seems it is considered among the two top KT133A boards.
I don´t mind it doesn´t support CPUs higher than Palomino, I just intend to use it for the Thunderbird line.
I found an eBay listing for used Kk266Plus boards and ordered one. Let´s see if I am lucky (that it works and that the caps are not in bad shape).

You say you experienced trouble with your MX440 in this board. It reminds me the issues with VIA Apollo Pro 133A (694X), it is hard to make GPUs work at 4X with it. It would only work properly with a certain combination of Via 4in1 and GPU drivers. That´s is for W98, in the case of XP I couldn´t find a fix yet. Very picky. Is that the kind of trouble you went through?
As my intention is to remain period correct, I would go with a Geforce2 or Radeon DDR (7200) for this board instead, though.

PcBytes wrote on 2022-04-27, 06:32:

Hermei, ew. I'd replace the small buggers if your USB kills mices. These Hermei caps are as bad as GSC, Chhsi, Choyo (this one is incredibly popular on retro Gigabyte mobos up to early SDR-based i845 mobos. Haven't seen Choyos beyond those, just bad batches of Nichicon HM/HN on anything 848P onwards until late 2005 to early 2006) and G-Luxons.

Otherwise, looks like a solid board, slightly similar in design to ABIT's KT7/KT7A.
Also how do you get Mobile Athlons to work on a desktop board? I slightly remember pulling a 400FSB 2600 from some trashed NEC laptop and couldn't use it anywhere. nF2 boards refused it, and so did KT600, KT133A and a SiS 730 as well.

I'm rocking PS2 devices now which was the plan all along. The little caps looked fine, but are probably out of spec at this point too. I'm not going to sweat it for now unless I get a bunch of problems.

For mobile Athlon to work (in this board in particular), it needs to be an older model pre-thoroughbred. You will need an AH prefix chip and not AX. AFAIK, there weren't any 400FSB socket A mobile chips. However, that ought not prevent it from running it if possible. I'm not sure why it wouldn't run, especially in a board like an Nforce2. I wonder if it could be a CPUID issue?

I have a Abit Kt133a-raid and run a mx460 I've never had any issues running the card at agp 4x under XP Pro. I'm just running the latest Nvidia drivers with the card it's been trouble free for 4 years now.

Con 2 botones wrote on 2022-04-27, 15:55:

Thank you. I´ve read reviews about it and it seems it is considered among the two top KT133A boards. I don´t mind it doesn´t s […]
Show full quote

ptr1ck wrote on 2022-04-26, 21:59:

It's been ok. It doesn't like any processor newer than a palomino. It's stable at 150mhz FSB all day long. There are nuances caused by the VIA chipset but the PCI latency patch fixes a lot. My Geforce4 (8x) is a pain in the ass on it but Voodoo 3 is flawless so far.

One of the rear USB ports may have killed two of my mice. I've decided to not use the onboard USB at all and added in a USB 2.0 card. Even if it worked properly I wouldn't use it as USB 1.0 is terrible.

Oh before I forget, it was a major recap job. I may not have selected the perfect new caps but couldn't find any data on the junk that was bad on it, hermei (iirc). I bet all of the boards you find will need new caps. I didn't touch the smallest caps, which may be why the USB wasn't right.

Thank you.
I´ve read reviews about it and it seems it is considered among the two top KT133A boards.
I don´t mind it doesn´t support CPUs higher than Palomino, I just intend to use it for the Thunderbird line.
I found an eBay listing for used Kk266Plus boards and ordered one. Let´s see if I am lucky (that it works and that the caps are not in bad shape).

You say you experienced trouble with your MX440 in this board. It reminds me the issues with VIA Apollo Pro 133A (694X), it is hard to make GPUs work at 4X with it. It would only work properly with a certain combination of Via 4in1 and GPU drivers. That´s is for W98, in the case of XP I couldn´t find a fix yet. Very picky. Is that the kind of trouble you went through?
As my intention is to remain period correct, I would go with a Geforce2 or Radeon DDR (7200) for this board instead, though.

