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PIII, Athlon mobo w ISA slot remommendation

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Reply 20 of 100, by Old Thrashbarg

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I see reports of people running Bartons on those with the A9 BIOS, so I think any chip you find with a 266fsb should work fine. There's apparently even a BIOS setting to enable >12.5X multipliers, called "12andabove".

Reply 21 of 100, by elfuego

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Amigaz wrote:

Ended up with this one
http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem& … em=130310885116

Haven't found any good info what the max spec for a CPU is I can use in it...

Good choice. BTW you didnt really read what I wrote a few days ago now, did you? 😉

elfuego wrote:

How about my board?

Abit KT7A V1.3, KT133a, supports all Athlon XPs (even >3200+)

You can plug in any duron/athlon/athlon XP you find, but choose carefully. Officially, every athlon XP up to 2000+ is supported (12.5x133Mhz), unofficially everything else. If you have revision 1.3 then you can make use of 133mhz FSB, if not (V1.0-V1.2) then you might need some luck.

Im running a Tbred 2400+ at 20x100Mhz right now on a V1.0 board. Check this link for multiplier settings:
http://mysite.verizon.net/res0exft/cpu.html

If you get stuck, write here and I'll help - I'm currently playing with that configuration too. 😉

Reply 22 of 100, by elfuego

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Old Thrashbarg wrote:

I see reports of people running Bartons on those with the A9 BIOS, so I think any chip you find with a 266fsb should work fine. There's apparently even a BIOS setting to enable >12.5X multipliers, called "12andabove".

There is in deed this setting, but its used only for CPUs with locked >12.5x multiplier. For everything else use normal multipliers 😉

Reply 23 of 100, by Amigaz

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elfuego wrote:
Good choice. BTW you didnt really read what I wrote a few days ago now, did you? ;) […]
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Amigaz wrote:

Ended up with this one
http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem& … em=130310885116

Haven't found any good info what the max spec for a CPU is I can use in it...

Good choice. BTW you didnt really read what I wrote a few days ago now, did you? 😉

elfuego wrote:

How about my board?

Abit KT7A V1.3, KT133a, supports all Athlon XPs (even >3200+)

You can plug in any duron/athlon/athlon XP you find, but choose carefully. Officially, every athlon XP up to 2000+ is supported (12.5x133Mhz), unofficially everything else. If you have revision 1.3 then you can make use of 133mhz FSB, if not (V1.0-V1.2) then you might need some luck.

Im running a Tbred 2400+ at 20x100Mhz right now on a V1.0 board. Check this link for multiplier settings:
http://mysite.verizon.net/res0exft/cpu.html

If you get stuck, write here and I'll help - I'm currently playing with that configuration too. 😉

🤣...I must have been blind 😉

This is a rev 1.1....does that stop me from running it at it's intended 133mhz FSB?

The seller had an Athlon XP 2500+ on it but I lost the auction for it 😜

My retro computer stuff: https://lychee.jjserver.net/#16136303902327

Reply 24 of 100, by elfuego

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Amigaz wrote:

This is a rev 1.1....does that stop me from running it at it's intended 133mhz FSB?

The seller had an Athlon XP 2500+ on it but I lost the auction for it 😜

Depends on the CPU. You can run any Athlon XP up to 2000+ on 133mhz FSB definitely. On the other hand, if you go any higher then that you need some luck. Reports (and my own experiments) show that only 9x (17x) multiplier works with 133Mhz FSB on pre V1.3 boards so, if your CPU is overclockable enough to handle 17x133Mhz (2.26Mhz) , you should be ok. If its not capable of that speed, you will need to run it at 100 Mhz FSB.

But thats also not that bad, since in that case memory is running at FSB+PCI = 133 Mhz anyway 😉 So, be as it may - you got yourself a good, if not the best, ISA board!

Reply 25 of 100, by Amigaz

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Just bought 4x new old stock WD 80gig 2008 year model
Aiming to build a raid 0 setup on the rig I will build with the Abit KT7A Raid mobo...when it arrives from "das vaterland" 😀 ....I mean the land where my grandfather actually came from...I'm 1/4 german 😁

My retro computer stuff: https://lychee.jjserver.net/#16136303902327

Reply 27 of 100, by Amigaz

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elfuego wrote:

^^ not bad 😀

I got myself a bit older RAID for the same purpose - 4x Maxtor DM 60+ 20GB 😀 80gb is a bit too modern for me 😜

Cool....how's the performance?

btw. do you know what the drive size limit is on this mobo?

My Abit ST6 Raid seem to only handle drives up to circa 60 gig since my 2x40gig drives in RAID 0 striped is seen as just over 60gig 😜

My retro computer stuff: https://lychee.jjserver.net/#16136303902327

Reply 28 of 100, by elfuego

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As far as I know - sky is the limit. I tried running 120-200 GB drives on it and it worked; but I never made RAID with modern drives. Only with retro.

