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ECS P6BXT-A+ V1.3B weird issues

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First post, by AlexZ

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I got 2nd ECS P6BXT-A+, this time V1.3B. I already have V2.2E and it runs Coppermine Celerons and PIIIs fine up to 1Ghz. V1.3B originally came with Compaq BIOS 5.2, V2.2E with Compaq BIOS 5.5. I use ECS BIOS as I dislike the full screen Compaq logo.

V1.3B is unfortunately quite troublesome. I flashed it to the same ECS BIOS version I have in V2.2E - bxt53s.BIN which is the latest BIOS from ECS website for P6BXT-A+. This BIOS version is officially supported for this board revision. Old Celerons up to 533Mhz work fine, as does PIII 500Mhz Katmai. But it seems to be very picky with Coppermines. I only got Celeron 600 working on it (SL3W8 , 1.5V at 600Mhz). It also boots at 75, 83, 100 FSB (9x100=900Mhz) at default voltage, however it requires a hard reset at boot. At standard clock it boots fine without a reset. In BIOS setup I can set voltage from 1.5V and above. When set, the change is reflected in monitoring. V1.3B has the same ICS chip as V2.2E. BIOS setup supports multipliers up to 8x. All capacitors look ok visually.

I also have Celeron 633 (SL3W9, SL4PA), Celeron 700 (SL4P8), Pentium III 733 (SL4CG), but none of these work in V1.3B. No beeps, but the CPUs do heat up. It's surprising as BIOS version is the same and Pentium III 733 was tested in V2.2E and it works. All these CPUs were tested in Asus CUBX afterwards and they work fine. Celeron 600 SL3W8 that is working is the same CPUID and stepping as Celeron 633 SL3W9 that doesn't work in it. Hard reset during boot doesn't help with CPUs that don't work.

Does anybody else have ECS P6BXT-A+ V1.3B ? Do faster Coppermines work there?

Pentium III 900E, ECS P6BXT-A+, 384MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 128MB, Voodoo 2 12MB, 80GB HDD, Yamaha SM718 ISA, 19" AOC 9GlrA
Athlon 64 3400+, MSI K8T Neo V, 1GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 7600GT 512MB, 250GB HDD, Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

Reply 2 of 4, by AlexZ

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According to https://web.archive.org/web/20011222053511/ht … port_table2.htm P6BXT-A+ V1.3X supports up to Pentium III 850 in slot 1 and Celeron 533 in socket 370. V2.2X added support for Pentium III and Coppermine Celeron in socket 370 (FC-PGA).

I happen to have Slotket 370SPC Rev: 1.0 so I went on to test whether my Coppermine Celerons and PIII work in there. And they do! I tested my PIII 733 and 1Ghz at 100, 112 FSB and they work fine. However 133 FSB setting is not functional on this board - CMOS reset is required. It was probably included only for testing purposes. That's why officially the V1.3B board is 100Mhz FSB only. On V2.2E 133 FSB boots, although it's still unofficial (and probably not 100% stable).

So the behavior I'm experiencing is normal and V1.3B supports FCPGA Celerons and PIII but only in slot 1 using Slotket. Early Coppermine Celerons up to 600Mhz were compatible with PPGA boards.

Pentium III 900E, ECS P6BXT-A+, 384MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 128MB, Voodoo 2 12MB, 80GB HDD, Yamaha SM718 ISA, 19" AOC 9GlrA
Athlon 64 3400+, MSI K8T Neo V, 1GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 7600GT 512MB, 250GB HDD, Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

Reply 4 of 4, by AlexZ

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Yup I tested it and mine works with Slot 1 Coppermine 600 as well. Higher clocked CPUs should work too as I was able to reach 750Mhz using Slotket (it has Coppermine jumper) and PIII 1Ghz downclocked to 100Mhz FSB. There are some topics about this board here on Vogons, but information presented there is not entirely correct.

Pentium III 900E, ECS P6BXT-A+, 384MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 128MB, Voodoo 2 12MB, 80GB HDD, Yamaha SM718 ISA, 19" AOC 9GlrA
Athlon 64 3400+, MSI K8T Neo V, 1GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 7600GT 512MB, 250GB HDD, Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

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