So far this is a great board. I like it a lot. Thinking of upgrading to 500MHz.

sliderider wrote:

I got a BP6 and a VP6 as oddities for my collection. Since 98 does not support multiple processors, they're really only good for using with NT based OS's or Linux and most games didn't support multiple processors then, either, so as a gaming rig you'd be missing out on the extra processing power. They'd probably be good machines if you still have a lot of vintage apps that you run like older versions of Photoshop and such.

Quake III Arena does make use of the second CPU...but it's about the only game from the BP6's era that does. Unreal Tournament certainly doesn't, and greatly suffers for it to the point where I find its performance on a single Celeron 533 totally unacceptable. The sort of games that do run perfectly on a Celeron 533 generally insist on DOS/Win9x and would have more issues running under NT/2000.

I was thinking of making it some kind of server, but without SATA ports or PCI-Express slots for SATA controller cards, it's not much use as a file server. Dedicated game servers would likely want more upload bandwidth and much faster CPUs.

If I wanted to run classic Photoshop, I'd probably do so on my HP 2730p instead for Wacom's sake.

That just leaves...wait a minute, what were old game FMV scenes rendered with? You know, that look that mid-1990s games like System Shock, MegaRace, Magic Carpet, etc. had...there's a very distinctive look to them you don't find in modern renderers. I wonder if today's hardware could render those scenes in real time without breaking a sweat...

It's just in that weird transitional period where multi-CPU support just wasn't all that common, and the apps I know would have multi-CPU support were designed for modern multi-core processors that are orders of magnitude faster. That's why I have such trouble finding a good use for it, since I'd hate to see that second CPU just go to waste.

Private_Ops wrote:

I've got 2 BP6s myself, love'em. One needs new caps (if its going to be put in long term use) and the other has a broken surface mount capacitor in one of the sockets (pliers, and tight CPU holders (whatever its called) is a bad combination. Otherwise they work fine.

Ones setup with a Voodoo 3 3000 and AWE64 Value with W2K, was playing some UT on it.

Did you find UT's performance acceptable?

I couldn't attain a consistent 60 FPS with a Celeron 533 and a Radeon 8500, that's for sure...UnrealEngine1 games appear to be heavily CPU-bottlenecked more than anything, possibly due to the lack of HT&L.

My BP6 doesn't seem to work (CPU fans spin up but doesn't post). Which capacitors seem to be the problem on these boards?

Unknown_K wrote:

My BP6 doesn't seem to work (CPU fans spin up but doesn't post). Which capacitors seem to be the problem on these boards?

rule of thumb, if you even suspect the motherboard has bad caps, (and you want to keep the board) then just replace ALL the barrel caps with low ecr nichicons (brand) caps.

None of them are bulging or leaking, that is the first thing I look for. Could be it won't work with the 500's without a BIOS update? I don't have a slower CPU to test it with and all my P3's are 133 FSB.

get one of these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/161028068342

They are worth their weight in gold. Which thankfully isn't that much to be honest...

I have a regular LED post card but ordered one of those because the LCD looks cool.

actually, now that I think about it, most if not all celerons will NOT work in SMP. do you have a dummy plug for the 2nd socket so you can test it out using only 1 cpu?

also:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/170858649364
&
http://www.ebay.com/itm/350699752467

Try first without dummy, ive have several boards that run fine without the dummy cpu.
the early Mendocino celerons would work for smp up to 533mhz, but around p3 age the coppermine celerons with the added SSE would not run in SMP config anymore as also the cheaper tualerons wont and some original tualatin cpus.
Just put in a few nice 1000mhz coppermine's.

JaNoZ wrote:

Try first without dummy, ive have several boards that run fine without the dummy cpu.
the early Mendocino celerons would work for smp up to 533mhz, but around p3 age the coppermine celerons with the added SSE would not run in SMP config anymore as also the cheaper tualerons wont and some original tualatin cpus.
Just put in a few nice 1000mhz coppermine's.

My VP6 has dual Coppermine 1ghz but I'm not sure if they would work in the BP6 since they are socket modded from the factory to enable SMP on the Mendocino Celerons. I have 533's in my BP6 though with the overclocking options, a 100mhz FSB is supported.

According to this

http://grizlyk1.narod.ru/other/abit2p3.htm

the BP6 BIOS is only set up to run Mendocino's. An update with a modded BIOS is required to run Coppermine CPU's.