BH6 was always my favorite motherboard of the era. It was the one I used when I built my first computer back in the day. Still have it and works fine.
Excellent find.
You can even run Tualatin CPUs on it with a bit of hardware modding.

any of that hardware alone is worth more then £25, very nice score indeed!

I've been lucky with the finds, the Yamaha got for £20 on a well known aution website due to it being mis-labelled as an ISA sound card. I'm still trying my luck for an Awe64 Gold.

I do have a PCI Geforce MX440, works fine in all my other systems, but for some reason it is not at all recognised in this motherboard. if I remove the AGP voodoo, it won't post wth the Geforce, tried all slots, set BIOS to PCI video. if I install the card alongside the Voodoo and boot to 98, I have a dsiplay from the Voodoo, but the Geforce won't appear on System devices - if anyone has any idea as wouldn't mind having 32bit 3D in some games, but stumped at what the issue could be, it's at the latest BIOS as well.

That's a really great buy and a well balanced spec! The case especially looks really good with no yellowing on the front.

I've got a BH6 in one of my builds too, really nice board (P3 700/Voodoo2 SLI).

DrLucienSanchez wrote on 2024-09-19, 12:05:

I've been lucky with the finds, the Yamaha got for £20 on a well known aution website due to it being mis-labelled as an ISA sound card. I'm still trying my luck for an Awe64 Gold.

I do have a PCI Geforce MX440, works fine in all my other systems, but for some reason it is not at all recognised in this motherboard. if I remove the AGP voodoo, it won't post wth the Geforce, tried all slots, set BIOS to PCI video. if I install the card alongside the Voodoo and boot to 98, I have a dsiplay from the Voodoo, but the Geforce won't appear on System devices - if anyone has any idea as wouldn't mind having 32bit 3D in some games, but stumped at what the issue could be, it's at the latest BIOS as well.

GF4MX440 and 420 PCI are late cards, many early motherboards don't work with them. I have a PCI 420 and it doesn't work in a Socket 7 (430TX) motherboard or in one of several 440BX motherboards; works in a few BX and in a i815 motherboard. Haven't tried it in the BH6 but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't work. There's about 5 years difference between the release dates of the motherboard and of the card.

stamasd wrote on 2024-09-19, 19:30:

DrLucienSanchez wrote on 2024-09-19, 12:05:

I've been lucky with the finds, the Yamaha got for £20 on a well known aution website due to it being mis-labelled as an ISA sound card. I'm still trying my luck for an Awe64 Gold.

I do have a PCI Geforce MX440, works fine in all my other systems, but for some reason it is not at all recognised in this motherboard. if I remove the AGP voodoo, it won't post wth the Geforce, tried all slots, set BIOS to PCI video. if I install the card alongside the Voodoo and boot to 98, I have a dsiplay from the Voodoo, but the Geforce won't appear on System devices - if anyone has any idea as wouldn't mind having 32bit 3D in some games, but stumped at what the issue could be, it's at the latest BIOS as well.

GF4MX440 and 420 PCI are late cards, many early motherboards don't work with them. I have a PCI 420 and it doesn't work in a Socket 7 (430TX) motherboard or in one of several 440BX motherboards; works in a few BX and in a i815 motherboard. Haven't tried it in the BH6 but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't work. There's about 5 years difference between the release dates of the motherboard and of the card.

Yeah I had the same problem with a Radeon 9250 PCI 128-bit card I found. Really cool card but I thought it was dead to start with because it wouldn't work or detect at all on my super socket 7 test system and possibly my Aopen AX6BC, but it would work fine in my Pentium 4 system. Seems the later PCI cards rely on 3.3v being available on the PCI slots but not all motherboards hooked up 3.3v to the pci slots, instead only doing the 5v.

You should be able to tell from the keying where 3.3v cards will have a notch on the front edge of the PCI slot, while 5v cards will have a notch on the back of the PCI slot: https://www.ni.com/en/support/documentation/s … patibility.html
But that's not a great rule because my Radeon 9250 was keyed in both front and back for universal but could only work on 3.3v boards, because its voltage regulator for the GPU was hooked into the 3.3v rail rather than 5v.

Really cool system btw, I think I had a case very similar to that one back in the day, the power & reset buttons look extremely familar to me.

If your Velocity runs at 143mhz a heatsink is more than enough they don’t get hot unlike 166mhz.
You can use the second floppy drive as B:.
Neat build, like soundcard options.
What brand caps does your BH6 use? Many Abits of the time were fitted with Jackcon and such trash.

In regards to the PCI slots, thanks for that information, the slots are standard from what I can see, but the MX440 has three notches for the PCI connector, just not recognised in any of the slots. I've just tried it in a Socket 370 board, same visual outlay PCI slots as the BH6, and that is recognised, it'll be some sort of incompatibility with the BH6 as all my PCI sound cards work fine.

The Voodoo runs well with the fan, cooler than without the fan, so I'm happy with it, but I'm actually not a fan of the Voodoo to be quite honest, it's very limiting, yes Glide is nice, but I think i may go to a Geforce 2 MX AGP, plentiful, cheap uses older drivers. I'm very limited with it lacking 32bit and only 8MB and don't relish low non-glide performance, and this system is mostly for audio which this excels at.

Speaking of audio, I just had a delivery yesterday from overseas, a SB-Link cable, which took some trial end error, but now connected between the BH6 and the YMF-74, more of a concept for me, and just because I think it's pretty cool to have, but any DOS gaming I do normally within Windows anyway, but had some fun with it.

Unsure of the caps as don't want to pull out the board, but have an image of it, if helpful.

Yea those Tayeh caps definitely must be replaced

Bruno128 wrote on 2024-10-03, 07:42:

Yea those Tayeh caps definitely must be replaced

I'll get it sorted. I've never done a recap before, but plan on practicing on an old ATI X600 and then progress onto a Asus P4P 478 board that definitely needs doing, then I'll brave the BH6.

Unsure if I may invest on a good desoldering gun, but in the meantime, if anyone knows, is it wise to have this on at all, or shall I keep it off until the recap?

Update: I'm sending it of for a professional recap, around £95, and that includes a new CMOS battery holder, I would have spent half of that on the soldering iron and materials/caps and then likely I would damage or do a bad job, I get it back in 4 weeks, so will update this thread when it comes back.

I can’t help but notice there is a MSI BX7 board in your sig system. Is it not good?

Bruno128 wrote on 2024-10-04, 16:39:

I can’t help but notice there is a MSI BX7 board in your sig system. Is it not good?

Yes, old signature, I've removed it now. The BX7 had issues, ISA slot completely dead, BIOS flash had an issue throughout the process so the board was bricked. The most heartbreaking thing for me though was my NOS Sun CRT I had for three years suddenly not powering on out of nowhere, I've kept that aside though and will look i to getting it repaired when I can afford it. I did find a working Compaq CRT, so that's covered, but it can't do 1600x1200 unfortunately.