a 400 watt PSU I imagine would be overkill even with a video card and several others. as for OS I would say Win 95 or 98. I always see P pro chips with a heatsink/fan combo. I would def go with a fan. I think I've read that the P Pro was meant for a 32 bit environment so something like a regular 200mhz P1 actually runs in DOS better then a 200mhz P pro.

your choice of video cards depends on what you plan to do with the machine.

I have a duel CPU socket 8 board I've been dying to try out but I don't have any CPU for it and I haven't been able to bring myself to drop $40 or so dollars that people seem to want for these chips.

I'd probably run a multi-boot of NT4 and Win98 or 95, whichever you need. I like NT4 but it's not as compatible with games. If you want an all in one OS, then use 2000, but if it was me I'd rather play with the older lighter OSes from the Pentium Pro's heyday. 2000 is the best Windows they ever made though.

I'd rather have a fan on a Pentium Pro, especially if you're going to have long periods of heavy number crunching on the CPU. The fan also helps keep the VRM cool, which may be healthier for the board long term.

400W is overkill, but if it's a modern PSU, it might provide most of it's amperage on 12V and not the 5V and 3.3V rails which you'll actually use. In that case a suitable PSU could end up being "400W". Most of the 12V capability will sit unused, but weighs heavily into the advertised wattage.

The memory requirements look flexible, but I've never used the board. Looks like ECC is optional but not required. EDO recommended but again not required. The memory has to be 60ns, but I think that's typical of 72pin memory. You do need matched pairs of course. This board is from the end of when SIMMs were still being used so I think it would be hard to find SIMMs that didn't work. Second hand is the way to go for old memory like this, but 64MB modules might be hard to find.
I think that outfit "18004memory" is a small manufacturer who actually make these things new, but I've never dealt with them. They are big on ebay but I think they also sell outside of it.
I haven't checked Crucial in forever, no idea if they sell SIMMs at a decent price, but you could check their site and see if your board is still in their database. Crucial==Micron==good.

And having good memory is crucial.

I have a PPRO200 which runs great on a Fortron FSP 235W from that time, so probably every PSU should be ok, if dual setup is ignored anyways.

Looks like 18004Memory has exactly what I need. They have 72pin SIMMs 64MB 60ns EDO ECC for about $20.00 each. Not at all unreasonable considering lack of availability elsewhere. I checked some of the more popular and contemporary manufacturers only to find that the VS440FX is "too-legacy". Micron, Crucial, Kingston - no-go.. I'm not bothering checking more. When I get the memory I'll run Memtest on it. It will either pass or fail

I've got a couple of Antec 400 - 550 watt supplies. I think I'll use one of those. Paying attention to the current rating on 3.3V and 5V lines.

OS? I'll multi-boot. Exactly which ones? I don't know. But I would be happy with DOS and WIN 3.1, with the option to do 95 or 98b.

I continued the old thread because it answered a lot of questions I had that tied in with my current project. Making a new topic at this point would fragment the discussion underway, unless a moderator thinks otherwise I suggest we keep going. And in the future I'll be more careful of course.

The thing that was interesting about the first part of the thread was running a chip with 1M cache. As far as I know the VS440FX was only validated with chips with 256K. And yet the screenshot shows a 1M chip working. I have all three varieties 256, 512, 1. And it's good to know 1M works. And furthermore this thread confirmed the latest BIOS version and commented about the extra heat made by the 1M cache. All things I need to know for my upcoming build.

Personally i would get 128mb edo stick 4 of them if the board supports it.
256MB is lil low.

also is it 3.3v ram or 5v?

Also check out http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Legacy- … ac-DIMMs-SIMMs/
Might someone ever buy some from macsales, i would like to see a picture of the ram you actually received. very much like to see the actual sold ram is the same as in those pictures (later micron ram)

The other day i bought some nice ebay 151324847426 , yes all 22pcs 50ns EDO 😀 i could not resist.

I find generic pictures of ram sticks quite annoying.

