PcBytes wrote on 2024-10-04, 01:06:

I wanna say they're almost as rare as KT133A with ISA, but then I remember that most early KT133 boards and even a few KT133A boards had ISA slots so they weren't really that rare/uncommon, as opposed to Tualatin + ISA.
At least VIA had a bonus of native ISA, unlike Intel who needed a separate chip to handle ISA on chipsets past 440BX.

If you had the choice, would you prefer to use the Soltek SL-65KV2-CT (ignoring the ISA slot) or the ASUS TUSL2-C in a build?

zuldan wrote on 2024-10-04, 00:39:

I did notice 2 of the CPU pins have a small capacitor between them (top left corner). I'm think it's a 0.1uF. I'm guessing this is from the factory?

Worth looking up the datasheet, but one of Intel's tricks over the years with same but incompatible sockets is to move the enable pin over one spot.

This might be a factory hack to support one chip up without changing the design.

https://www.geocities.ws/tuacubx/reads/MSMG.htm

Yep. Pwrgood on tualatin.

So nice to see all these Pentium III bits being saved !

Question .. was there a Tualatin board with RDRAM ? would be great to get an i840 with Tually support.

Ive found a few boards but they all seem to top out at CU Mine T which while nice doesn't really help for some Tualatin benches I want to run between the three memory types around at that time.

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-10-04, 06:02:

So nice to see all these Pentium III bits being saved !

Question .. was there a Tualatin board with RDRAM ? would be great to get an i840 with Tually support.

Ive found a few boards but they all seem to top out at CU Mine T which while nice doesn't really help for some Tualatin benches I want to run between the three memory types around at that time.

With Slot 1 adapters, yes...

...single (i820)- The Tuala-Bus (My 9x/Dos Rig) (Pentium III-S 1.4ghz, AWE64G+Audigy 2 ZS, Voodoo5 5500, Chieftec Dragon Rambus)

...dual (i840) - Outrigger: an ongoing adventure with the OR840

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2024-10-04, 09:57:

With Slot 1 adapters, yes... […]
Show full quote

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-10-04, 06:02:

So nice to see all these Pentium III bits being saved !

Question .. was there a Tualatin board with RDRAM ? would be great to get an i840 with Tually support.

Ive found a few boards but they all seem to top out at CU Mine T which while nice doesn't really help for some Tualatin benches I want to run between the three memory types around at that time.

With Slot 1 adapters, yes...

...single (i820)- The Tuala-Bus (My 9x/Dos Rig) (Pentium III-S 1.4ghz, AWE64G+Audigy 2 ZS, Voodoo5 5500, Chieftec Dragon Rambus)

...dual (i840) - Outrigger: an ongoing adventure with the OR840

Hmmm, was there any 3rd party chipsets that had RDRAM support for 370 ?

Just asking out of curiosity .. the OR840 is like hunting unicorns and ive heard the i820 was rather unstable.

zuldan wrote on 2024-10-04, 03:27:

PcBytes wrote on 2024-10-04, 01:06:

I wanna say they're almost as rare as KT133A with ISA, but then I remember that most early KT133 boards and even a few KT133A boards had ISA slots so they weren't really that rare/uncommon, as opposed to Tualatin + ISA.
At least VIA had a bonus of native ISA, unlike Intel who needed a separate chip to handle ISA on chipsets past 440BX.

If you had the choice, would you prefer to use the Soltek SL-65KV2-CT (ignoring the ISA slot) or the ASUS TUSL2-C in a build?

Soltek at any given moment. Intel's 512MB limit is a curse.

zuldan wrote on 2024-10-04, 00:39:

Manage to get this Soltek SL-65KV2-CT. For $17 "Untested". It was advertised as a "Vintage Computer Motherboard, Celeron SL5ZJ , […]
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Manage to get this Soltek SL-65KV2-CT. For $17 "Untested". It was advertised as a "Vintage Computer Motherboard, Celeron SL5ZJ , INTEL 01 , 1300/256/100/1.5" so I don't think anyone noticed it. It's a Pentium III board with native Tualatin support PLUS ISA. Not sure if it's any different to the -T version (https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/6636). I wonder if this board would be considered better than a ASUS TUSL2-C?

I gave her a good clean. She's in perfect condition. I cannot find a single scratch. A lot of the caps are bulging though so I'll replace them all.

The attachment IMG_20241003_172033.jpg is no longer available

I did notice 2 of the CPU pins have a small capacitor between them (top left corner). I'm think it's a 0.1uF. I'm guessing this is from the factory?

The attachment IMG_20241003_172447.jpg is no longer available

I didn't think the board would work considering it was listed For Parts / Untested. I checked for shorts then plugged in my 1400 Tualatin and to my surprise she booted up first time. Very very happy. Sometimes you do get lucky.

The attachment IMG_20241004_075012.jpg is no longer available

A word of warning:
Have an eye on real Vcore if you happen to change it in the BIOS.
I remember it behaving a bit "odd" i.e. not what you would think it to be. Depended on the type of cpu used iirc, coppermine/tually, but was definitely not correct.
We don't want any 1400 end up grilled do we...

Edit: note to myself: check own board for those patches on the cpu socket. Maybe these make for some difference in this vcore thing...

