I've become a Dolch fanatic. Mind you, they're not that well built, the hardware complement appears to be whatever was on the shelf, and internal cabling is stretched and crushed into places it shouldn't go for a reliable machine. Still, a Dolch is a great lunchbox with everything included. One of my older Dolch machines even has the coveted Cherry keyswitches.

The machine I'm working with today is a Dolch PAC 65 with a 440BX-based motherboard. This is the same board CuriousMarc fought with in his Dolch video series.

I'm attempting to replace the Pentium II Slot 1 / 400 MHz / 100 MHz FSB / 2.0V processor with a Pentium III Slot 1 / 600 MHz / 100 MHz FSB / 1.65V core. The machine boots, but hangs when identifying the processor. The processor is normally identified with its core frequency. When changing to the 600 MHz PIII, the processor name shows, but the core frequency is shown as 98 MHz.

Also, after the core frequency, the memory test normally starts. With the PIII, the memory test never starts.

The BIOS is AWARD 4.51PG, with a rather generic ID for the 440BX chipset.

I've tried two types of memory. Both work with the PII 400 MHz. Both give the same result (no memory test) with the PIII.
Memory type 1: 128Mbit x 8, single sided PC100 Non-ECC, CL2 (Kingston module, NEC chips)
Memory type 2: 256Mbit x 8, dual sided PC100 non-ECC CL2 (Micron modules, Micron chips) The Micron chips are -8E

I've set the CPU frequency DIP switches per the motherboard manual - for a 600 MHz FSB. The settings are clearly described.

Any ideas on why the board won't support this processor, or why the board is behaving the way it is?