Socket7 without ISA might be the least coolest motherboard in my book...

The colour is really nice but no ISA (nor SB-Link), awkward placement of PSU and floppy connector, and the old VT82C586B south bridge (ATA33) really don't make this a very useful Super7 board.
Too bad, really dig the look!

kolderman wrote on 2021-11-19, 20:41:

Socket7 without ISA might be the least coolest motherboard in my book...

It actually baffles my mind why they didn’t put just one at the bottom, there is room for one without sacrificing a thing… 🤔

But luckily for me, my cards I plan on using are as follows:

Radeon 9800 pro, which I will try to flash to a 128mb xt custom

Audigy 2 zs

Gigabyte iRam

usb 3.0

Promise tx4 sata II 300

Killer NIC pci gigabit network card

Doornkaat wrote on 2021-11-19, 21:20:

The colour is really nice but no ISA (nor SB-Link), awkward placement of PSU and floppy connector, and the old VT82C586B south bridge (ATA33) really don't make this a very useful Super7 board.
Too bad, really dig the look!

I’ll be using a sata add in card so no biggie about the south bridge. What can you tell me about the north bridge? Is it up to par?

Yeah, they did put those ports in weird spots but no biggie.

Seems the major upgrade between it and the board it’s based from is they took out the simm slots and put extra power fets there which is nice!

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-11-19, 23:49:

I’ll be using a sata add in card so no biggie about the south bridge. What can you tell me about the north bridge? Is it up to par?

I have been using an Epox MVP3G2 for some time and it was a pretty good experience. It's a late Super7 board but has got the same NB so unless there's any major revisions I suspect you're going to have a similarly good experience.😃👍 I'm generally pretty happy with VIA based boards despite all the bad press they get.

A 1999 review at Anandtech.

Understandably, most of us are too enamoured with our ISA peripherals for this to ever be The One Ideal Board, but then, nobody is asking it to be.

For what it is, it's pretty awesome. I haven't seen it before. I bet it will form the basis of a really nice system.

That review says the motherboard was quite unstable, even at 112Mhz fsb:

• Unfortunately, for the consumer's sake, TMC didn't design the TI5VGF to the best of their ability. Although the board supports up to 133MHz FSB settings, even the 112MHz FSB setting wasn't stable enough to be considered a viable option for normal operation. This can be attributed to a combination of factors, the quality/yield of the L2 cache chip on the board, as well as the lack of increased filters between the chipset and the DRAM banks to improve the clarity of the signal as the FSB speed is pushed outside of the specified limit.
  
  The positioning of the floppy connector directly below the ATX power supply connector near the top of the motherboard is horrible, especially in a crowded case. The design could have been reworked to place the Socket-7 CPU interface directly in the path of the ATX power supply fan's airflow, however that isn't the case, so the purpose of the ATX specification from a CPU cooling standpoint is virtually defeated.

At least, it is an interesting board. Not really common compared to other socket 7 boards with 1, 2 or 3 ISA slots. A full PCI setting on mainboards, this is becoming standard during the release of most Athlon boards, at least starting the VIA266 chipset.

Despite of having no ISA slot, i agree this is a bad position of FDD and ATX interface.
I have a Shuttle HOT 597.
There is the same problem with the FDD interface position, but it is handled user friendly with the ATX interface.
A recommendation is to use slaved and rounded IDE cable.

Another interesting point:
It comes with up to 3 DIP switches to control the frequencies, the V-core and V-IO independently.
I have 1 DIP switch at least on my HOT 597.

And three 3-pin fan headers... 😉

man, look at the position of that ATX connection and floppy header.

The computer hardware world back then was a lawless one.

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-11-19, 20:38:

I’m starting a new build using this beauty of a motherboard made by freeway […]
Show full quote

I’m starting a new build using this beauty of a motherboard made by freeway

I’ll use this thread as a build log

Here is some info on it from Jan

This TI5VGF board is made by TMC, but is also marketed by Freeway, a Japanese Company. I have good reports about the Ver. 1.00 b […]
Show full quote

This TI5VGF board is made by TMC, but is also marketed by Freeway, a Japanese Company.
I have good reports about the Ver. 1.00 board, running a K6-2+/500 at stock speed without problems.

The standard TI5VGF board came with 1MB cache, but there were boards with an optional 2MB cache. I believe the extra 1MB cache was soldered at the back side of the board!??

About the BIOS, note that the E2, E3, E4, and E5 BIOS revisions don’t support the K6plus CPUs.
However, Freeway made a rev. H7 beta BIOS that fully supports the K6-2+/-III+ and HDDs up to 128GB!
You can download this –H7- BIOS from my K6plus page at:
http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm

When flashing the –H7- BIOS, you may get the "The program file's part number does not match with your system" message. This is caused by the difference in BIOS-ID with your present BIOS. The Ti5vgfe2/3/4/5 BIOSes have a 2A5LEM2LC ID and the Ti5vgfh7 beta BIOS has 2A5LEM2PC. This one letter difference triggers this message.
Just force the flash with /py switch like:
Awdflash TI5VGFH7.BIN /Py

Manual:

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2021-11-20, 00:59:

Did you notice the manual for your board layout is listed here - https://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/Archive/Tmc%20 … al/ti5vgf10.pdf

Need to find yourself the Freeway FW-5VGF+/Ultra. It comes with ata66.

supercordo wrote on 2021-12-15, 02:20:

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-11-19, 20:38:

I’m starting a new build using this beauty of a motherboard made by freeway […]
Show full quote

I’m starting a new build using this beauty of a motherboard made by freeway

I’ll use this thread as a build log

Here is some info on it from Jan

This TI5VGF board is made by TMC, but is also marketed by Freeway, a Japanese Company. I have good reports about the Ver. 1.00 b […]
Show full quote

This TI5VGF board is made by TMC, but is also marketed by Freeway, a Japanese Company.
I have good reports about the Ver. 1.00 board, running a K6-2+/500 at stock speed without problems.