I highly recommend picking up a mobile Athlon 4 (Palomino/Corvette) for it. I love the flexibility it provides and having SSE is nice as well. I can crank the FSB up to 150 with the RAM in sync and run from 825mhz to 1400mhz without running the voltage higher than spec (1.45v). I can run it as low as 550mhz with BIOS options as well. I got it for $5 with free shipping.

The Geforce4 card is an 8x AGP Ti 4200, but yea it seems finicky. I need to mess with it some more as I originally didn't use the PCI latency patch and such. It's just maddening that you basically need to wipe the install of Windows 98 to get it right. On the other hand, XP is running perfectly with default drivers for the Geforce and the VIA chipset. I only had to install Koolsmokys Voodoo 2 drivers and Turtle Beach drivers.

I may just drop my Voodoo 3 in it and call it a day. It's the more compatible and period correct anyways. And if I'm being honest with myself (rare occurrence) I can most likely play anything newer with my modern machine or an XP specific build so the Geforce4 isn't really a necessity.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-04-27, 16:02:

I have a Abit Kt133a-raid and run a mx460 I've never had any issues running the card at agp 4x under XP Pro. I'm just running the latest Nvidia drivers with the card it's been trouble free for 4 years now.

XP Pro seems to work fine here too. How is 98 for you with that setup?

ptr1ck wrote on 2022-04-27, 16:14:

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-04-27, 16:02:

I have a Abit Kt133a-raid and run a mx460 I've never had any issues running the card at agp 4x under XP Pro. I'm just running the latest Nvidia drivers with the card it's been trouble free for 4 years now.

XP Pro seems to work fine here too. How is 98 for you with that setup?

I have it built as an XP Pro only system. I have a different system for 98.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-04-27, 16:15:

ptr1ck wrote on 2022-04-27, 16:14:

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-04-27, 16:02:

I have a Abit Kt133a-raid and run a mx460 I've never had any issues running the card at agp 4x under XP Pro. I'm just running the latest Nvidia drivers with the card it's been trouble free for 4 years now.

XP Pro seems to work fine here too. How is 98 for you with that setup?

I have it built as an XP Pro only system. I have a different system for 98.

Intriguing.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-04-27, 16:02:

I have a Abit Kt133a-raid and run a mx460 I've never had any issues running the card at agp 4x under XP Pro. I'm just running the latest Nvidia drivers with the card it's been trouble free for 4 years now.

Well, that of yours is a similar chipset, yes. But I was referring to the Intel´s CPU oriented counterpart, "Apollo Pro 133A".

It is in fact, a known issue from that era:

https://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33608315

https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/agp-4x-and- … -pro133a.49569/

https://www.tweaktownforum.com/forum/hardware … 2x-to-4x-issues

https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=816035

https://www.wimsbios.com/forum/video-vga-and- … blem-t3188.html

Skt 370 VIA Apollo 133 AGP4x issue troubleshooting

Con 2 botones wrote on 2022-04-28, 13:57:

Well, that of yours is a similar chipset, yes. But I was referring to the Intel´s CPU oriented counterpart, "Apollo Pro 133A". […]
Show full quote

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-04-27, 16:02:

I have a Abit Kt133a-raid and run a mx460 I've never had any issues running the card at agp 4x under XP Pro. I'm just running the latest Nvidia drivers with the card it's been trouble free for 4 years now.

Well, that of yours is a similar chipset, yes. But I was referring to the Intel´s CPU oriented counterpart, "Apollo Pro 133A".

