Sorry RG100, must have gone to bed when your next posts came in. I think I faced the same issue doing the wire trick before too, on which ones are VSS and VID2. I too used both sites for reference, can't remember which one though for the Soyo. I used Martin's exclusively for my AX33 Pro board- cranked that one up to 2.05v.

Congrats also on your super overclock- though by now this is business as usual for you! 🤣

Tetrium wrote:

Tualatin chips and especially the boards were never common here in The Netherlands either. My guess is that there were simply ne […]
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Tualatin chips and especially the boards were never common here in The Netherlands either. My guess is that there were simply never that many made and on top of that, it was the start of the capacitor plague. The Tualatin boards I did find often had leaking caps and one other board (an ASUS TUSL2-C) had this annoying whining from one of it's coils. I ended up giving the board away, even though it seemed to work perfectly.
The Tualatin chips I found were usually Tualerons 1.2 and 1.3 and only once did I find a Tualatin P3 1.2. I never actually found any of the P3-s's in the wild but thankfully they are being sold cheaply on Ebay these days, NOS 😀

I've recently gotten an ECS board (yukky) and the only reason it didn't disappear on the bottom of my stash right away is because the board happens to support Tualatins! 😜
I'd even be happy if a Compaq Tualatin board happened to find it's way into my hands 🤣
Of the Tualatin boards, over here it seems that the TUSL2-C's are the most common ones.

Tualatins were expensive when new and gaming performance is still below even a sub 2ghz P4, despite the excitement of having a 1ghz + P3 system. I too only have managed to find a Tualeron 1.2, which unfortunately only overclocks to 112mhz stably. At that speed, it doesn't seem to be faster than an overclocked coppermine- at most it's equal due to the low bus speed.

But the 1.4S at 1740mhz is a whole different animal though- RG100 could you pls do some benchies against a P4 or Athlon XP? I'd be very much interested to see how really does a 1.74 ghz PIII stack up against a P4 or similar.

I'm having the strangest problem I think I have ever encountered. The Soyo mobo has stopped POSTing, but now I can't get *any* of my mobos to POST. I've tried 2 good working PSUs. I've tried at least 6 VGA cards. I'm trying to get mobos to POST that have always worked OK, but no luck.

I've removed everything from these boards, incl FDD, HDD, ODD, keyboard, mouse. The only thing I haven't tried is changing the monitor cable. But I'm using mobos with onboard diagnostic LEDs, and they are showing "error". Surely the mobo wouldn't care if the monitor cable was broken? Also, I haven't tried chaning the monitor yet.

The last thing I remember doing, before all of this weirdness started, was I tried an AGP Voodoo5 in the Soyo board. It didn't POST. From that moment on, I've had all of the problems mentioned above. Strange!

Edit: I've just tried changing the monitor cable - and that worked! I can't believe it! I'm just messing about with another old mobo ATM. I haven't gone back to the Soyo yet. I'll do that very soon. But if the cable did die, how did it die? Did the Soyo mobo + AGP Voodoo 5 combo somehow kill it?

sgt76 wrote:

... But the 1.4S at 1740mhz is a whole different animal though- RG100 could you pls do some benchies against a P4 or Athlon XP? I'd be very much interested to see how really does a 1.74 ghz PIII stack up against a P4 or similar.

I will try some of this as soon as I can. Please note however, that I have no P4 mobos at all. 🙁 Regarding the Athlon XP speed test comparison, please can you recommend a system? For example, do you want me to run a system at the same FSB? That is, 166? I think my Epox mobo can do 166, but I'm not sure what Athlon CPU will survive such an overclock. A chip with a 10.5 multi, perhaps? What chip would that be, I wonder? If it's cheap, I can get one from ebay. I like testing, as you guys know! 😀

Edit: Regarding the monitor cable issue. It really was the cable! I've just tried the "broken" cable again, just to make sure. No POST. That's on a mobo that definitely works. I've never known this to happen before. I didn't tread on it, or pull it, or anything. It just "died" after I used the Voodoo5 with it. There's nothing physically wrong with it. No bent, or broken pins. Strange!

retro games 100 wrote:

sgt76 wrote:

... But the 1.4S at 1740mhz is a whole different animal though- RG100 could you pls do some benchies against a P4 or Athlon XP? I'd be very much interested to see how really does a 1.74 ghz PIII stack up against a P4 or similar.