The memory sold by 18004MEMORY is 5V. They have it in 64MB and 128MB modules.
http://www.18004memory.com/edo-modules-72pin-simm-60ns.asp

The mother board manual doesn't specify a voltage level. It also says the board supports a maximum of 256MB (4x64), or lesser configurations. So I take it 256MB is the maximum. It would be awesome to get 512MB (4x128) going. However, however.. The memory controller chip, 82441FX, supposedly supports up to 1GB of memory - according to its data sheet.

So the question remains, what is the max memory?

Regarding the voltage levels. The controller supports 3.3v and 5v memory, and most memory from that era is 5V. I checked the old SIMMS that were already installed when I acquired the board, and they are 5v. MT4C4M4E8DJ-6. So I'm satisfied with the voltage requirements of the memory, both old and new are 5V.

Made new thread. 😉

Very good. Thx.

The memory 60ns or 70ns is dependent on the bus speed. 60MHz and you can use 70ns or 60ns, 66MHz and you need 60ns.

That 128MB sticks are pretty expensive if you need 4 just to try it out.

I have a ASUS P/I-XP6NP5 which according to manual only supports up to 4x64MB EDO, but who know what will happen with 4x128MB
Not sure if the ASUS can use 3.3v ram at all.

I have a Tyan Tahoe Plus ATX (S1686DL) with 2x 333Mhz PII and that would be able tun run 8x128MB EDO.
But a jumper makes me choose to use 3.3v and 5v power to the ram.
Sadly i only own 64MB FPM Sticks.

I wonder why the tyan that uses probably the same 440FX chipset is able to do 128MB simm's and the ppro we have with 440FX says only to support 64mb modules in the manual.

Is this really so, can't we put in 4x128MB??

IDK. It may not have been fully validated. Intel validation is a lengthy process. And perhaps by the time 128MB modules were available, the validation process was over, or perhaps the board was close to end of life? I don't know.

It's too expensive for me to order just to try out, perhaps something else present an opportunity or other information will surface - indicating what is really the max limit.

Please excuse my ignorance, for what program you need such huge amount of RAM?

I have some PPro hardware myself, including several Single- and Dual-CPU boards.
The sweet spot for a PPro is Win NT4 SP6, therefore 64MB per CPU is good. If you want to use W2K 128MB of RAM per CPU may be justifiable but more memory is pretty useless IMO.
Upgrading a single CPU board to more than 128MB is just an exercise in feasability if you ask me.

Just my 2 cents! Enjoy your hardware!
The VS440FX is a reliable board, thats for sure. With a PPro 200 / 256 the Quake shareware benchmark gives you more than 52 frames per second with a 4MB Matrox Mystique220 card installed. With a PPro 200 / 1M Quake benchmark climbs to 59.9 frames per second! Thats awesome!

Regards
Fabian

To be able to run even WinXP, and 256MB and or even 512MB makes it run out of ram several times in use.
But for the PPRO a Win2K is indeed a great OS.

I don't have an immediate need for 512MB, it is just the way I like to do things - max out the memory if possible.

Seems I best consider and get Windows 2000. And definitely looking forward to Quake. I used to play that quite a bit back in the day.

I don't like to run 2K or XP on PPro. NT5 is beyond its comfort zone and clearly sluggish. I have a PPro 1MB @ 233MHz with 128MB on a VS440FX.

I tend to just use 98, but yup NT3/4 would be the PPro's home turf. The best PPro is not much faster than 233MHz Klamath PII in most situations.

Oh, I really woulnd't recommend to use the system with WinXP. It's too slow and eats up too much ressources. You can try AntiX Linux if you want a more modern OS on a PPro.. it performs well on this machine. The sweet spot is Windows NT4 , Win 9x also runs great.

To answer a few of your other questions:

1. Graphics card:
Sure the Riva128 would be a good match. But there are other great cards from this era: A Permedia card would be really cool or a nice matrox card in combination with a 3Dfx and / or PowerVR acelerator card. There are many games that run great with early 3D titles.

