VOGONS


Reply 20 of 32, by AngryByDefault

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Hi again.
Well, a wise fellow in this community once said: "You're asking in the wrong forum... we will only encourage you!"....

The "PCPartner MVP4BS7-947" AND the "SOYO Sy-5ssm" are both on their way to my local post office 😜

In my defence I'll say that I bargained a bit (these were no auctions but plain sales) and ended up paying around %65 of their original asked price...

Thank you for all of your opinions, even the ones saying none of the boards are interesting enough.
Regards.

Reply 21 of 32, by debs3759

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Wise choice - if it feels good, buy it. Then when you test it, you'll remember another time if a brand or chipset is no good 😀 If I need one board, you can be sure I'll buy 5 with different chipsets (I've got enough stuff now, and read enough posts here and elsewhere to be able to be more choosy about chipsets and brands - I favour brands like Asus and Gigabyte for 486 and later, Asus ROG if later than 2010! I'll always consider anything I believe to be well built though)

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.

Reply 22 of 32, by kohellus@gmail.com

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I would buy them all, that little thing at the sholder...but if i had to choose, i would go with looks and choose 4) DTK PAM-0057I E0. Its not the best but a nice time period build for me.

Reply 23 of 32, by debs3759

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kohellus@gmail.com wrote on 2022-05-14, 22:05:

I would buy them all, that little thing at the sholder...

Parrot, or chip?

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.

Reply 25 of 32, by AngryByDefault

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So I got both boards a few days ago. So far I have only made a cursory inspection on them to check they were functional.

The Soyo one is nice, and I did want an (extra) ATX S7 board, so I like it.

But maybe I am not so thrilled about it because of the MVP4BS7... ->

Man, I love this board! It is very compact for an AT board, or at least it gave me that impression, to the point I initially tried to mount it on the ATX header of my bench because it felt like an mATX board and not an AT.

I have the feeling it will become one of my favorite retro boards... Time will tell.

Reply 26 of 32, by Sphere478

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I’m very interested in hearing about your experience with that mvp4 board.

Is it overclockable?

Note about the 430tx board discussed earlier, it will top out at 256mb of ram, even if more can fit. If you plan on using anything except a k6-3, a k6-2+, or a k6-3+ then stick to 64mb of ram if you can. However if you do use a k6-3, a k6-2+, or a k6-3+ then load it up. The cache on the processor will help with the caching problem.
You may or may not want to disable L2 mainboard cache when using these three processor types btw. (Benchmark and find out)

Sphere's PCB projects.
-
Sphere’s socket 5/7 cpu collection.
-
SUCCESSFUL K6-2+ to K6-3+ Full Cache Enable Mod
-
Tyan S1564S to S1564D single to dual processor conversion (also s1563 and s1562)

Reply 27 of 32, by Socket3

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AngryByDefault wrote on 2022-05-29, 15:54:

But maybe I am not so thrilled about it because of the MVP4BS7... ->

Man, I love this board! It is very compact for an AT board, or at least it gave me that impression, to the point I initially tried to mount it on the ATX header of my bench because it felt like an mATX board and not an AT.

I have the feeling it will become one of my favorite retro boards... Time will tell.

I was convince you'd like it. If you have the vga header try the on board Trident Blade 3D - you'll be surprised at how well it runs in both DOS and Direct3D/OpenGL! The southbridge is a VIA 82C686A witch has Ultra ATA66 support, unlike most MVP3 boards witch are limited to ATA33. The on board sound (Advance Logic ALS-100 I believe) on the MVP4BS7 isn't horrible either. My Lucky Star P5MVP4 came with a yamaha codec but I can't remember witch one. What I do remember is that it had a tiny rectangular Yamaha chip labeled YMF232 or YMF236 or similar. Dos games sounded great. The P5MVP4 could also do 124Mhz FSB but I never tried it.

I have a MVP4BS7 myself but it refuses to post. No post beeps either. It looks fine phisically, no burn marks, no broken traces or bad caps.... it just won't post for some reason... possibly corrupted BIOS.

Reply 28 of 32, by AngryByDefault

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Hi guys!

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-06-05, 12:02:

I’m very interested in hearing about your experience with that mvp4 board.

Is it overclockable?