It is in fact, a known issue from that era:

https://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33608315

https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/agp-4x-and- … -pro133a.49569/

https://www.tweaktownforum.com/forum/hardware … 2x-to-4x-issues

https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=816035

https://www.wimsbios.com/forum/video-vga-and- … blem-t3188.html

Skt 370 VIA Apollo 133 AGP4x issue troubleshooting

My mistake sorry about that I didn't realize you were talking about Intel.

ptr1ck wrote on 2022-04-27, 16:12:

I highly recommend picking up a mobile Athlon 4 (Palomino/Corvette) for it. I love the flexibility it provides and having SSE is […]
Show full quote

Con 2 botones wrote on 2022-04-27, 15:55:

Thank you. I´ve read reviews about it and it seems it is considered among the two top KT133A boards. I don´t mind it doesn´t s […]
Show full quote

ptr1ck wrote on 2022-04-26, 21:59:

It's been ok. It doesn't like any processor newer than a palomino. It's stable at 150mhz FSB all day long. There are nuances caused by the VIA chipset but the PCI latency patch fixes a lot. My Geforce4 (8x) is a pain in the ass on it but Voodoo 3 is flawless so far.

One of the rear USB ports may have killed two of my mice. I've decided to not use the onboard USB at all and added in a USB 2.0 card. Even if it worked properly I wouldn't use it as USB 1.0 is terrible.

Oh before I forget, it was a major recap job. I may not have selected the perfect new caps but couldn't find any data on the junk that was bad on it, hermei (iirc). I bet all of the boards you find will need new caps. I didn't touch the smallest caps, which may be why the USB wasn't right.

Thank you.
I´ve read reviews about it and it seems it is considered among the two top KT133A boards.
I don´t mind it doesn´t support CPUs higher than Palomino, I just intend to use it for the Thunderbird line.
I found an eBay listing for used Kk266Plus boards and ordered one. Let´s see if I am lucky (that it works and that the caps are not in bad shape).

You say you experienced trouble with your MX440 in this board. It reminds me the issues with VIA Apollo Pro 133A (694X), it is hard to make GPUs work at 4X with it. It would only work properly with a certain combination of Via 4in1 and GPU drivers. That´s is for W98, in the case of XP I couldn´t find a fix yet. Very picky. Is that the kind of trouble you went through?
As my intention is to remain period correct, I would go with a Geforce2 or Radeon DDR (7200) for this board instead, though.

I highly recommend picking up a mobile Athlon 4 (Palomino/Corvette) for it. I love the flexibility it provides and having SSE is nice as well. I can crank the FSB up to 150 with the RAM in sync and run from 825mhz to 1400mhz without running the voltage higher than spec (1.45v). I can run it as low as 550mhz with BIOS options as well. I got it for $5 with free shipping.

The Geforce4 card is an 8x AGP Ti 4200, but yea it seems finicky. I need to mess with it some more as I originally didn't use the PCI latency patch and such. It's just maddening that you basically need to wipe the install of Windows 98 to get it right. On the other hand, XP is running perfectly with default drivers for the Geforce and the VIA chipset. I only had to install Koolsmokys Voodoo 2 drivers and Turtle Beach drivers.

I may just drop my Voodoo 3 in it and call it a day. It's the more compatible and period correct anyways. And if I'm being honest with myself (rare occurrence) I can most likely play anything newer with my modern machine or an XP specific build so the Geforce4 isn't really a necessity.

I could follow your suggestion just to play around a little bit.
As a "finished" build, though, I would like to leave the top of the line of the Thunderbirds paired with a period correct top quality/stability motherboard (as this Iwill seems to be) .

I own the mentioned above ASUS A7N266-VM to play with other breeds of Athlon Xp (like Palomino, up to Thoroughbred and related Durons). Also an MSI with KM400 chipset paired with a 3200+ Barton. I would also like to pair this Barton with an nforce2 based board which has been elusive to me so far.
Maybe because I want it to have it all (Sata, dual channel and the 12V auxiliar connector, which not all nforce2 boards accomplish) while being reasonably priced...

