https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/pcchips-m715-v1-2

Kinda looks like this one. One difference I can see is no PS/2 port on the one in the picture.

Good eye Maj, def a PcChips board (Sound Pro label on audio gives that away) and matches quite well.
Rev 1.2 vs 2a....

I think this is the EXACT one, but there is not much else about it. Can't even find much about the company, but appears to be rebranded PC chips. I would assume the drivers/BIOS are the same.

Thank you all for help. I believe it is AMPTRON P2 2100 board, I was hoping I can use this with a P2 400mhz cpu however according to specs it only supports up 366mhz cpu.

codexinsignis wrote on 2024-12-28, 13:40:

Thank you all for help. I believe it is AMPTRON P2 2100 board, I was hoping I can use this with a P2 400mhz cpu however according to specs it only supports up 366mhz cpu.

The limitation is the chipset - i440LX officially supports max 66MHz and you're a very lucky overclocker indeed if you can push it to 83MHz. P2-400 needs 100MHz FSB as provided by i440BX or ZX. You can ignore the clock speed itself, as that's just FSB times multiplier, which is locked and not under motherboard control. What matters is the CPU core. When LX came out, only the first gen P2 Klamath was available, but that was replaced by second gen Deschutes in P2-333. After that, the Covington (no L2 cache) and Mendocino (128kB L2 cache) Celerons were released. Juding BIOS releases from 1999, those are probably supported. And then there's Coppermine.

Now, the fastest CPU with 66MHz FSB you could potentially put into a Slot 1 board is the Celeron 766 (using a Coppermine-capable slocket). Of course this won't be officially supported. It might work though...

Whether a Coppermine CPU will work depends on a number of things:
- support for the core voltage that it requests
- BIOS support, or at least tolerance for not having the right microcode

The latter is a big issue on Intel OEM boards, but PC Chips boards are basically sluts that will run anything that will run.

As for the voltage, that depends on the VRM chip. I'm having a bit of trouble identifying it on that board. But if you have a P2-400 you can already find out enough. Plug it in and see what happens.

If it works (at 266MHz, as its multiplier is locked at 4x, and 4x66=266MHz), that means that your board can supply 1.8V and is happy to run an 'unknown' CPU. Still no complete guarantee, as the Deschutes P2-333 is supported so Deschutes 400MHz (or 266MHz) isn't a big leap.

Now, Coppermine CPUs are designed for 1.6-1.75V, which this board almost certainly can't provide, and if a VRM can't provide it, it won't supply anything. But you can get slockets with voltage jumpers that override what the CPU itself requests. Take one of those and set it to 1.8V and you won't fry the Coppermine CPU and might get the board to work with it...

Failing that, see if Mendocino Celeron CPUs will work. If so a Celeron 533 (non-A) is the fastest this will run.

Thank you for such a comprehensive and informative reply. My personal preference is not to overclock processors and keeping them stock. I believe that I might have an Asus P2B motherboard that should support stock P2 400MHz processor.

Thanks,

dionb wrote on 2024-12-28, 18:40:

The limitation is the chipset - i440LX officially supports max 66MHz and you're a very lucky overclocker indeed if you can push […]
Show full quote

codexinsignis wrote on 2024-12-28, 13:40:

Thank you all for help. I believe it is AMPTRON P2 2100 board, I was hoping I can use this with a P2 400mhz cpu however according to specs it only supports up 366mhz cpu.

The limitation is the chipset - i440LX officially supports max 66MHz and you're a very lucky overclocker indeed if you can push it to 83MHz. P2-400 needs 100MHz FSB as provided by i440BX or ZX. You can ignore the clock speed itself, as that's just FSB times multiplier, which is locked and not under motherboard control. What matters is the CPU core. When LX came out, only the first gen P2 Klamath was available, but that was replaced by second gen Deschutes in P2-333. After that, the Covington (no L2 cache) and Mendocino (128kB L2 cache) Celerons were released. Juding BIOS releases from 1999, those are probably supported. And then there's Coppermine.

Now, the fastest CPU with 66MHz FSB you could potentially put into a Slot 1 board is the Celeron 766 (using a Coppermine-capable slocket). Of course this won't be officially supported. It might work though...

Whether a Coppermine CPU will work depends on a number of things:
- support for the core voltage that it requests
- BIOS support, or at least tolerance for not having the right microcode

The latter is a big issue on Intel OEM boards, but PC Chips boards are basically sluts that will run anything that will run.

As for the voltage, that depends on the VRM chip. I'm having a bit of trouble identifying it on that board. But if you have a P2-400 you can already find out enough. Plug it in and see what happens.

If it works (at 266MHz, as its multiplier is locked at 4x, and 4x66=266MHz), that means that your board can supply 1.8V and is happy to run an 'unknown' CPU. Still no complete guarantee, as the Deschutes P2-333 is supported so Deschutes 400MHz (or 266MHz) isn't a big leap.

Now, Coppermine CPUs are designed for 1.6-1.75V, which this board almost certainly can't provide, and if a VRM can't provide it, it won't supply anything. But you can get slockets with voltage jumpers that override what the CPU itself requests. Take one of those and set it to 1.8V and you won't fry the Coppermine CPU and might get the board to work with it...

