I received the Gigabyte Z370 HD3P I bought as a potential vanilla Windows 2000 retro rocket (and to multi-boot XP, Vista, and 7). I only had time to set up the board on a test bench for a quick test with an i5-8400 and 8GB of DDR4. For those interested in using newer Gigabyte boards with Windows 2000, I can confirm that this board has a MPS implementation compatible with Windows 2000.

Unfortunately, Windows 2000 didn't detect any of the PCI or PCIE devices in the expansion slots on the first boot (with the exception of the video card) , just like my experience with an Asus H310-Plus board. I kind of expected this since I haven't tweaked the UEFI settings yet. I also need to try adding a NVMe drive which allowed Windows 2000 to detect peripherals on my H310 board.

I also messed up the device detection on my Windows 2000 install and didn't set up AHCI controller support correctly. Now the drive won't boot. I'll need to re-image the drive and prep it for MPS and generic AHCI before doing more testing.

clownwolf wrote on Yesterday, 10:11:

Got a Gainbery P120 Upgrade CPU for socket 4. While I am happy to have it, there's not much use-case for retro computing. In my opinion the point of using a Socket 4 is to use the P60 or P66 after all.

The attachment 20250523_025553.jpg is no longer available

you said that like you didnt want to give "your existing pentium 60/66 mhz system advanced power and performance" 😀

Still, it is interesting and i guess i couldn't resist comparing speeds with various benchmarks just to see

It's from an interesting time, when getting some small increase in cpu speed could yield a big proportional difference in experience while avoiding buying a new pc

gerry wrote on Yesterday, 14:21:

you said that like you didnt want to give "your existing pentium 60/66 mhz system advanced power and performance" :) […]
Show full quote

clownwolf wrote on Yesterday, 10:11:

Got a Gainbery P120 Upgrade CPU for socket 4. While I am happy to have it, there's not much use-case for retro computing. In my opinion the point of using a Socket 4 is to use the P60 or P66 after all.

The attachment 20250523_025553.jpg is no longer available

you said that like you didnt want to give "your existing pentium 60/66 mhz system advanced power and performance" 😀

Still, it is interesting and i guess i couldn't resist comparing speeds with various benchmarks just to see

It's from an interesting time, when getting some small increase in cpu speed could yield a big proportional difference in experience while avoiding buying a new pc

They did have a benchmark page... https://web.archive.org/web/19961105030738/ht … om/686bench.htm

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2025-05-22, 21:46:

Hmmm I'm confused becuase unless im reading the data sheet wrong these are 4MB chips x 8 on the card for a total of 32MB's of ram.

Whoops! Not sure why I thought it was a 64MB card... 🤦 Sorry for the incorrect information.

Bought a box of junk at a garage sale. This was in the box:

I also grabbed this guy:

It had all the parts, so I figured it would be fun. It takes full-size VHS, so I can actually play with this one if it works.

PD2JK wrote on Yesterday, 11:14:

clownwolf wrote on Yesterday, 10:11:

Got a Gainbery P120 Upgrade CPU for socket 4. While I am happy to have it, there's not much use-case for retro computing. In my opinion the point of using a Socket 4 is to use the P60 or P66 after all.

The attachment 20250523_025553.jpg is no longer available

It's nevertheless an interesting piece of hardware which I've never heard of. Did they make their own core or is it some Cyrix/AMD/you-name-it deriative?
And is it about twice as fast compared to the first gen Pentium?

gerry wrote on Yesterday, 14:21:

you said that like you didnt want to give "your existing pentium 60/66 mhz system advanced power and performance" :) […]
Show full quote

clownwolf wrote on Yesterday, 10:11:

Got a Gainbery P120 Upgrade CPU for socket 4. While I am happy to have it, there's not much use-case for retro computing. In my opinion the point of using a Socket 4 is to use the P60 or P66 after all.

The attachment 20250523_025553.jpg is no longer available

you said that like you didnt want to give "your existing pentium 60/66 mhz system advanced power and performance" 😀

Still, it is interesting and i guess i couldn't resist comparing speeds with various benchmarks just to see

It's from an interesting time, when getting some small increase in cpu speed could yield a big proportional difference in experience while avoiding buying a new pc

I'll test the P60, P66 and P120 upgrade now and post the results on a new thread.

Actually I didnt need to test the P60 or P66, System Information already has P66 as a reference score. Also, this looks to be an actual P120 CPU they used. But cant be too sure unless I take the heatsink off, which is secured firmly.

Results show the Gainbery P120 upgrade as 80% faster than the P66 as per SysInfo 8.0, and a 25 FPS average on Doom Max Details Quake.

EDIT: I tried running tests again, buy SysInfo 8.0 no longer works. I am getting divide overflow error. I added a new screenshot for Speedsys 4.78 instead.