I will try some of this as soon as I can. Please note however, that I have no P4 mobos at all. 🙁 Regarding the Athlon XP speed test comparison, please can you recommend a system? For example, do you want me to run a system at the same FSB? That is, 166? I think my Epox mobo can do 166, but I'm not sure what Athlon CPU will survive such an overclock. A chip with a 10.5 multi, perhaps? What chip would that be, I wonder? If it's cheap, I can get one from ebay. I like testing, as you guys know! 😀

Edit: Regarding the monitor cable issue. It really was the cable! I've just tried the "broken" cable again, just to make sure. No POST. That's on a mobo that definitely works. I've never known this to happen before. I didn't tread on it, or pull it, or anything. It just "died" after I used the Voodoo5 with it. There's nothing physically wrong with it. No bent, or broken pins. Strange!

I think a comparison between a P3s-1400 and a Thunderbird 1400C would be interesting. The fastest P3 ever made vs the fastest Athlon Thunderbird ever made 😁

And pfew, good thing it was just a monitor cable!

Unfortunately, I think the T-Bird 1400C is rather uncommon. I don't have one, and I'm not sure if I can get one cheaply. Pity. Um, just trying to think what else I could use...some low spec 133 FSB Athlon XP chip, perhaps?

The Athlon XP added SSE to the chip along with a few other tweaks so if you were looking for an analogue to the Thunderbird I don't think it would be suitable.

You might be better off just getting a 1.333GHz Thunderbird, a lot of the C's were multiplier unlocked, and even if its not its trivial to unlock them with the pencil trick. Simple multiplier adjustment at stock FSB and you've basically got a 1.4.

Thanks a lot for the extra info. BTW, with a replacement monitor cable, I now have the Soyo mobo running again. I have been experimenting with AGP VGA cards. I have noticed that none of them POST when the FSB is set to 166. I wonder if this is because there is no AGP voltage increase option?

Because I cannot ask the mobo to send more juice to the AGP slot, perhaps this is why none of them are functioning at 166 FSB? Or, could it be that the mobo has no "AGP divider", and that's the reason why they are not working? I have tried a Radeon 9800, a GF3 Ti500, a Voodoo3 and a Voodoo5.

For now, I will abandon the idea of using an AGP card @ 166 FSB, and try a PCI Voodoo5 instead. I'll post back with the results of this...

Edit: Inside the BIOS set up area, there is an option called AGP Driving Control. You can set this to manual. Then, you can choose a hex number for the AGP Driving value. The default is DA. I wonder if this is some kind of "instruction" to tell the AGP port that it needs more "power"?

[quote="Tetrium"]I think a comparison between a P3s-1400 and a Thunderbird 1400C would be interesting. The fastest P3 ever made vs the fastest Athlon Thunderbird ever made 😁[quote]

But that's been done by contemporary testers many times before. I was thinking of real empirical proof verifying a Tualatin's performance vs. processors one gen ahead. You know like, if you look around the net for oc'ed Tualatin systems you'll find the builders claiming that it outperforms a so-and-so mhz P4 or Athlon XP system, blah, blah, blah. So, let's settle this once and for all.

@RG100- I have some P4 hardware if that would help- some Wilamette, Northwood and Prescott chips plus Intel 845GBV, 865 and SiS645 mobos (SDRAm as well as DDR). And a small collection of retro video cards ranging from S3 Trios right up to 6xxx series Nvidias.

Can't really speak about Athlons... I've never owned any 😊 ....

Unfortunately, I'm having too many problems with this mobo @ 166 FSB. I find that I can't cold boot it at this speed. If I get it working at 166 FSB, and then switch off power for 5 minutes, and then if I try to use it again, it won't POST. The mobo then automatically reboots at 133 FSB. Also, I tried a PCI Voodoo5, and that wouldn't work at 166. Perhaps the caps on this board are bad? Inside the BIOS set up area, the wire mod trick seems to be working, because the CPU voltage reading is about 1.68.

sgt76, how are you getting on with this mobo? What VGA cards are you using? Have you tried a cold boot at 166 FSB? Have you got any BIOS settings hints and tips you could share please? Thanks a lot! 😀

I've noticed that sometimes when a board has bad caps of the invisible type, inside the BIOS the voltages will be all over the place (like >13v on the 12v line). I don't suspect your board to have bad caps. After all, you are overclocking with the thing 😉

I think the 1400C's are not too uncommon. It's the 1400B that's uncommon!