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-04-28, 14:00:

Con 2 botones wrote on 2022-04-28, 13:57:

Well, that of yours is a similar chipset, yes. But I was referring to the Intel´s CPU oriented counterpart, "Apollo Pro 133A". […]
Show full quote

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-04-27, 16:02:

I have a Abit Kt133a-raid and run a mx460 I've never had any issues running the card at agp 4x under XP Pro. I'm just running the latest Nvidia drivers with the card it's been trouble free for 4 years now.

Well, that of yours is a similar chipset, yes. But I was referring to the Intel´s CPU oriented counterpart, "Apollo Pro 133A".

It is in fact, a known issue from that era:

https://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33608315

https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/agp-4x-and- … -pro133a.49569/

https://www.tweaktownforum.com/forum/hardware … 2x-to-4x-issues

https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=816035

https://www.wimsbios.com/forum/video-vga-and- … blem-t3188.html

Skt 370 VIA Apollo 133 AGP4x issue troubleshooting

My mistake sorry about that I didn't realize you were talking about Intel.

Oh, no problem at all! It is good to know that KT133A does not seem to suffer the same kind of trouble as Apollo Pro 133A.

I've owned this Abit board for a very long time and it's in it's most recent configuration since 2018 and my son uses the system quite regularly and it's been just rock solid.

Con 2 botones wrote on 2022-04-28, 14:19:

I could follow your suggestion just to play around a little bit. As a "finished" build, though, I would like to leave the top o […]
Show full quote

ptr1ck wrote on 2022-04-27, 16:12:

I highly recommend picking up a mobile Athlon 4 (Palomino/Corvette) for it. I love the flexibility it provides and having SSE is […]
Show full quote

Con 2 botones wrote on 2022-04-27, 15:55:

Thank you. I´ve read reviews about it and it seems it is considered among the two top KT133A boards. I don´t mind it doesn´t s […]
Show full quote

Thank you.
I´ve read reviews about it and it seems it is considered among the two top KT133A boards.
I don´t mind it doesn´t support CPUs higher than Palomino, I just intend to use it for the Thunderbird line.
I found an eBay listing for used Kk266Plus boards and ordered one. Let´s see if I am lucky (that it works and that the caps are not in bad shape).

You say you experienced trouble with your MX440 in this board. It reminds me the issues with VIA Apollo Pro 133A (694X), it is hard to make GPUs work at 4X with it. It would only work properly with a certain combination of Via 4in1 and GPU drivers. That´s is for W98, in the case of XP I couldn´t find a fix yet. Very picky. Is that the kind of trouble you went through?
As my intention is to remain period correct, I would go with a Geforce2 or Radeon DDR (7200) for this board instead, though.

I highly recommend picking up a mobile Athlon 4 (Palomino/Corvette) for it. I love the flexibility it provides and having SSE is nice as well. I can crank the FSB up to 150 with the RAM in sync and run from 825mhz to 1400mhz without running the voltage higher than spec (1.45v). I can run it as low as 550mhz with BIOS options as well. I got it for $5 with free shipping.

The Geforce4 card is an 8x AGP Ti 4200, but yea it seems finicky. I need to mess with it some more as I originally didn't use the PCI latency patch and such. It's just maddening that you basically need to wipe the install of Windows 98 to get it right. On the other hand, XP is running perfectly with default drivers for the Geforce and the VIA chipset. I only had to install Koolsmokys Voodoo 2 drivers and Turtle Beach drivers.

I may just drop my Voodoo 3 in it and call it a day. It's the more compatible and period correct anyways. And if I'm being honest with myself (rare occurrence) I can most likely play anything newer with my modern machine or an XP specific build so the Geforce4 isn't really a necessity.

I could follow your suggestion just to play around a little bit.
As a "finished" build, though, I would like to leave the top of the line of the Thunderbirds paired with a period correct top quality/stability motherboard (as this Iwill seems to be) .