SysInfo 8.0

SysInfo 8.0

Doom Max Details Quake

Batman's Revenge Socket 4 Motherboard

Speedsys 4.78

My purchased arrived this week after a very long searching and fighting.
It this guy:

It work fine for both midi and pcm audio, i'm playing around with its mixer.

Probably the sound card with the biggest chips ever.

PcBytes wrote on 2025-05-22, 16:35:

Good thing: I got a P2B-DS
Bad thing: It keeps resetting if I have two CPUs installed. It'll get as far as doing the usual beep then it automatically restarts. BIOS doesn't look retail (VMP in the Sign-On string instead of "ASUS P2B-DS ACPI BIOS Revision nnnn").

Other than that... couldn't get the P3B-F working. Bits und Bolts' videos didn't help either.

I'm pretty sure that the P2B-DS only supports the Pentium 2 and Pentium 3 Katmai CPUs. It does not support Coppermine. I believe early versions of the P3B-F are the same way. Either way, I would start with testing them with the previously mentioned CPUs. If that works and the board seems to be stable, then upgrade the bios to the latest version before installing the Coppermine.

Here is more information on these boards and their CPU compatibility:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180205052849/ht … pgrade_faq.html

TheMLGladiator wrote on Today, 19:57:

I'm pretty sure that the P2B-DS only supports the Pentium 2 and Pentium 3 Katmai CPUs. It does not support Coppermine. I believe […]
Show full quote

PcBytes wrote on 2025-05-22, 16:35:

Good thing: I got a P2B-DS
Bad thing: It keeps resetting if I have two CPUs installed. It'll get as far as doing the usual beep then it automatically restarts. BIOS doesn't look retail (VMP in the Sign-On string instead of "ASUS P2B-DS ACPI BIOS Revision nnnn").

Other than that... couldn't get the P3B-F working. Bits und Bolts' videos didn't help either.

I'm pretty sure that the P2B-DS only supports the Pentium 2 and Pentium 3 Katmai CPUs. It does not support Coppermine. I believe early versions of the P3B-F are the same way. Either way, I would start with testing them with the previously mentioned CPUs. If that works and the board seems to be stable, then upgrade the bios to the latest version before installing the Coppermine.

Here is more information on these boards and their CPU compatibility:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180205052849/ht … pgrade_faq.html

v1.06 does support Copper mine and Tualatin with an adapter prior to v1.06 it depends on if your board can supply the correct voltage, some v1.04 boards can others can be modded to do so with caveats.

I have a P2B-DS 1.06 that has a pair of 1Ghz Copper mines running in it via slotket adapter cards, but I also have a pair of 933Mhz slot 1 copper mine cpus that also work in it just fine.

The P3B-F is much the same later revisions will run Cu and Tualatin with adapters while earlier ones lack the ability to provide correct voltages but can be modded to do so.

https://theretroweb.com/motherboard/manual/th … 4f905496897.pdf

here is a rather comprehensive guide from the Retro Web about it.

Both the P2b-F/DS and P3B-F are highly moddable depending on the version you own, tons of info about them and likely a ton of modded BIOSes out the for them.

TheMLGladiator wrote on Today, 19:57:

I'm pretty sure that the P2B-DS only supports the Pentium 2 and Pentium 3 Katmai CPUs. It does not support Coppermine. I believe […]
Show full quote

PcBytes wrote on 2025-05-22, 16:35:

Good thing: I got a P2B-DS
Bad thing: It keeps resetting if I have two CPUs installed. It'll get as far as doing the usual beep then it automatically restarts. BIOS doesn't look retail (VMP in the Sign-On string instead of "ASUS P2B-DS ACPI BIOS Revision nnnn").

Other than that... couldn't get the P3B-F working. Bits und Bolts' videos didn't help either.

I'm pretty sure that the P2B-DS only supports the Pentium 2 and Pentium 3 Katmai CPUs. It does not support Coppermine. I believe early versions of the P3B-F are the same way. Either way, I would start with testing them with the previously mentioned CPUs. If that works and the board seems to be stable, then upgrade the bios to the latest version before installing the Coppermine.

Here is more information on these boards and their CPU compatibility:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180205052849/ht … pgrade_faq.html

P2B-DS is Rev 1.05, PCBA D04, and uses HIP6004BCB so Coppermine support is existent. Same for P3B-F. P2B-DS will POST stable in single CPU configuration using 650MHz SL3XK. Dual CPU configuration is unstable with 2x SL3XK, same CPU set works fine and stable on Gigabyte GA-6BXDU.

P3B-F has been tested with various CPUs and all with same result:
- Celeron 300A SL2WM
- Celeron 366 SL36B
- Katmai 500 SL37D
- Coppermine 650 SL3XK
- Coppermine 866 SL4CB
- Coppermine 1GHz SL52R
- Coppermine 1GHz SL4C8