@sgt76: Well, you are right about that, but still it would be interesting what we think when we compare these 2 😉

Tetrium wrote:

I think the 1400C's are not too uncommon. It's the 1400B that's uncommon!

Of course! You are right. Oops. 😦

retro games 100 wrote:

sgt76, how are you getting on with this mobo? What VGA cards are you using? Have you tried a cold boot at 166 FSB? Have you got any BIOS settings hints and tips you could share please? Thanks a lot! 😀

Not too well unfortunately. I can cold boot even up to 190mhz, but stable operation is another matter. Like I said, the inability to wire mod over 1.75v with this board is holding me back- cause I'm using a coppermine in it.

Vid card wise I'm using an AGP ATi Rage 128 Ultra, ram settings at CAS3, clockspeed-33mhz to bring the ram within spec.

Your thoughts about the AGP lock have given me an idea- I'll be testing it later with a PCI S3 and see if the AGP is what's holding it back.

This board would be perfect if it didn't have the overvoltage protect feature. We like burning our chips dammit!!!

I have a 7VBA133 and a 7VCA, both by Soyo. They are from the previous generation, the one that doesn't support Tualatin (the 7VBA133 comes with the VIA 693A, and the 7VCA with the 694X). They both have voltage controls (7VBA through jumpers, 7VCA in BIOS), it's very weird they removed it in the next model (7VBA133-U).
I spent many months with them, and found that the most stable FSB to overclock is 154 Mhz. They came with predefined FSB settings, for example, from 154 it jumps to 160 and then to 166, I think the 7VBA133-U goes in 1 Mhz increments. Problems start happening with 160 and 166 Mhz (they both support up to this) in mine. They POST at those speeds, but not so apparent problems occur, like the one RG mentions about cold boots, and some HDD corruption, or sporadic restarts or hangs. Also, all that I did with default voltage, I suppose if I increase the voltage they would work ok at 166.

sgt76 wrote:

Can't really speak about Athlons... I've never owned any 😊 ....

You never owned any?
Well, go get some 🤣, they are a branch of hardware you shouldn't be without hehe! 😜

retro games 100 wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

I think the 1400C's are not too uncommon. It's the 1400B that's uncommon!

Of course! You are right. Oops. 😦

Happens to the best of us! 😁

And the 1400C could indeed be substituted by a 1333C, pencil trick and overclock for that 66Mhz. Shouldn't be much of a problem but remember these units need lots of cooling!
I think I found one 1400C and a 1333C in the wild and later I got a couple more left and right. You could try CPU-World.com, it's where I got 1 or 2 for darn cheap 😉
The 1X00B's are harder to find. The 1000B seems fairly common (though the 1000C's are all over the place it seems) and I have a single 1100B laying around which I briefly used in a test rig for a KT133(non-A) rig. It worked, but after I finished it, I basically never touched it again!

But if you buy one, have a good look at the die first. Those Athlons often have slight bits of the die missing and in such a case it kinda becomes a gamble wether it works or not.

And bending these pins back is a pain compared to the PPGA Celerons (=the old Celerons that look similar to the black Pentium MMX's) and Socket 7's. The Coppermines and later CPU's seem to have pins that are a lot more brittle.

What I don't like about the Thunderbirds though is the motherboards they generally came with. Those KT133A's are kinda critical about how you tweak it. Back at work we had around 30 of these (we used them for old rigs we gave away for free to poor people with psychological problems 😉 ) and these boards (btw, they were ASUS A7V's and A7V133's) were kinda itchy to get stable. The BX boards we also had was just a matter of "plug it in and away yer go!"
To get the KT133A boards stable we had to do a lot of switching/exchanging memory modules in order to get them to work stable (enough 😜).

I had (or kinda have) one system based on the ASUS K7V133 1.05 (without dot) and a Palomino and it seemed to always overheat after a while. They need good cooling!

Gigabyte made a few with 1.4GHz support and ISA slots. Are these any good?

sgt76 wrote:

We like burning our chips dammit!!!

Yeah! BTW, when I was testing the mobo last night @ 166, I was using aggressive BIOS settings: RAM speed was "host clock" (not -33), and CAS2! However, pity about the cold boot problems the next day. Naturally, I "loosened up" these BIOS timings, but the cold boot problems persisted.