I own the mentioned above ASUS A7N266-VM to play with other breeds of Athlon Xp (like Palomino, up to Thoroughbred and related Durons). Also an MSI with KM400 chipset paired with a 3200+ Barton. I would also like to pair this Barton with an nforce2 based board which has been elusive to me so far.
Maybe because I want it to have it all (Sata, dual channel and the 12V auxiliar connector, which not all nforce2 boards accomplish) while being reasonably priced...

I have an Albatron KX18D Pro II Nforce2 board that has all the bells except 12v connector. It ran my barton at 2.0 with no problem. I replaced it with this board for better 98 compatibility and ISA sound. My SLI setup is very fast on it.

I just completed a successful re-cap of a KK266+ today. I actually re-capped one that was probably from the same seller you mention months ago, but that board had a different fault so I had to scrap it. The first board he sent me was a revision 2.0 KK266+R, this time I got the vanilla KK266+ revision 1.0.

The only difference between revision 1.0 and 2.0 is that when it's the RAID edition, they use a Highpoint controller instead of the rare (but inferior) AMI one, so the circuitry surrounding it is a little different. Otherwise, I see some other minor cost reductions (SMT GAL chips as opposed to DIP, and swapping name brand ICs for Taiwanese generics). There is no benefit to revision 2.0. I also have the original KK266 (non Plus) that is in need of a re-cap, but the design is significantly different.

Your post encouraged me to try another board from him, and I'm glad I did... I initially assumed that all his stock were returns, but for reasons other than capacitor issues (unrepairable stuff like VRM short, chipset short, etc...)

I tried to pin mod it like my KT7A to run Barton, and it did not post. It only works with Palomino.

I ordered a Corvette Athlon (also most likely from the same seller as you), and that should put this platform on par with a Tualatin PIII-S 1.4 once the chip is overclocked to 10.5x133 (but with the added benefit of on-the-fly multiplier changes in DOS). I also modified the 0826 BIOS, first to unhide the option to disable ACPI, and also ran it through BIOS Patcher 6a9.

I am attaching a copy of my modded BIOS here.

That's awesome mockingbird. I also modified the 0826 BIOS for myself. What is the BIOS patcher 6a9?

mockingbird wrote on 2022-05-05, 21:38:

I just completed a successful re-cap of a KK266+ today. I actually re-capped one that was probably from the same seller you men […]
Show full quote

I just completed a successful re-cap of a KK266+ today. I actually re-capped one that was probably from the same seller you mention months ago, but that board had a different fault so I had to scrap it. The first board he sent me was a revision 2.0 KK266+R, this time I got the vanilla KK266+ revision 1.0.

The only difference between revision 1.0 and 2.0 is that when it's the RAID edition, they use a Highpoint controller instead of the rare (but inferior) AMI one, so the circuitry surrounding it is a little different. Otherwise, I see some other minor cost reductions (SMT GAL chips as opposed to DIP, and swapping name brand ICs for Taiwanese generics). There is no benefit to revision 2.0. I also have the original KK266 (non Plus) that is in need of a re-cap, but the design is significantly different.

Your post encouraged me to try another board from him, and I'm glad I did... I initially assumed that all his stock were returns, but for reasons other than capacitor issues (unrepairable stuff like VRM short, chipset short, etc...)

I tried to pin mod it like my KT7A to run Barton, and it did not post. It only works with Palomino.

I ordered a Corvette Athlon (also most likely from the same seller as you), and that should put this platform on par with a Tualatin PIII-S 1.4 once the chip is overclocked to 10.5x133 (but with the added benefit of on-the-fly multiplier changes in DOS). I also modified the 0826 BIOS, first to unhide the option to disable ACPI, and also ran it through BIOS Patcher 6a9.

I am attaching a copy of my modded BIOS here.

I´m guessing we all are talking about the same seller (the description of the board in the eBay listing is wrong/incomplete)...
If so, I also bought from him, mine is still on its way.

Just curious, why is it a good to disable ACPI?