do a virus scan
Check bad capacitors
Check if any motherboard stand-offs or post shorting/grounding out something.

I had a k6-3 350 best thing I ever did was replace it with a p2
k62 boards at the time were very unstable

man i am working a 5AX and k6-2+500 and awe32 rig, and i can only share these experience:
dos: no crashing encountered yet, just dunno how to set the soundcard up, heavy irq5 conflicting with video card.
win98: apparently no known issues.
win2k: detects cpu at half of actual clock(250mhz), causing most games to run out of speed control(too fast). reinstalling win2k without acpi core fixes this but arises another problem: system takes a very long time to boot(about 10 minutes), after agp chipset driver is installed.

btw, some dos game do have problems when you have too much ram. i don't have many dos games to test myself, but have been unable to run simcity2000 without crashing in minutes for many years, on many machines...

I have a GA-5AX as well and it's proven to be very stable for the things I done with it so far.

I'd say "Replace the PSU!!", AT PSU's seem to be made of crappy quality like 90% of the times. The GA-5AA should have a header for ATX PSU, so you could use one of those, much easier to find a decent one 😉

That could easily be it-- I should've been tipped off by the fact that the PSU says "ValueLine" on it. That doesn't sound good. 😜

However, can I fit an ATX PSU in an AT case?

MrKsoft wrote:

That could easily be it-- I should've been tipped off by the fact that the PSU says "ValueLine" on it. That doesn't sound good. 😜

However, can I fit an ATX PSU in an AT case?

If the power supply is the same physical dimensions as an ATX then you should be ok but may need an ATX to AT harness adapter and make sure you get an older style ATX power supply. You don't need one with PCIe and SATA connectors in a machine so old. A handful of 4 pin molex, a floppy connector and maybe one of the older, small 4 pin adapters for a video card should be all you need.

If all else not working,

1. Disassemble and re-assemble the whole system, including the cpu and heatsink. Dust off each of the pci and isa slots.

2. Replace the thermal compund before fixing back the heatsink. (Scrap off the older residue on the cpu.)

3. Try underclocking the FSB to 66MHz. (I've noticed random lock-ups/crashes at FSB 100 and 133MHz while using Dos Games.)

4. And this is just a hunch - try replacing the ATI card with another one. Try using a PCI video card.

One of my classic systems :

EPOX MVP3C2 Super Socket 7 Mobo
AMD K6-2 550, underclocked at 66MHz FSB, multiplier maintained at 5.5 (66Mhz x 5.5 = 366MHz)
256MB PC100 SDRAM (128MB + 128MB)
Diamond Stealth 3D 3000 Pro (S3 Virge VX) 4MB PCI
Diamond Monster 3D 12MB
AWE64 Gold ISA
MQ PC MIDI Card ISA
MS-DOS 6.22
Windows 95c

No crashes or lockups. All games and programs run fine, including Windows 95 games.

EDIT : If running Smartdrv, disable write-behind cache for the hard drives. (Again, I noticed lockups while saving certain games.)

Malik wrote:

If all else not working,

4. And this is just a hunch - try replacing the ATI card with another one. Try using a PCI video card.

Yup, and you just can't go wrong with a Virge, those things are a staple! ;D

Tetrium wrote:

Malik wrote:

If all else not working,

4. And this is just a hunch - try replacing the ATI card with another one. Try using a PCI video card.

Yup, and you just can't go wrong with a Virge, those things are a staple! ;D

I thought the Rage cards were problematic with OpenGL? Maybe that's the trouble, but I wouldn't go to a Virge. I'd go newer like TNT. There's still plenty of TNT cards out there and they're cheap and would be compatible with more games than a Virge. He's running a K6-2, not a DX2.

sliderider wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

Malik wrote:

If all else not working,

4. And this is just a hunch - try replacing the ATI card with another one. Try using a PCI video card.

Yup, and you just can't go wrong with a Virge, those things are a staple! ;D

I thought the Rage cards were problematic with OpenGL? Maybe that's the trouble, but I wouldn't go to a Virge. I'd go newer like TNT. There's still plenty of TNT cards out there and they're cheap and would be compatible with more games than a Virge. He's running a K6-2, not a DX2.