Im also not using integrated HPT 370 - Im using external Promise Fasttrak TX2 instead (works up to 66Mhz PCI, so I have some space to OC the FSB) and I am very pleased with performance. How cant I be - I fire up Windows Xp 10s 😉

Reply 29 of 100, by valnar

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Amigaz wrote:

Ahhh!!! 😳 😲

Sorry- came to the thread late. A VIA KT133A/686B mobo would not be my recommendation.

Reply 30 of 100, by elfuego

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valnar wrote:
Amigaz wrote:

Ahhh!!! 😳 😲

Sorry- came to the thread late. A VIA KT133A/686B mobo would not be my recommendation.

What would it be then? The next best thing with ISA slot is an old P2 BX chipset...

Reply 31 of 100, by valnar

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elfuego wrote:

What would it be then? The next best thing with ISA slot is an old P2 BX chipset...

That would be my recommendation.

I just hated that VIA chipset combo. Brings back bad memories. It might be the worst ever made (along with some early nForce offerings).

Reply 32 of 100, by elfuego

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valnar wrote:
elfuego wrote:

What would it be then? The next best thing with ISA slot is an old P2 BX chipset...

That would be my recommendation.

I just hated that VIA chipset combo. Brings back bad memories. It might be the worst ever made (along with some early nForce offerings).

Interesting. I found VIA KT133A the best chipset they ever made. Nforce is also a good chipset. Dunno what problems you had, but KT133A and NF (both 1 and 2) were great at the time. What was the alternative? AMD 760? That one sucked...

Reply 33 of 100, by valnar

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elfuego wrote:
valnar wrote:
elfuego wrote:

What would it be then? The next best thing with ISA slot is an old P2 BX chipset...

That would be my recommendation.

I just hated that VIA chipset combo. Brings back bad memories. It might be the worst ever made (along with some early nForce offerings).

Interesting. I found VIA KT133A the best chipset they ever made. Nforce is also a good chipset. Dunno what problems you had, but KT133A and NF (both 1 and 2) were great at the time. What was the alternative? AMD 760? That one sucked...

Compared to Intel, most AMD partner chips sucked.

Reply 34 of 100, by swaaye

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What was wrong with AMD 760? I've never used one myself. I know they were usually paired with a VIA or ULI southbridge. A friend of mine had one of those boards, with a VIA 686 southbridge. I think it worked fine for him. Ran a Tbird 1400 and Radeon DDR.

Oh wait, those had AGP problems with some cards didn't they? That would be annoying....

The only well-known problems with KX133, KT133, and KT133A are the southbridge and bad BIOS programmers setting registers incorrectly. You could get nasty data corruption on the PCI bus when some cards are used. But I did have a rather trouble-free experience with a Abit KT7A KT133A mobo.

KT266A and onward were the best of VIA, IMO. New southbridges with much faster interconnect. Really great DDR memory controllers that matched nForce's fancy dual channel + DASP L3 cache in app performance.

Reply 35 of 100, by valnar

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swaaye wrote:

The only well-known problems with KX133, KT133, and KT133A are the southbridge and bad BIOS programmers setting registers incorrectly. You could get nasty data corruption on the PCI bus when some cards are used.

Isnt that enough?! 😳 😉

Yah, I had that problem. They had issues with PCI bridge chips too. It affected some sound blasters and combo boards (like Firewire/USB2 combo cards).

Reply 36 of 100, by swaaye

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My biggest VIA problems by far are with their P2/P3 and K6 chipsets. I once had to work on a P2 mobo with Apollo Pro and couldn't get a SBLive! working at all until I installed George Breese's PCI Latency patch.

And of course MVP3's AGP conformance is the laughing stock of the industry.

The problems are caused by the chipsets being buggy, the mobos being cheap, and the BIOSs being poorly written.

Reply 37 of 100, by retro games 100

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elfuego wrote:

If you have revision 1.3 then you can make use of 133mhz FSB, if not (V1.0-V1.2) then you might need some luck.

elfuego, please can you tell me how to find out what revision these boards are? Is it printed somewhere on the board itself? Thanks a lot!

Reply 38 of 100, by Amigaz

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Board arrived yesterday.... 😀

Crossing my fingers this board works...it came with an Athlon XP 2000+ CPU
No sign of bulging caps or anything... 😁

My retro computer stuff: https://lychee.jjserver.net/#16136303902327

Reply 39 of 100, by prophase_j

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Amigaz wrote:

No sign of bulging caps or anything

That's exciting to hear! Isupposed that means it has hardly been used or it is absent of those funky caps. I f have a non-raid version laying around and it defiantly has some defective caps. Just remember that you shoudln't enable "PCI Delayed Transation" in the BIOS (686b bug), and use the older 4-in-1's from VIA, I found 4.37 to be the most stable for me.

"Retro Rocket"
Athlon XP-M 2200+ // Epox 8KTA3
Radeon 9800xt // Voodoo2 SLI
Diamond MX300 // SB AWE64 Gold