First post, by gerwin
- Rank
- l33t
Came across this Pentium II 440BX board some weeks ago. I eventually decided it may be nice to have, Mainly because it does 50MHz to 133MHz FSB and there arent many BX mainboards with that feature. The 50MHz that is.
Here is my earlier 50 to 133MHz FSB project:
50 to 133MHz FSB on a BX Mainboard
This board is more obscure and troublesome. Fortunately the support site is still available if one searches very well:
Shuttle archive
I did clean up the board layout from the manual quite a bit. It is attached at the bottom of this post.
Shuttle HOT-661 v1.1
(very similar to v2.0, but v3.1 has several differences)
PRO:
- 440BX
- 3x ISA Slot
- 50MHz FSB setting
- Both jumpered and BIOS FSB and Multiplier configuration.
- Allows 66MHz FSB CPU's to run on 100MHz or more (JP45).
CON:
- The v1.1 board VRM does not go below 1,8 Volt. Coppermine core Pentium III CPUs request 1,75/1,65 Volt.
- Counts/Checks the RAM at boot, can be skipped, but not disabled entirely.
- Does not allow a 100MHz FSB CPU to run below 100MHz FSB.
- Where is the AGP divider setting?
- No hardware monitor chip mounted
A coppermine could run on this board when modded to request 1,8V. So there was no BIOS limitation. I wanted to try and upgrade the VRM so it supports the normal coppermine core voltages. So I needed to replace the hip6004ACB chip with a pin compatible hip6004BCB. The legs seemed large enough to consider (de)soldering this chip. Unfortunately I could not find this chip anywhere, or any compatible one for that matter. And I did not want to buy an entire mainboard just to scavenge a VRM. Later I came across a picture of a mislabeled XEON CPU with VRM module, and it occured to me that such modules may hold what I need. And they do.
The board now runs with coppermines. the voltages are spot on. But the combintation of a coppermine with 133MHz FSB is not reliable:
Coppermine 4x50MHz = OK
Coppermine 4x112MHz = OK
Coppermine 4x133MHz = Crashes within a minute
Deschutes 2x50MHz = OK
Deschutes 2x133MHz = OK
The smoothing capacitors for the core voltage do look small compared to later boards. They are 6,3V 1000microF, 8 pieces.
Anyway this is not too big a deal. I am already happy my soldering action did not destroy anything. 😉
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