Yes, but it was more of a suggestion to try out a card that you basically can't go wrong with.
If problems persist --> problem wasn't the graphics card 😉

I'm almost certain it's not the CPU... I have a K6-3 450 running at 400 (6x66) on my Spacewalker 569 board, which is a 430TX chipset... extremely stable and I never had problems with it... the only thing that sucks is the lack of AGP and 66mhz FSB... I can overclock it to 75 or 83mhz, but I rather have stability than speed

TheMAN wrote:

I'm almost certain it's not the CPU... I have a K6-3 450 running at 400 (6x66) on my Spacewalker 569 board, which is a 430TX chipset... extremely stable and I never had problems with it... the only thing that sucks is the lack of AGP and 66mhz FSB... I can overclock it to 75 or 83mhz, but I rather have stability than speed

Many TX boards didn't have the proper CPU voltage regulation to supply stable juice to 2.2v CPU's. Maybe that's your issue???

So I think replacing the PSU would be a great idea except that the only spare I have on me right now won't fit my case. I'll figure that out later. In the mean time I'm trying some other options.

For one, I am attempting the recommendation of taking the FSB down to 66mhz. Now I have it running at 66x5 to get 333mhz-- still plenty of speed. However, now the sound card (SB16 w/ Vibra chip) doesn't work at all. Any games that use digital audio lock up the whole machine. Games that just use Adlib work fine. Using Creative's DIAGNOSE.EXE, it locks up when scanning for a Low DMA channel. I haven't changed any BIOS settings... so I don't know why changing the FSB would cause this.

Could you post some (detailed) pics of the system? Your problems could be anything from CPU overheating, memory problems, even to somekind of loose connector or a bad cable

Well, here are some pictures. If you want any areas in specific detail let me know.

(Links, because they're huge pictures)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11388083/DSCN1250.JPG
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11388083/DSCN1251.JPG
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11388083/DSCN1254.JPG
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11388083/DSCN1255.JPG
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11388083/DSCN1258.JPG

MrKsoft wrote:

For one, I am attempting the recommendation of taking the FSB down to 66mhz. Now I have it running at 66x5 to get 333mhz-- still plenty of speed. However, now the sound card (SB16 w/ Vibra chip) doesn't work at all. Any games that use digital audio lock up the whole machine.

Just for the record...have you adapted the PCI divider accordingly (along with the ISA bus) so the PCI bus runs at 33Mhz, seeing you lowered the FSB.

Maybe it's a stupid question, dunno, I'm kinda tired atm 😜
The pictures didn't tell me a lot, it's mostly cable.

Btw, how come the other AT PSU won't fit the case? They should all be standard...maybe except when it has a switch power button instead of the usual button-type button.
Am I making sense? If no then off to bed I go!

Tetrium wrote:

TheMAN wrote:

I'm almost certain it's not the CPU... I have a K6-3 450 running at 400 (6x66) on my Spacewalker 569 board, which is a 430TX chipset... extremely stable and I never had problems with it... the only thing that sucks is the lack of AGP and 66mhz FSB... I can overclock it to 75 or 83mhz, but I rather have stability than speed

Many TX boards didn't have the proper CPU voltage regulation to supply stable juice to 2.2v CPU's. Maybe that's your issue???

the HOT-569 board was designed for use with the K6 series CPUs... it supports vcores down to 2.0v... if it didn't allow me to set a 2.2 vcore, I would've never bought the K6-III for it and had I ignored this, the CPU would've burned up years ago from overvolt abuse

CPU voltage or the CPU is not the issue. The cards running overclocked are. I rather not burn them out as they're practically irreplaceable now

the 569 was one of the best socket 7 boards made.... it was very good even when overclocked according to anandtech and toms hardware, but I never did it... it even has ATX power support! it's also one of the few 430TX boards to officially support the K6-III in the BIOS 😀

Tetrium wrote:

Just for the record...have you adapted the PCI divider accordingly (along with the ISA bus) so the PCI bus runs at 33Mhz, seeing you lowered the FSB.

Maybe it's a stupid question, dunno, I'm kinda tired atm 😜
The pictures didn't tell me a lot, it's mostly cable.

Well, I figured it did that on its own. Not exactly sure how to go about this if not. (And either way I thought ISA would be on its own little bus in order to accommodate the changeable FSB, since the bus speed for it was set way back with the original PC) There's no mention of anything like this in the board manual.

Tetrium wrote:

Btw, how come the other AT PSU won't fit the case? They should all be standard...maybe except when it has a switch power button instead of the usual button-type button.
Am I making sense? If no then off to bed I go!

The spare isn't an AT PSU, it's an ATX. This tower here is the only AT case system I have had.

How come it doesn't fit? Is it because of the location of the air intake "area" on the ATX PSU?