2. Hard disk:
Check your BIOS version. If your board is a Intel board you can upgrade it to the newest BIOS (Version 1.00.18 IIRC); this BIOS will support the 1MB PPRo as well as the PPro Overdrive CPU and also hard disks larger than 8.4GB. Earlier BIOSes have the 8.4GB limit (up to Version 1.00.08 I think). If your board is an OEM variant of the VS440FX (eg. Dell, Micron, Gateway 2000...) you can still use the original BIOS but only using some tricky BIOS upgrade process- just ask if its relevant for you.

JaNoZ wrote:

And having good memory is crucial.

🤣 No pun intended!

Looks like it's been a while since anyone has posted in here. But I'm curious if anyone ever got more than 256mb RAM to work in the board. I have 256MB in mine, which I think should be more than fine for Win98, but I was thinking about dual booting it with Lubuntu.

FGB wrote on 2014-07-19, 18:01:

Oh, I really woulnd't recommend to use the system with WinXP. It's too slow and eats up too much ressources. You can try AntiX L […]
Show full quote

Oh, I really woulnd't recommend to use the system with WinXP. It's too slow and eats up too much ressources. You can try AntiX Linux if you want a more modern OS on a PPro.. it performs well on this machine. The sweet spot is Windows NT4 , Win 9x also runs great.

To answer a few of your other questions:

1. Graphics card:
Sure the Riva128 would be a good match. But there are other great cards from this era: A Permedia card would be really cool or a nice matrox card in combination with a 3Dfx and / or PowerVR acelerator card. There are many games that run great with early 3D titles.

2. Hard disk:
Check your BIOS version. If your board is a Intel board you can upgrade it to the newest BIOS (Version 1.00.18 IIRC); this BIOS will support the 1MB PPRo as well as the PPro Overdrive CPU and also hard disks larger than 8.4GB. Earlier BIOSes have the 8.4GB limit (up to Version 1.00.08 I think). If your board is an OEM variant of the VS440FX (eg. Dell, Micron, Gateway 2000...) you can still use the original BIOS but only using some tricky BIOS upgrade process- just ask if its relevant for you.

Hi!resuming this old post…i have an oem variant …gateway 2000 and i would update bios (for larger hd ) which bios i should flash? Thanks

Rollotiz83 wrote on 2021-05-23, 15:12:

FGB wrote on 2014-07-19, 18:01:

Oh, I really woulnd't recommend to use the system with WinXP. It's too slow and eats up too much ressources. You can try AntiX L […]
Show full quote

Oh, I really woulnd't recommend to use the system with WinXP. It's too slow and eats up too much ressources. You can try AntiX Linux if you want a more modern OS on a PPro.. it performs well on this machine. The sweet spot is Windows NT4 , Win 9x also runs great.

To answer a few of your other questions:

1. Graphics card:
Sure the Riva128 would be a good match. But there are other great cards from this era: A Permedia card would be really cool or a nice matrox card in combination with a 3Dfx and / or PowerVR acelerator card. There are many games that run great with early 3D titles.

2. Hard disk:
Check your BIOS version. If your board is a Intel board you can upgrade it to the newest BIOS (Version 1.00.18 IIRC); this BIOS will support the 1MB PPRo as well as the PPro Overdrive CPU and also hard disks larger than 8.4GB. Earlier BIOSes have the 8.4GB limit (up to Version 1.00.08 I think). If your board is an OEM variant of the VS440FX (eg. Dell, Micron, Gateway 2000...) you can still use the original BIOS but only using some tricky BIOS upgrade process- just ask if its relevant for you.

Hi!resuming this old post…i have an oem variant …gateway 2000 and i would update bios (for larger hd ) which bios i should flash? Thanks

Latest Intel BIOS (1.00.18.CS1) will work just fine, but you will lose the gateway bootlogo.
Actually my first post here was about exactly this:
Updating BIOS on a Gateway 2000 VS440FX motherboard
=)
IIRC the max HDD size with 18.CS1 is 80Gb