I haven't had enough time to look much into it, because I have a couple of sound and video cards that I should test and, I don't know if it's them or the Soyo board that are acting up, but I'd like to sort that out while I have time to return them if needed.
I will let you know when I get into this one, just be aware that overclocking is something I am just learning, so my contribution will probably be modest at best 😀

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-06-05, 12:02:

Note about the 430tx board discussed earlier, it will top out at 256mb of ram, even if more can fit. If you plan on using anything except a k6-3, a k6-2+, or a k6-3+ then stick to 64mb of ram if you can.

Don't have anything better than K6-2 550 and actually never came across any of those. Even when I know that I shouldn't, I will benchmark with 64mb vs as much as I can and then decide... I might max some board even if it goes a bit slower, just for kicks 😜 (not necessarily with this fine board though)

Socket3 wrote on 2022-06-05, 15:46:
AngryByDefault wrote on 2022-05-29, 15:54:

But maybe I am not so thrilled about it because of the MVP4BS7... ->

Man, I love this board! It is very compact for an AT board, or at least it gave me that impression, to the point I initially tried to mount it on the ATX header of my bench because it felt like an mATX board and not an AT.

I have the feeling it will become one of my favorite retro boards... Time will tell.

I was convince you'd like it. If you have the vga header try the on board Trident Blade 3D - you'll be surprised at how well it runs in both DOS and Direct3D/OpenGL! The southbridge is a VIA 82C686A witch has Ultra ATA66 support, unlike most MVP3 boards witch are limited to ATA33.

Fortunately it came with the video and audio brackets! I installed win 98 and their drivers just to check they where working but not much more than that yet.

Socket3 wrote on 2022-06-05, 15:46:

The on board sound (Advance Logic ALS-100 I believe) on the MVP4BS7 isn't horrible either. My Lucky Star P5MVP4 came with a yamaha codec but I can't remember witch one. What I do remember is that it had a tiny rectangular Yamaha chip labeled YMF232 or YMF236 or similar. Dos games sounded great.

Mine seems to have a VIA sound chip? That surprised me when I installed the drivers. I guess that is a testament of how much of a later Socket 7 board this one is...

Socket3 wrote on 2022-06-05, 15:46:

... possibly corrupted BIOS.

Bummer... I don't own an eeprom reader (not yet at least) but if there's any way I could help you with that do let me know.

Cheers.

Reply 29 of 32, by Sphere478

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Admittingly, I am curious what your results of 64 vs 128, 256 will be. With a non cached processor. Do let us know.

Sphere's PCB projects.
-
Sphere’s socket 5/7 cpu collection.
-
SUCCESSFUL K6-2+ to K6-3+ Full Cache Enable Mod
-
Tyan S1564S to S1564D single to dual processor conversion (also s1563 and s1562)

Reply 30 of 32, by Socket3

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AngryByDefault wrote on 2022-06-08, 13:28:

Mine seems to have a VIA sound chip? That surprised me when I installed the drivers. I guess that is a testament of how much of a later Socket 7 board this one is...

The driver is provided by VIA, but the audio codec is made by ALS. If you look at the board closely, you'll spot a tiny 3x3mm (arpoximate) square IC that says ALC on it. It's to the left of the middle PCI slot, near 3 black capacitors. That is the audio codec.

Reply 31 of 32, by AngryByDefault

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Mine is VIA branded (maybe re-branded? )
FWIW I just attached an image of it and the BIOS chip, as I can't spot any "revision" information printed on the PCB....

Side note: Bummer... the Soyo board has a couple of bad caps and acts wonky... It came in like that but it didn't seem to be so unstable at first, probably I didn't test it well enough. I don't feel like sending it back since I believe it was sold in good faith. Plus, maybe some day I will finally force myself to learn how to recap, that's been on my to-do list for eons now...

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Reply 32 of 32, by Sphere478

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Recapping kinda goes hand in hand with retro activities.

I wonder if maybe we could be using capacitors that don’t age. Like metal film or tantalums? Do those age?

Sphere's PCB projects.
-
Sphere’s socket 5/7 cpu collection.
-
SUCCESSFUL K6-2+ to K6-3+ Full Cache Enable Mod
-
Tyan S1564S to S1564D single to dual processor conversion (also s1563 and s1562)