The standard TI5VGF board came with 1MB cache, but there were boards with an optional 2MB cache. I believe the extra 1MB cache was soldered at the back side of the board!??

About the BIOS, note that the E2, E3, E4, and E5 BIOS revisions don’t support the K6plus CPUs.
However, Freeway made a rev. H7 beta BIOS that fully supports the K6-2+/-III+ and HDDs up to 128GB!
You can download this –H7- BIOS from my K6plus page at:
http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm

When flashing the –H7- BIOS, you may get the "The program file's part number does not match with your system" message. This is caused by the difference in BIOS-ID with your present BIOS. The Ti5vgfe2/3/4/5 BIOSes have a 2A5LEM2LC ID and the Ti5vgfh7 beta BIOS has 2A5LEM2PC. This one letter difference triggers this message.
Just force the flash with /py switch like:
Awdflash TI5VGFH7.BIN /Py

Manual:

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2021-11-20, 00:59:

Did you notice the manual for your board layout is listed here - https://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/Archive/Tmc%20 … al/ti5vgf10.pdf

Need to find yourself the Freeway FW-5VGF+/Ultra. It comes with ata66.

I plan on using sata, is that all that I’m missing?

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-12-15, 03:06:

supercordo wrote on 2021-12-15, 02:20:

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-11-19, 20:38:

I’m starting a new build using this beauty of a motherboard made by freeway […]
Show full quote

I’m starting a new build using this beauty of a motherboard made by freeway

I’ll use this thread as a build log

Here is some info on it from Jan

Manual:

Need to find yourself the Freeway FW-5VGF+/Ultra. It comes with ata66.

I plan on using sata, is that all that I’m missing?

Just that the floppy connecter is in a better spot and VT82C686. (not sure if its a or b)

probably a board with 2k l3 cache or at
least one without a terrible layout

If nothing else, motherboards with a red PCB are really cool looking. I would have recapped this board anyway, but the red PCB gave me extra incentive.

Am I the only one that doesn't like weird PCB colours? I think it looks cheap. Give me green, Damnit. Emerald green, snot green, army green, British racing green...

The most amazing thing about this board is that it's made by TMC. I thought they went bankrupt years before this board was made.
Just in case you don't know, TMC/MyComp is probably the only company that could compete with PCChips in terms of quality.

Started this build finally!

One of the first things that I noticed was in the bios, it told me that my vcore was 3.3v

Ummm… no good!!

After some investigation it turns out they mislabeled vI/O as core voltage in the bios…🙄

I had to be 100% sure though so I directly measured vcc2 to confirm.

Can’r seem to get it to post over 75fsb 4.5x multi.

Which is just damned odd because I’m running a k6-3+ 550….
This cpu on my p5a 1.04 will do a tad over 600mhz stable. So why the cpu can’t do anything higher than 4.5x at 75 fsb is really puzzling

Some info from jan:

1~it is a nice one, with the great VIA MVP3 chipset and 6 PCI slots!
2 
3This TI5VGF board is made by TMC, but is also marketed by Freeway, a Japanese Company.
4I have good reports about the Ver. 1.00 board, running a K6-2+/500 at stock speed without problems.
5 
6The standard TI5VGF board came with 1MB cache, but there were boards with an optional 2MB cache. I believe the extra 1MB cache was soldered at the back side of the board!??
7 
8About the BIOS, note that the E2, E3, E4, and E5 BIOS revisions don’t support the K6plus CPUs.
9However, Freeway made a rev. H7 beta BIOS that fully supports the K6-2+/-III+ and HDDs up to 128GB!
10You can download this –H7- BIOS from my K6plus page at:
11http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm
12 
13When flashing the –H7- BIOS, you may get the "The program file's part number does not match with your system" message. This is caused by the difference in BIOS-ID with your present BIOS. The Ti5vgfe2/3/4/5 BIOSes have a 2A5LEM2LC ID and the Ti5vgfh7 beta BIOS has 2A5LEM2PC. This one letter difference triggers this message.
14Just force the flash with /py switch like:
15Awdflash TI5VGFH7.BIN /Py
16 
17Enjoy this board!

Updates:

I decided to update the bios to Jan’s recommendation.

With the old bios it had a really cool splash screen which I didn’t see a option to disable, would be cool to get it back somehow but still be able to see the post text doing its thing with the old bios you could only see it if you pressed tab while the freeway splash screen showed

My usb keyboard would hang the system at post screen if plugged in, hopefully new bios will fix it

Here is the stock bios:

Unfortunately I had to do it the old fashioned way as I didn’t have a chip programmer adapter which would have made this super easy.

I didn’t get a pic of the old splash screen unfortunately. I wish I had.

Here is the new bios h7

I noticed that the vcore is now 2v and it now shows vcc separately so that’s fixed!

It added a option for agp2x mode which I don’t recall from before.

There is a cyrix cpuid option that I think is new

This bios is one of the few that has a hdd low level format option which is cool. The old version also had this

I’m hoping that this bios will fix the issue with cpuz locking up the system