I don't see why not; Phil simulated the 4 modes with 66MHz bus, so I think any socket 7 board can replicate the same experiments.
Well, not exactly any board; the board must support low core voltage and have BIOS patched for k6+ CPUs.

as I have a PII machine that can take care of that side of things.

You should consider VIA C3 option.

I read about that, but unfortunately my PII motherboard does not have an option in the BIOS for disabling cache.

Disabling cache in PII isn't very useful anyway. It makes the cpu way too slow. It isn't same as with socket 7 systems.

lazibayer wrote:

I don't see why not; Phil simulated the 4 modes with 66MHz bus, so I think any socket 7 board can replicate the same experiments.
Well, not exactly any board; the board must support low core voltage and have BIOS patched for k6+ CPUs.

Thanks for that link, it is really useful.

Turns out that the board I had my eye on would not work.

It looks like it's going to be tricky finding a suitable board at a sane price.

jamesbeat wrote:

It looks like it's going to be tricky finding a suitable board at a sane price.

Near impossible. Getting a Pentium-1 system is much more easy these days. Even a 486 is sometimes cheaper.
3 complete AT systems might cost you the same. The major drawback is how much space they take up.

I'd seriously look at the Ezra route. My personal experience is that S370/Slot 1 boards are far more common.

Baoran wrote:

Disabling cache in PII isn't very useful anyway. It makes the cpu way too slow. It isn't same as with socket 7 systems.

I reckon jamesbeat was talking about disabling the cache of a C3 in his PII board.

jamesbeat wrote:

I read about that, but unfortunately my PII motherboard does not have an option in the BIOS for disabling cache.

You can disable the cache in C3 by using SetMul.
Does your P-II board support C3? You might get a via C3 + 694x board combo for cheap and not need a P-II system anymore, but I am not sure if a 200MHz Cache-free C3 is too fast for your 386 emulations.

jamesbeat wrote:

Thanks for that link, it is really useful. […]
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lazibayer wrote:

I don't see why not; Phil simulated the 4 modes with 66MHz bus, so I think any socket 7 board can replicate the same experiments.
Well, not exactly any board; the board must support low core voltage and have BIOS patched for k6+ CPUs.

Thanks for that link, it is really useful.

Turns out that the board I had my eye on would not work.

It looks like it's going to be tricky finding a suitable board at a sane price.

Are you in the US? Right now there is a TXP4 and an SP97-V board with reasonable price on ebay.
You might have to go thru that list and search for each individual board. My experience told me that the more the seller knows about the board, the more accurate the description will be, and the higher the price. My best luck of getting (super) socket 7 boards are from scrappers. For example, HP used to use ASUS motherboard in their systems but the seller will just label it as "HP logic board model number 1234-5678".

Well, it seems as though there may be a change of plan....

At my job, we are currently putting together skids of old pc equipment to send off to the recycler.

I'm allowed to take anything I want before it goes, so today I went into the warehouse with a screwdriver to salvage floppy drives etc.

There was a new beige machine I had not seen before - it's a Digital server, and the case badge tells me it's a Pentium Pro!

I have rescued it from the skid, but I haven't been able to get the lid off because it's locked.

I'm going to try and pick the lock tomorrow lunchtime, and I'll see what I have.

A quick look at the manual appears to show that it is SCSI only, but maybe i can fix that with a PCI card.

I'll post a new thread when I know exactly what I have.

I’ve done K6 III+ and Via C3 builds, but actually found a good old Pentium MMX 233 to be the most flexible, you can get very smoth transitions bewteen low end 386 up to P233 performance.

lvader wrote:

I’ve done K6 III+ and Via C3 builds, but actually found a good old Pentium MMX 233 to be the most flexible, you can get very smoth transitions bewteen low end 386 up to P233 performance.

Agreed, the PMMX has more versatility within it's performance range.
Let's benchmark our systems with caches disabled