It's not that big of an investment to replace the caps. Probably around $10 worth of parts, and an hour's time. There's the seven CPU VRM caps, and a couple at the upper right of the memory slots... the rest of the smaller ones I'd only worry about replacing if they're in noticeably bad shape.

Once you get the capacitors replaced, it won't really be 'brittle' anymore, and it's once of the better SDRAM-based Athlon boards.

Well, if you consider the fact that I bought it for a single buck, the price virtually explodes.

In fact, the big cpu caps all seem fine still. The 1000µF ones that are spread all over the board seem to go puff more readily. Three of them smoked off on first power up. I wonder if I can recap them with 1200µF instead?

1200uf should be fine for most places, just be sure you use low-ESR caps. The upward tolerances on electrolytics tend to be 20% or more anyway.

On the subject of cost, I see it this way: if you bought the board for $1, then investing $10 in parts still only makes it an $11 board, and it's $11 for a perfectly working board that isn't going to have capacitor problems anymore. So it comes down to whether it's worth $11 to you, to have a solid Socket A board... if you want to build that sort of system, you're probably not going to do much better on price.

Unless I ruin it when soldering out the old caps.

I bought the caps and replaced them. Wasn't a big deal. And it still works. So I could now throw together all the ingredients for a hellish retro machine.

BTW: Does anyone here have any EPOX Software for it or a link? Stuff like onboard sound?

Only 1.5 years later, I completed the project - as far as 'complete' is possible in our trade.

Here are the specs:
EP-8KTA3 Pro (KT133A)
Athlon xp-m 2600+
256MB + 64 MB Ram
Voodoo5 5500
Sound Blaster AWE 32 CT2760 with Nec XR385 daughterboard (yamaha clone)
USB 2.0 Via PCI card for the internal USB2.0 card reader (way faster than floppy)

After much contemplation, this system won over a p3-1000 setup. The final reason that made me choose this one were a few games, most notably European Air War and Gunship! both at 1600x1200, which profited by a fair number of frames from the extra 1000 MHz. Also, the graphics can be swapped for a 4200ti quickly, the system will boot straight to be ready for work for nearly continuous 60fps.

While this setting has a nice variable speed range from 300 MHz-2000MHz in Windows, it can also be converted into something as fast as a 486DX2-66, by turning off the internal cache at 2000MHz. The turbo pascal error does not occur here, besides it can be patched out.

But there is a price to pay for this outrageous speed - I will see if I am willing to pay for it. For Wing Commander, I must still use "throttle" at 50% to hit the right speed. There also is a niche between 300MHz and 133 MHz, which the Athlon can not cover without a software break. I have so far tested "Magic the Gathering" with the infamous shandalar. It is a windows game, that is speed sensitive and will require something around 133 MHz. A 50% slowdown with turbo worked ok.
The Asus P3b-f would have covered (by swapping in an early P2-400) 133-400 MHz out of the box, while 750 MHz without Cache would have worked out of the box for Wing Commander.

My machine uses an early SB AWE 32 (the CT 2760) which fortunately has no plug and pray and no distorting 3D enhancement. (I also have a CT 3980 AWE32 PnP, and an early SB16 w/o hanging notes bug, but prefer the CT2760 so far)
I know that it does have hanging notes problems with the daughterboard in some games, but then, I have 8MB of ram on it to try alternatives perhaps. RG100 reported problems with AWE32 on this board. I am aware of stuttering issues in some games, but so far, a slower bus and clock could solve them.

The only reason why I am using this KT133A 😵 Socket A Mobo is the ISA slot. And the reasons for the ISA slot is the cache off option (a nogo with pci sound) and the opl chips on older cards for DOS games. Should this turn out too troublesome, I would get a KT266A or a KT333 board with PCI Sound and DDR for the Voodoo5. We'll see.

Very nice!

What 3DSPEED score do you get when all caches disabled?

PCI cards aren't that bad for the newer DOS games that use Sound Blaster and General MIDI. But old games like Wing Commander will always be problematic for fast machines.

Once cache disabled the main thing that determines speed is the FSB and memory speed / timings.

It is impossible to hit every speed point and the main reason why many here have several PCs 😀

Sounds like you have that KT133A thoroughly defeated and beaten/sculpted into an excellent setup. Congrats!

I have to say that all the KT133A talk reminds me of my old Abit KT7A board. I bought it refurbished from Newegg in 2001. It was ok. I'm sure, if it had enjoyed a long life, that its defective caps would have burst and the dumb little Abit northbridge fan would have jammed up. Alas, it had an accident... A HDD power cable connected itself to a USB header on the board during a mod project and exciting things happened which caused it to be quite dead. 😁

In fact, all of this 2001-2 Athlon talk has me pondering a KT333 purchase. I like that universal AGP slot... If only nForce2 boards had that. Years ago I had a Epox KT333 board but sold it off. As usual, I regret a sale.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

What 3DSPEED score do you get when all caches disabled?

I only ran speedsys and it would come up with 15.8-27 as range, depending on the CPU/FSB speed. Iirc, the Ram speed didn't matter much.

It is impossible to hit every speed point and the main reason why many here have several PCs 😀

I still have a beautiful retro 486 on the shelf. I have not started it in a while, but it was working last time I checked. But it should be covered by the Athlon w/o cache. In a few months, I will upgrade to an Ivy Bridge K model and then Dosbox will enter a new speed range too. The reason I don't use Dosbox more ist that every time I change the hardware or a new version comes out, I need to relearn, reconfigure etc. With a Retro Crate, it just stays till it dies.

swaaye wrote:

Sounds like you have that KT133A thoroughly defeated and beaten/sculpted into an excellent setup. Congrats!