PcBytes wrote on 2024-10-04, 10:29:

zuldan wrote on 2024-10-04, 03:27:

PcBytes wrote on 2024-10-04, 01:06:

I wanna say they're almost as rare as KT133A with ISA, but then I remember that most early KT133 boards and even a few KT133A boards had ISA slots so they weren't really that rare/uncommon, as opposed to Tualatin + ISA.
At least VIA had a bonus of native ISA, unlike Intel who needed a separate chip to handle ISA on chipsets past 440BX.

If you had the choice, would you prefer to use the Soltek SL-65KV2-CT (ignoring the ISA slot) or the ASUS TUSL2-C in a build?

Soltek at any given moment. Intel's 512MB limit is a curse.

What about a QDI Advance 10T with Apollo 133T ?

I just recently bought one of these .. was after the 12T but they dont appear very often and normally need a recap.

This is the one I got .. has been recapped with what look like poly caps .. but they might just be normal ones with ally cans.

Its nice to see all these Pentium 3 Tualatins being moved into peoples collections, really do need to save as many of them as we can, they aint getting any younger.

The green ones look like Taicons, and the CPU caps are Nichicon HD though they seem to use the same "bare-aluminium" cap that my ABIT KR7A has.

ChrisK wrote on 2024-10-04, 10:41:

A word of warning: Have an eye on real Vcore if you happen to change it in the BIOS. I remember it behaving a bit "odd" i.e. not […]
Show full quote

zuldan wrote on 2024-10-04, 00:39:

Manage to get this Soltek SL-65KV2-CT. For $17 "Untested". It was advertised as a "Vintage Computer Motherboard, Celeron SL5ZJ , […]
Show full quote

Manage to get this Soltek SL-65KV2-CT. For $17 "Untested". It was advertised as a "Vintage Computer Motherboard, Celeron SL5ZJ , INTEL 01 , 1300/256/100/1.5" so I don't think anyone noticed it. It's a Pentium III board with native Tualatin support PLUS ISA. Not sure if it's any different to the -T version (https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/6636). I wonder if this board would be considered better than a ASUS TUSL2-C?

I gave her a good clean. She's in perfect condition. I cannot find a single scratch. A lot of the caps are bulging though so I'll replace them all.

The attachment IMG_20241003_172033.jpg is no longer available

I did notice 2 of the CPU pins have a small capacitor between them (top left corner). I'm think it's a 0.1uF. I'm guessing this is from the factory?

The attachment IMG_20241003_172447.jpg is no longer available

I didn't think the board would work considering it was listed For Parts / Untested. I checked for shorts then plugged in my 1400 Tualatin and to my surprise she booted up first time. Very very happy. Sometimes you do get lucky.

The attachment IMG_20241004_075012.jpg is no longer available

A word of warning:
Have an eye on real Vcore if you happen to change it in the BIOS.
I remember it behaving a bit "odd" i.e. not what you would think it to be. Depended on the type of cpu used iirc, coppermine/tually, but was definitely not correct.
We don't want any 1400 end up grilled do we...

Edit: note to myself: check own board for those patches on the cpu socket. Maybe these make for some difference in this vcore thing...

Thats a real possibility, perhaps it was picked up in QA but not soon enough to alter initial production runs.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-10-04, 10:52:

The green ones look like Taicons, and the CPU caps are Nichicon HD though they seem to use the same "bare-aluminium" cap that my ABIT KR7A has.

It amazes me just how good people are here at identifying caps just from a picture, perhaps its my eyes but I actually need to have the board in my hands to do stuff like that...

That said I dont have a ton of experience at recapping or caps in general either.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-10-04, 10:52:

The green ones look like Taicons, and the CPU caps are Nichicon HD though they seem to use the same "bare-aluminium" cap that my ABIT KR7A has.

That reminds me the two Soltek SL-75KAV boards I got recently from Ukraine both arrived and both work flawlessly ...now I just need to decide what to do with the spare.

I bought another GTX 480 (an EVGA GTX 480+) for $54 US shipped. Hopefully, this one won't short out like the last one. I do have a damaged motherboard now that I can use for fault checking.

Picked up this Athlon CPU with the only cooler allowed to be attached to one. It's just not a Slot A, without the Gold Thermaltake Cooler... 😁

One thing I don't miss from then is the noise from the tiny fans on crappy sinks

Retro PC's just don't feel or sound right without ear blasting Fan noise. Every time I build one without it, it just lacks soul. 😀

Had a couple of donations from friends. First a cool Gigabyte GA-7VAXP for socket 462.

This one was plagued by bulged capacitors. After replacing all of them, the voltages became stable, but no joy. No post codes, and the reset was asserted with 3-4 seconds interval. Removed the main flash, no joy. Compared with all available bios but no exact match. There where only minimal differences on small section , so I suspected a "bit rot" event. After loading the F15 version it came back to life.

A beautiful Asus Saberthooth Z77. It has some damage to the tracks near the holes for the cpu cooler. Didn't had yet time to full inspect and diagnose, but there is a chance that may be fixable.

Ultra branded CRT pickup, 50RON (I think roughly $20).

Yes, I took the photo in Shrek's swamp 🤣

Thankfully it works, tested it right there at chap's house. Needs A LOT of cleaning, much like the ESS Audiodrive ISA and the OG Xbox I picked up from him.

Do boxes count as hardware? I finally completed my collection of Microsoft operating systems.
(I might also get an NT4 box someday, but it's not really planned and those are expensive.)

Stopping at XP, because from Vista onwards, Microsoft used ugly plastic boxes and I don't really care about those...