I have strated to put the Pentium 3 together with the Voodoo3000

The first issue is that the psu motherbord cables are not long enough so I will need a new one.

Second issue was a bios wide range protection error, i managed to boot into the dual bios function and flash the backup. This hopefully has fixed it.

Third issue is that the 120gb hdd is not being recognised by the bios, I have two others but I might look for a smaller capacity than 120gb and hope that works.

Good catch! Especially that 3Dfx card and the first dual BIOS mainboard by Gigabyte.

Maybe the hard drive has a capacity limit jumper so it gets recognized by the BIOS?

PD2JK wrote on 2025-10-12, 12:27:

Good catch! Especially that 3Dfx card and the first dual BIOS mainboard by Gigabyte.

Maybe the hard drive has a capacity limit jumper so it gets recognized by the BIOS?

Thanks for the advice. I will look into that. It seems to be the only real issue I am having. Other than the power supply (I really should buy a new one so i don't have to worry about it going bang).

PD2JK wrote on 2025-10-12, 12:27:

Good catch! Especially that 3Dfx card and the first dual BIOS mainboard by Gigabyte.

Maybe the hard drive has a capacity limit jumper so it gets recognized by the BIOS?

It can be limited to 32gb 👍

Great! It should function properly that way.

Hello Daniel4200,

About the GA-BX2000 board, although the capacity limit jumper on the 120GB HDD is a nice solution to get around the Award BIOS 32GB HDD limit, you lose a lot of drive capacity this way.
Award fixed this 32GB HDD limit bug in September 1999, so if your BX2000 runs an early BIOS release from before that date, flashing a later BIOS release should solve this 32GB limit problem.

At https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/gigaby … bx2000-1-1#bios I even see a 2002 BIOS update for your board. I’ve checked this V.F9 BIOS and it is definitely free of this 32GB limit and supports drives up to 128GiB/137GB.

Note that to fully break the 128GiB barrier, you need a BIOS with 48-bit LBA support, but these came later in 2004 after the ATA-6 specification was published in 2003.

Regards, Jan

Even on the potatocam pics it's clear the Epox boards both have bad caps, as expected - they bought full into the cap plague and it was one of the reasons they didn't survive as a company. I'd suggest ordering replacements while you work on the BX2000 so you'll have the parts once you get round to them.

Chkcpu wrote on 2025-10-15, 17:54:

Hello Daniel4200, […]
Show full quote

Hello Daniel4200,

About the GA-BX2000 board, although the capacity limit jumper on the 120GB HDD is a nice solution to get around the Award BIOS 32GB HDD limit, you lose a lot of drive capacity this way.
Award fixed this 32GB HDD limit bug in September 1999, so if your BX2000 runs an early BIOS release from before that date, flashing a later BIOS release should solve this 32GB limit problem.

At https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/gigaby … bx2000-1-1#bios I even see a 2002 BIOS update for your board. I’ve checked this V.F9 BIOS and it is definitely free of this 32GB limit and supports drives up to 128GiB/137GB.

Note that to fully break the 128GiB barrier, you need a BIOS with 48-bit LBA support, but these came later in 2004 after the ATA-6 specification was published in 2003.

Regards, Jan

Thanks Jan

I will look into this, I am tempted to get windows installed and stable first and start tweaking and improving after I know everything works fine.
My PSU arrived yesterday so hopefully I will have time to have a look tomorrow.

dionb wrote on 2025-10-17, 12:07:

Even on the potatocam pics it's clear the Epox boards both have bad caps, as expected - they bought full into the cap plague and it was one of the reasons they didn't survive as a company. I'd suggest ordering replacements while you work on the BX2000 so you'll have the parts once you get round to them.

The photos are not the best I will probably take some more when I start on the Epox boards. I will have a closer look and see what I need 👍

So i have the psu sorted and the 32gb limiter seems to have done the job. I think that will be plenty of storage for me to get started with. I remember 1gb being plenty back in the day.

dionb wrote on 2025-10-17, 12:07:

Even on the potatocam pics it's clear the Epox boards both have bad caps, as expected - they bought full into the cap plague and it was one of the reasons they didn't survive as a company. I'd suggest ordering replacements while you work on the BX2000 so you'll have the parts once you get round to them.

I have made some good progress with the Pentium 3 board and was going to have a look at the other two.
I have never re-capped anything before, I have a soldering iron so I was hoping ghat you might be able to advise on what capacitors are needed and if any are better quality?

Daniel4200 wrote on 2025-10-19, 16:46:

So i have the psu sorted and the 32gb limiter seems to have done the job. I think that will be plenty of storage for me to get started with. I remember 1gb being plenty back in the day.

32 will suffice for some time, yes. But IIRC, when I got my Windows95 OSR2 K6 233, that was with a 4.2GB harddisk, which didn't excactly feel "unlimited" 😉

Daniel4200 wrote on 2025-10-20, 05:55:

[...]

I have made some good progress with the Pentium 3 board and was going to have a look at the other two.
I have never re-capped anything before, I have a soldering iron so I was hoping ghat you might be able to advise on what capacitors are needed and if any are better quality?

Sorry for the late reply - I was away with my son visiting some significantly older vintage stuff in Roma.

Yes, capacitors have different specs and quality. For this sort of motherboard work, you need low-ESR caps. Quality is part brand (things like Panasonic, Nichicon and Rubycon generally good, pretty much anything on a 2000-era motherboard: bad) and part voltage and temperature spec. There are lots of topics on which caps to buy (like: What are good caps to buy? )

First step is to determine specs of the bad caps. If only one cap of a certain type is bulging, treat all of them as failed. The relevant specs are:
- capacitance (generally in uF)
- (theoretically) ESR
- pin spacing
- type (electrolytic can, tantalum or polymer)
- voltage (in V)
- temperature

Your replacement caps need to have the same (or really close) capacitance, ESR, type and pin spacing. Note that I call ESR "theoretical" - the reason is that poor caps probably never performed at nominal ESR even when new. So short-cut is just to go for generic 'low-ESR' caps of the same type with the same capacitance and pin spacing. The caps in your pics are all electrolytic cans.

Voltage and temperature rating must be at least the same as the original caps but may be higher. Going over original spec will generally give you more headroom, so more reliability and lifespan. However that generally also makes the caps physically bigger (possibly not available in the correct pins spacing) and can affect ESR as well - and cost more. So one voltage level up (i.e. 10V instead of 6.3V or 16V instead of 10V) is generally fine, as is one temperature level up (i.e. 100C instead of 80C), but don't go crazy: nothing on a motherboard goes over 12V, so you do't need 250V 300C caps.

So I had a good look at the next board and yes i can see what you mean. It looks like most of the caps need replacing.

Should be fun 😀

Yes, Epox was one of the manufacturers notorious for bad caps in those days. It's probably safest to replace all of them. In any evert replace all the caps of the types you see any bulging/leaking. Also be sure to clean off any leaked electrolyte after removal - it's not as bad as leaked battery, but it can corrode other stuff.

CPU caps can stay (Teapos rarely fail in that package). The small ones (1000/1500uF 6.3v) like in picture 2 need replacing entirely (as in, all the ones of the same brand and rating)