Interesting that unmei220 mentions HDD corruption. I tried to install 3DMark 2001 today, and it freezes on part of the installation - to do with texture decompression. I have reinstalled Windows 98 to retest this, but don't have the time right now to retest it. I'm doing a massive retro junk tidy up ATM!

retro games 100 wrote:

sgt76 wrote:

We like burning our chips dammit!!!

Yeah! BTW, when I was testing the mobo last night @ 166, I was using aggressive BIOS settings: RAM speed was "host clock" (not -33), and CAS2! However, pity about the cold boot problems the next day. Naturally, I "loosened up" these BIOS timings, but the cold boot problems persisted.

Oooo, too aggressive. It's amazing that it posted as it did. I know that most PC133 CL3 runs stable at 150mhz CAS2 but 166... 😳

Tetrium wrote:

sgt76 wrote:

Can't really speak about Athlons... I've never owned any 😊 ....

You never owned any?
Well, go get some 🤣, they are a branch of hardware you shouldn't be without hehe! 😜

Yes, it's embarrassing I know... What's even more embarrassing is that for an AMD fanboi, I have an awful number of Intel systems and Nvidia cards 😵

sgt76 wrote:

retro games 100 wrote:

sgt76 wrote:

We like burning our chips dammit!!!

Yeah! BTW, when I was testing the mobo last night @ 166, I was using aggressive BIOS settings: RAM speed was "host clock" (not -33), and CAS2! However, pity about the cold boot problems the next day. Naturally, I "loosened up" these BIOS timings, but the cold boot problems persisted.

Oooo, too aggressive. It's amazing that it posted as it did. I know that most PC133 CL3 runs stable at 150mhz CAS2 but 166... 😳

Yep! My benchies at the bottom of page 3 of this thread are all done using 166 FSB, RAM = host clock, and CAS2! Damn, it's so frustrating that the mobo won't work like that on a cold boot. I do wonder if it's the caps that's causing this problem...

retro games 100 wrote:

Interesting that unmei220 mentions HDD corruption. I tried to install 3DMark 2001 today, and it freezes on part of the installation - to do with texture decompression. I have reinstalled Windows 98 to retest this, but don't have the time right now to retest it. I'm doing a massive retro junk tidy up ATM!

Perhaps the HDD corruption happened with the PCI bus out of spec? I also heard about a bug in the VIA chipset with certain southbridges and a SB Live! causing HDD corruption. It could basically be causes by lots of things.

sgt76 wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

sgt76 wrote:

Can't really speak about Athlons... I've never owned any 😊 ....

You never owned any?
Well, go get some 🤣, they are a branch of hardware you shouldn't be without hehe! 😜

Yes, it's embarrassing I know... What's even more embarrassing is that for an AMD fanboi, I have an awful number of Intel systems and Nvidia cards 😵

Well, here is another AMD fanboy (though there are some Intel systems that I like for sure!) butteh...just have a look at my avatar 🤣!

retro games 100 wrote:

sgt76 wrote:

retro games 100 wrote:

Yeah! BTW, when I was testing the mobo last night @ 166, I was using aggressive BIOS settings: RAM speed was "host clock" (not -33), and CAS2! However, pity about the cold boot problems the next day. Naturally, I "loosened up" these BIOS timings, but the cold boot problems persisted.

Oooo, too aggressive. It's amazing that it posted as it did. I know that most PC133 CL3 runs stable at 150mhz CAS2 but 166... 😳

Yep! My benchies at the bottom of page 3 of this thread are all done using 166 FSB, RAM = host clock, and CAS2! Damn, it's so frustrating that the mobo won't work like that on a cold boot. I do wonder if it's the caps that's causing this problem...

RG100, have you tried another P3-1400s chip to see if it has the same cold boot problems?

I've tried a couple of SL6BY CPUs, but I can't get DOS to boot up @ 166 FSB any more. I can't remember where I bought these SL6BY CPUs. They have a Compaq sticker on them.

This ebay advert looks familiar. What does this seller mean? "ONLY SUPPORT 815T SHIPSET MOTHERBOARD !!!!" The mobos I am testing these CPUs on is i440BX based and also this Soyo VIA Apollo mobo. They seem to work, so long as you don't try to overclock them too much!