have you tried any hdd diagnostic software ?

dforell wrote:

Specs: Abit BE6 II motherboard. Pentium III 800mhz MSI Nvidia GeForce 4 TI4200 64M SoundBlaster 16 Value ADMtek NC100 Ethernet […]
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Specs:
Abit BE6 II motherboard.
Pentium III 800mhz
MSI Nvidia GeForce 4 TI4200 64M
SoundBlaster 16 Value
ADMtek NC100 Ethernet

My bet is bad caps.

bad caps?

I find it odd that win98 and freedos run flawlessly.
Some dos games seem to run okay too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

Looking for bad caps should be one of the first things to do when you find an unstable system built around a motherboard made circa 1999-2000. Of course, there are other possible issues that may cause the same symptoms (bad ram, power supply fault, hard disk fail), but bad caps were somewhat common those days, and very easy to identify just by looking at your board:

http://www.badcaps.net/store/images/000_1065.JPG (good caps)

http://www.sanslogic.co.uk/images/abit-be6-ii … capacitors.jpeg (bad caps)

Please check whether you have any capacitor looking like these ones or not, so we can at least discard that possible issue.

Damn, several appear "bloated" and one looks to be "leaking".

dforell wrote:

Damn, several appear "bloated" and one looks to be "leaking".

Sorry to read that. If you are handy with the soldering iron, you can buy a replacement kit and recap the motherboard by yourself:

http://www.badcaps.net/store/product_info.php … &products_id=18

Alternatively, you can buy another 440BX motherboard for a little more (including shipping):

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/ebayISAPI.dll?View … em=221036955198
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/ebayISAPI.dll?View … em=140717239758

Thank you very much Batracio. I did some soldering in an electronics class in highschool... it wasn't very good work.

dforell wrote:

Thank you very much Batracio. I did some soldering in an electronics class in highschool... it wasn't very good work.

See if anyone in your area can solder them in for you, most people will charge a very fare fee, just supply them the new caps and they will have them soldered in in less than 20 minutes. 😀

Also as batracio pointed out you could always get another motherboard on eBay or Amazon... the ASUS P3B-F v1.04 is an AMAZING Slot-1 motherboard and will support Pentium III up to 1.4Ghz with the latest BIOS, and a slotket. It's the best 440BX based motherboard i've ever used, and supports "undocumented" 133Mhz FSB, so PC-133 RAM and 133Mhz FSB CPU's will work perfectly in it as well. 😀

The ASUS P3B-F is a slot 1 motherboard and I can't seem to find any slot 1 Pentium iii processors over 1 GHz. Is this correct?

That's correct, you need a "slotket adapter" to use a socket 370 Pentium III.
I used to use this one with a 600Mhz PIII in my ASUS P2B:
http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=175

Wow, you guys have been amazingly helpful/knowledgeable. It will be great to upgrade to a 1.4 GHz processor. Now I need to get rid of this old processor and memory.

Don't get rid of CPU and RAM yet. A P-III 800 is more than enough for every DOS and most Win9x games. If you just replace the motherboard, everything else will keep working fine. Also bear in mind that not every slocket adapter will support a Tualatin core (P-III CPUs over 1 GHz). You would need a Powerleap PL-IP3/T (very expensive and hard to find), an Upgradeware Slot-T (it once was cheaper and easier to find, now getting scarce too), or a pin-modded Tualatin (there was a seller who used to list tons of these already modded CPUs at ebay, but I cannot find him anymore). My advice is to replace only the motherboard for the moment, and later upgrade step by step.

batracio wrote:

Don't get rid of CPU and RAM yet. A P-III 800 is more than enough for every DOS and most Win9x games. If you just replace the motherboard, everything else will keep working fine. Also bear in mind that not every slocket adapter will support a Tualatin core (P-III CPUs over 1 GHz). You would need a Powerleap PL-IP3/T (very expensive and hard to find), an Upgradeware Slot-T (it once was cheaper and easier to find, now getting scarce too), or a pin-modded Tualatin (there was a seller who used to list tons of these already modded CPUs at ebay, but I cannot find him anymore). My advice is to replace only the motherboard for the moment, and later upgrade step by step.

A Powerleap PL-IP3/T is NOT required for the ASUS P3B-F motherboard.

The MSI MS-6905 Master slotket adapter works just fine and those are as cheap as $11.99 USD and sometimes cheaper. The Asus S370-DL slotket adapter also works, however the MSI MS-6905 Master is the most common.

A simple mod to the slotket is all that is needed, and you'll have a working Pentium III 1.4Ghz Tualatin system.

How-To Guide: Tualatin in the Asus P3B-F

Modded BIOS: Asus P3B-F BIOS 1008 Beta 004 with all Microcode Updates
until CPUID 06B4.

I know that Asus P3B-F can provide 1.45-1.5V for Vcore and therefore it doesn't require a Powerleap PL-IP3/T. That's why I mentioned other options. And yes, there's a fourth option I didn't mention, making the pin-mod by yourself. But come on, dforell isn't confident enough of his soldering skills in order to recap his motherboard, so I wouldn't recommend him to make the pin-mod by himself, which I think is a more complex task. However, it would certainly be the best option for people who like challenges 😀

Just an update on purchases.

ASUS P3B-F Pentium III ATX Intel 440BX Motherboard
ASUS S370 Slot 1 to Socket 370 PGA370 1.8-2.6V Adapter
Tualatin Pentium III-S 1.4 GHz P3-S 1400 SL657
Low Density PC133 168Pin Memory

I might still see if I can get the old motherboard's caps fixed.
Wouldn't hurt to keep the old parts around for backup.

dforell wrote:

Just an update on purchases. […]
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Just an update on purchases.

ASUS P3B-F Pentium III ATX Intel 440BX Motherboard
ASUS S370 Slot 1 to Socket 370 PGA370 1.8-2.6V Adapter
Tualatin Pentium III-S 1.4 GHz P3-S 1400 SL657
Low Density PC133 168Pin Memory

I might still see if I can get the old motherboard's caps fixed.
Wouldn't hurt to keep the old parts around for backup.

Just follow that guide I posted and install that BIOS and you'll be golden! Have fun and enjoy your awsome new Pentium III system! 😁

Please note: You should use Aflash utility, rev. 1.24 to flash the BIOS or else you may end up with a "Error: data compare failure" message after flashing the BIOS.

Gee, I guess this means the only thing the 81x chipset has over the 440BX is the support for AGP 4X instead of 2X. Interesting.

(Of course, the real advantage would be in maxing out the RAM to 1 GB, and finding four 256 MB SDRAM modules might be a bit tricky.)

440BX is missing the proper AGP clock divider at 133MHz FSB, therefor it is never 'officially' supported.

It's hardly surprising Abit have bit the dust, I think most if not all Motherboards they made in that era have cheap rubbish capacitors on them.

I have replaced the caps on my KT7-RAID a couple of times, different caps of course

A free bit of advice, Don't ever throw any old hardware out, unless it's stuffed of course.
Dial-up modems throw out, they're the exceptions in my opinion.
I've got 5 processors for my motherboard, glad I kept em.