Not quite. When it says "unknown CPU", it means it. While I can change the multi on the fly many times, it will not forget that I did so. The next warm restart will usually require a power off or a hard reset. Also it turned out that it does not accept a second ram module. So it will be 64, 128, 256 or 512. Jane's Longbow 2 says it may not be 512MB so 256 it is. As far as I recall, that should be plenty.

I'm sure, if it had enjoyed a long life, that its defective caps would have burst and the dumb little Abit northbridge fan would have jammed up.

Actually, I removed the NB cooler and replaced it with a passive one from Zalman. The CPU is under a "7V" arctic cooling copper silent 2, which directs the air directly into the tall NB cooler. Vcore is lowered to 1.47V.

In fact, all of this 2001-2 Athlon talk has me pondering a KT333 purchase. I like that universal AGP slot... If only nForce2 boards had that. Years ago I had a Epox KT333 board but sold it off. As usual, I regret a sale.

I have thought about it too. The gain from fsb 333 is not much. I tried FSB 100 vs fsb 150 with 15x vs 10x respectably. So the cpu clock was 1500 MHz in both cases. In 3DM2000, the score went from 5456 to 5626. For practical purposes, the V5 is maxed out either way. But I keep the option in mind, should the current Epox blow more caps.

ux-3 wrote:

I have thought about it too. The gain from fsb 333 is not much.

The appeal to KT333 is mainly it being the fastest chipset with 3.3v AGP support (AFAIK) and that it has a significantly upgraded southbridge compared to the 686B with KT133A. None of this is of major practical value though 🤣

Besides, KT133A has ISA. That's a big positive for what you're doing.

ux-3 wrote:

...

But there is a price to pay for this outrageous speed - I will see if I am willing to pay for it. For Wing Commander, I must still use "throttle" at 50% to hit the right speed. There also is a niche between 300MHz and 133 MHz, which the Athlon can not cover without a software break. I have so far tested "Magic the Gathering" with the infamous shandalar. It is a windows game, that is speed sensitive and will require something around 133 MHz. A 50% slowdown with turbo worked ok.
The Asus P3b-f would have covered (by swapping in an early P2-400) 133-400 MHz out of the box, while 750 MHz without Cache would have worked out of the box for Wing Commander.

As for the old microprose MTG (Planeswalker) game, I've played it many times on a P4 2666mhz(on win98, as on XP it has some minor issues), with no speed problem.

I believe it is a version that is patched for the speed problem(or I patched it myself with the official patch), but I don't remember the details, as it is a long time since I installed it.

http://forums.mtgnews.com/showthread.php?page=9&t=67392
...user 'Planeswlk' mention speed & patch here.

Just tried "Star Wars - Rebel Assault". The game is poor imho, but it does run without problems when cache gets disabled.

I've seen patched versions of Shadalar, but either I need to grab a web version of the game or the patch is for the US version only. At least that is how I recall it. I'll look for the mentioned patch in that thread.

I feel like sharing some knowledge that I've recently reacquired -

KT333 = 133 MHz FSB / 166 MHz RAM
KT400 = 166 / 166 (unofficial 200)
KT400A = 166 / 200
KT600 = 200 / 200
KT880 = 200 / 200 (dual channel)

VIA name game.

The "best" is missing, the KT266a (iirc), which was their most honorable entry.
It was 133/133 and stable at that. Would be my choice for a PCI only machine, should the KT133a toss the towel.

I skipped KT266A because its name is straightforward. 😉

I ran a Shuttle AK31A v3 (KT266A) board for years. It was ok. But I had major problems with Radeon 8500 on it. KT266A and KT333 people had trouble. I remember things like Morrowind's UI becoming very sluggish and Unreal II running at ~1 fps. But then Radeon 8500 was no high watermark for quality so who knows what the deal was.

The Shuttle finally died in '08 (I think), probably because of the caps (a few had burst).

swaaye wrote:

The Shuttle finally died in '08 (I think), probably because of the caps (a few had burst).

You really try to rub that in, don't you? 😉 Well, there is always the P3 to fall back on.

ux-3 wrote:

You really try to rub that in, don't you? 😉 Well, there is always the P3 to fall back on.

🤣 yeah I'm sorry. It's just becoming more and more common that I run into hardware with bursting caps. Just looking around on ebay.

swaaye wrote:

It's just becoming more and more common that I run into hardware with bursting caps. Just looking around on ebay.

Why don't you just replace them?

As a rule of thumb, good ventilation or cooling will prolong capacitor live. Thats why my Athlon didn't get the 5V low noise treatment. I boot him to only 500 MHz. That is fast enough for almost all games, even SVGA games. Only 3D titles sometimes need more. And thats just a few clicks in Win98.

But then, I am a computer user, not a collector. I do have piles of sound cards, but I only got them for testing, I will or did pass most of them on once I decide against them. And so it goes with all components.

If we were all in one country, we'd have a trade market, but postage is prohibitive for many deals here.

In general, I would recommend to stockpile on the components you really need, because it all tends to get rare, even on ebay.

One other thing I will really preserve with spares is a Windows XP retro machine. I am already eyeing components I need to stack up on. So far I have decided on a E8500 on a mATX (all japanese caps this time! 😎 ) with a low heat graphics board (GF 450 GTS perhaps). The amount of games that runs on such a machine (or would be lost if xp was lost) is just too great.

Worst threat there is the loss of the digital rights management. But then, we won't live forever either, and once the vision gets low, who cares anyway. After you use a beamer and a wall, there is no line to fall back on. 😵

Windows XP runs 100% fine and functional on a Sandy Bridge CPU system. And I expect it to run just as well when I would upgrade that Z68 mainboard with an Ivy bridge later. So no need to worry about that yet.