Failing that, see if Mendocino Celeron CPUs will work. If so a Celeron 533 (non-A) is the fastest this will run.

codexinsignis wrote on 2024-12-28, 23:32:

Thank you for such a comprehensive and informative reply. My personal preference is not to overclock processors and keeping them stock. I believe that I might have an Asus P2B motherboard that should support stock P2 400MHz processor.

I'm not suggesting overclocking, all the options I proposed run the CPUs stock, and all except the Coppermines would run at stock voltage too, in fact the P2-400 would run underclocked. That board most likely will run a 533MHz Mendocino without complaint or overclocking. The fact it isn't mentioned in the manual is purely because the manual was written when the board was first released and those CPUs didn't exist. There are BIOS releases from 1999, so after the release of Covington and Mendocino Celeron CPUs - and looking at date codes on some of the chips on that board it's from 1999 too (very late for an LX board - PC Chips undoubtedly found a supply of old chipsets for a low price).

That said, the P2B is a vastly better motherboard so if you have it and want to run a P2-400, it's a no-brainer. It does beg the question though why you were considering this board if you have both. That might help us understand what you're trying to achieve.

Thanks again for being so informative. My goal is to setup 2 retro machines since I have 2 processors one is a P2 400/512/100 and the other is a P3 800EB/256/133 /165V. I was hoping to use the P2 processor in the AMPTRON board and the P3 in the P2B-F rev 1.0 board until I realized that the P3 is 133FSB processor. Can you recommend a MB for 133FSB processor?

-Thanks

dionb wrote on 2024-12-29, 00:12:

codexinsignis wrote on 2024-12-28, 23:32:

Thank you for such a comprehensive and informative reply. My personal preference is not to overclock processors and keeping them stock. I believe that I might have an Asus P2B motherboard that should support stock P2 400MHz processor.

I'm not suggesting overclocking, all the options I proposed run the CPUs stock, and all except the Coppermines would run at stock voltage too, in fact the P2-400 would run underclocked. That board most likely will run a 533MHz Mendocino without complaint or overclocking. The fact it isn't mentioned in the manual is purely because the manual was written when the board was first released and those CPUs didn't exist. There are BIOS releases from 1999, so after the release of Covington and Mendocino Celeron CPUs - and looking at date codes on some of the chips on that board it's from 1999 too (very late for an LX board - PC Chips undoubtedly found a supply of old chipsets for a low price).

That said, the P2B is a vastly better motherboard so if you have it and want to run a P2-400, it's a no-brainer. It does beg the question though why you were considering this board if you have both. That might help us understand what you're trying to achieve.

codexinsignis wrote on 2024-12-29, 13:26:

Thanks again for being so informative. My goal is to setup 2 retro machines since I have 2 processors one is a P2 400/512/100 and the other is a P3 800EB/256/133 /165V. I was hoping to use the P2 processor in the AMPTRON board and the P3 in the P2B-F rev 1.0 board until I realized that the P3 is 133FSB processor. Can you recommend a MB for 133FSB processor?

OK, that makes things clearer.

Most likely you could run the P2-400 on your LX board (at 266MHz). As for the 800MHz - is it a Slot 1 CPU or a Socket 370 FC-PGA CPU with an adapter? Thing is, the best boards for 133MHz P3 CPUs are still i440BX-based boards, like the P2B or P2B-F. Most will run at 133MHz FSB and if so they are faster than newer chipsets that officially support 133MHz FSB such as the Via ApolloPro133(A) and Intel i815 and i820, and on par with rarer options like Intel i840 and SiS635T.

Your P2B-F might support Coppermine CPUs without modifications. It depends on the voltage regulator. Unhelpfully, Asus used multiple regulators in the same rev 1.0 P2B-F design. There are two ways to identify the regulator:
1) look at the PCBA number on the motherboard. A0A, A0B, A1A, A1B, A2A, A2B, A33, A34, A43, A44, A53, A54 have the new regulator that will work with Coppermines.
2) look at the VRM chip itself. It's a small rectangular chip near the Slot 1 and surrounded by coils and capacitors. If it is one of these two, you can do min 1.8V: HIP6019CB, HIP6004ACB. Anything else starting with HIP or US will go down to 1.3V (if it starts with something other than HIP or US, you're looking at the wrong chip).

As for what I would recommend - it depends what you want to do with the system, in particular which operating systems you want to run.

If you want DOS (and Win3.x), you want ISA slots and i440BX boards are the best option. If you really don't want to run something out of spec, in that case look for Via ApolloPro133A (82C694X)-based boards (and not the glacially slow ApolloPro133 (82C693A) ones) with as many ISA slots as you can find.
If you don't want DOS, you don't need ISA. For Win98SE-only, max 512MB RAM is fine, so an i815(E/P) based board would be a good option.
For WinNT/2K/XP or Unixen/Linux, you want as much RAM as you can get. In that case, the unloved i820 chipset would be better, with unobtainium i840, SiS635 or ServerWorks IIIHE being best - and the Via ApolloPro133A the cheap option.

But... do you want to use a SoundBlaster Live card? In that case, Via ApolloPro133A boards with 686B southbridges are a no-go. Instead, either try to find one with older 686A southbridge, or choose a different chipset vendor.

Of course, this sort of recommendation is 99% useless. There aren't any shops where you can buy any and every board ever made, let alone buy them for an acceptable price. So a better approach would be for you to look at what you could obtain locally and give us a shortlist to judge what would be the best option.