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Going Kayaking - My HP Kayak XW 6/400 Dual Slot-1 Build Thread

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First post, by flux1270

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Hello all,

I've been chasing the dream of a dual Slot 1 Pentium II/Pentium III workstation build for a couple of years now. Earlier this year, I attempted to put together a dual slot-1 Pentium III 500MhZ build using an Intel L440GX+ motherboard, but ran into issues finding compatible coolers for the CPUs and ended up selling motherboard and CPUs on eBay. Content with my upgraded Dell XPS T500, I decided it wasn't worth the effort of trying to put together another Slot 1 SMP rig.

That lasted until last night, when on an ill-advised eBay bender, I found this bad boy for well under the typical price for comparable dual Slot-1 workstations. It's an HP Kayak XW 6/400 Series U3 with dual PII 400s. I have no idea what the rest of the specs look like, as it's coming from an electronics recycler, totally untested. It looks to be in pretty good cosmetic condition minus a few missing(?) plastic covers up front, with the drive bays. 120USD later and it's on the way here.

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I absolutely love the grey/blue aesthetic on this thing. Really says "this is for real work" compared to the standard beige of the era. The screen is pretty cool too - it gives big iron vibes.
I'll be anxious to see what it's got for RAM and what that video card is. It looks like someone's already done the legwork for me in the Ethernet department, I see a 1000BASE-T card in there. Saves me having to swipe the gigabit card back out of my T500.

From what I've read in the HP service manual, it looks to be a BX chipset board, which opens up dual Pentium III 1.0GhZ (100MzH)'s as my end goal for this build. It will take up 1GB of RAM as well, which is my intention.
I'll be swapping in my FX 5200 512MB for now, and my Audigy 2ZS.

Would love to hear any suggestions/thoughts from any fellow Kayak owners (Kayakers?) here. I'll post an update when it arrives.

Toshiba Tecra 510CDT (P133MhZ, 48MB RAM, W98SE)
Compaq Armada E700 (P3 500MhZ, ~512MB RAM, W2K)
Dell XPS T500 (P3 500MhZ, ~512MB RAM, FX 5200, Audigy 2ZS, W2K)
Macintosh Classic II (68030 16MhZ, 4MB RAM, System 7.something)

Reply 1 of 4, by chinny22

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Wouldn't be surprised if your limited to a pair of Katmai 600's
Both my dual P2 era motherboards were. (Asus P2-DS and Compaq Prolient 1600)

Build quality of these OEM workstation's is on another level, I also get a kick out of gaming on what would have been stupid expensive enterprise level hardware.
I'm liking your hardware choices so far. What OS were you thinking? I went with Win2k which I found actually does a real good job covering for Win98, with only a few games that weren't compatible.

Reply 2 of 4, by flux1270

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chinny22 wrote on 2025-08-11, 00:47:
Wouldn't be surprised if your limited to a pair of Katmai 600's Both my dual P2 era motherboards were. (Asus P2-DS and Compaq Pr […]
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Wouldn't be surprised if your limited to a pair of Katmai 600's
Both my dual P2 era motherboards were. (Asus P2-DS and Compaq Prolient 1600)

Build quality of these OEM workstation's is on another level, I also get a kick out of gaming on what would have been stupid expensive enterprise level hardware.
I'm liking your hardware choices so far. What OS were you thinking? I went with Win2k which I found actually does a real good job covering for Win98, with only a few games that weren't compatible.

Ahh that's possible. Guess we'll find out when it gets here - I've seen so much mixed info on BX-series CPU compatibility. Dual 600s is still a lot of extra horsepower compared to the single 500 in my XPS T500.

The build quality is a big reason I'm a workstation guy. My last four modern desktops and last two laptops have all been Dell Precision workstations. There is no going back after you've tasted hot-swappable fans and tool-less everything.
I'll definitely go with Windows 2000, that's what I've got on my XPS T500 and my Compaq Armada E700. I've had my share of NT 4.0, W2k is just a nice place to be. I like streaming my Windows Media Player library across the network from my file server to my Windows 2000 rigs while I'm writing or messing around in Bryce 3D.

Toshiba Tecra 510CDT (P133MhZ, 48MB RAM, W98SE)
Compaq Armada E700 (P3 500MhZ, ~512MB RAM, W2K)
Dell XPS T500 (P3 500MhZ, ~512MB RAM, FX 5200, Audigy 2ZS, W2K)
Macintosh Classic II (68030 16MhZ, 4MB RAM, System 7.something)

Reply 3 of 4, by Intel486dx33

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It was the computer to have back around 1998
The XW was the Top of the line Kayak
I had the XAs and XU versions.
The XW came with a High end video card and Dual pentiums.

I upgraded my Kayaks with Dual Pentium III 500mhz.
They served me well as home office computers.
Very reliable.
I ran Win NT 4.0 and Win2000
I used them until the release of WinXP

The only thing I did not like was that the fans are loud,

Reply 4 of 4, by flux1270

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Update #1:
The Kayak arrived this Monday. It's in really good condition besides a few scuffs and such. Took it apart far enough to get it cleaned up and it seems to work fine.
As it arrived, the specs were:
Dual Pentium II 400s
512MB of RAM
Matrox G200 8MB
3COM 10BASE-1000 NIC
Adaptec SCSI Controller

Right now, the upgrades I've done/plan to do next week are:
Swapping the fans out for Noctuas
Upgrading the GPU to a Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB
Swapping in my Audigy 2ZS
Adding a PCI SATA Controller
Adding two 256GB SSDs in RAID (mirrored, I forget which level that is)
I bumped it up to 1GB of RAM after I found some PC100-322-620R in a drawer.

I'll post another update and better photos when I get that all done next week. It's currently in about 14 pieces.

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Toshiba Tecra 510CDT (P133MhZ, 48MB RAM, W98SE)
Compaq Armada E700 (P3 500MhZ, ~512MB RAM, W2K)
Dell XPS T500 (P3 500MhZ, ~512MB RAM, FX 5200, Audigy 2ZS, W2K)
Macintosh Classic II (68030 16MhZ, 4MB RAM, System 7.something)

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