SavantStrike wrote:

Reading about the 4GB cacheable memory limit on the later PII's makes me want to try that though, but only on 2k or above as 9x is limited to 2GB 😀. 64GB for the PPro and the Xeons is really impressive.

The only problem is, BX maxes out @ 1GB.
The only way to get past 1GB on a Deschutes is by trying a VIA Slot 1 board me thinks.

leileilol wrote:

512MB won't make XP smooth.

True that. I prefer to give XP at least 1GB or more, but 512MB (and even 384MB) is doable if you use it for an offline retro rig. For a fully updated XP 512MB is somewhat sluggish.

Tetrium wrote:

The only problem is, BX maxes out @ 1GB. The only way to get past 1GB on a Deschutes is by trying a VIA Slot 1 board me thinks. […]
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SavantStrike wrote:

Reading about the 4GB cacheable memory limit on the later PII's makes me want to try that though, but only on 2k or above as 9x is limited to 2GB 😀. 64GB for the PPro and the Xeons is really impressive.

The only problem is, BX maxes out @ 1GB.
The only way to get past 1GB on a Deschutes is by trying a VIA Slot 1 board me thinks.

leileilol wrote:

512MB won't make XP smooth.

True that. I prefer to give XP at least 1GB or more, but 512MB (and even 384MB) is doable if you use it for an offline retro rig. For a fully updated XP 512MB is somewhat sluggish.

The VIA slot 1 boards max out at 1.5GB.

For 4GB on a Deschutes, one would have to go for a server chipset. As luck would have it, I have access to an old Dell slot 1 leviathan (well, not really a leviathanz, more like glorified mid tower) with a serverworks chipset. I can confirm it will run fine with 2GB of PC133 and a coppermine, but I don't have 4 1GB pc100/133 sticks of memory, so I can't test this to it's logical conclusion, but I can state it probably would work.

It would be pretty hot to have twin 450mhz PII chips with 4GB of ram.

1GB SDRAM sticks...

And the 512MB ones are already quite uncommon. I do see them for sale on Ebay and such, but hardly any appear in old systems I disassemble.
Up until recently I only had 1 stick of 512MB SDRAM, and it was DS. I'm not even sure if there's any non-server chipsets that fully support the density required for the 1GB sticks.

I only have 1 old Intel dual Slot 1 board, but it appears to be a normal BX chipset (and doesn't even support Coppermines, awwww).

Tetrium wrote:

1GB SDRAM sticks... […]
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1GB SDRAM sticks...

And the 512MB ones are already quite uncommon. I do see them for sale on Ebay and such, but hardly any appear in old systems I disassemble.
Up until recently I only had 1 stick of 512MB SDRAM, and it was DS. I'm not even sure if there's any non-server chipsets that fully support the density required for the 1GB sticks.

I only have 1 old Intel dual Slot 1 board, but it appears to be a normal BX chipset (and doesn't even support Coppermines, awwww).

They're rare-ish for certain.

I've seen 512's in servers (yes, I've been lucky enough to tear down a few old servers that people were tossing 🤣) but they are always CL3 and ECC. The ECC can be disabled though, and cas2 only adds like 3-5 percent more performance. Old servers are a great source for high capacity SDRAM, but only to a point. The 1GB sticks are premium grade stuff. 4 of them would set one back 30-50 bucks on Ebay.

1GB sticks just weren't that common. 1GB sticks weren't even common in DDR1, let alone regular SDRAM.

It seems to raise the amount of system memory, manufacturers usually just added 8 or more slots for the memory. I've seen that, but those boards were Xeon boards.

The problem with server memory is that it's usually registered memory, which iirc isn't supported by desktop boards. Please correct me if I'm wrong 😉

ECC should be no problem though, even if a board doesn't support it, the ECC memory will function like a normal memory module.

Tetrium wrote:

The problem with server memory is that it's usually registered memory, which iirc isn't supported by desktop boards. Please correct me if I'm wrong 😉

ECC should be no problem though, even if a board doesn't support it, the ECC memory will function like a normal memory module.

Correct. You can't use registered memory in most desktop boards. I've not actually come acrosss a lot of registered PC133 believe it or not though.

I would expect it to be relatively rare because it's not used in the big consumer market. But you might run into auctions with bulk server quantities getting liquidated.

swaaye wrote:

I would expect it to be relatively rare because it's not used in the big consumer market. But you might run into auctions with bulk server quantities getting liquidated.

Yup, they appear on Ebay with regular intervals. Problem is, you don't want to get that registered RAM.
I once placed a bid on 50? 512MB SDRAM modules, but unfortunately I got outbid, 🤣!

I thought we were looking to max out a server board? 😁

Me?? Nono, I just wanted those sticks for the VIA later SDRAM boards like the A7V133's and their Tualatin boards ;D

swaaye wrote:

I thought we were looking to max out a server board? 😁

That was me.

I've got a Dell with a Serverworks chipset in it, and it's just itching for dual 450mhz PII chips (I even have the chips 🤣). I could only give it 2GB of ram though, as opposed to the 4GB it deserves.

I will probably not bother though. Seriously, my retro rigs run 98SE.

Tetrium wanted a much more reasonable 1.5GB

SavantStrike wrote:

Tetrium wanted a much more reasonable 1.5GB

🤣!

But only for XP though 😜

For 9x (ME 😜) I think 256MB is more then enough 😉

I can't feel any benefit from going over 256mb with 98, anything beyond that is really past the point of diminishing returns. Unless of course your gonna use XP on a retro monster rig 😈

sgt76 wrote:

I can't feel any benefit from going over 256mb with 98, anything beyond that is really past the point of diminishing returns. Unless of course your gonna use XP on a retro monster rig 😈

Yup!

But then the next sweet spot is more around 1GB's?
Kinda a big step-up 🤣.
95 + 64MB RAM and you're ok
98SE + 128MB RAM and you're ok
ME + 256MB RAM and you're ok (192MB will work also)
XP + 1024MB and you're ok
2k...roughly the same as XP?
Big gap aaahhh!!1

Problem is, 512MB is kinda a limit on quite a lot of hardware (early P2's and i815) and P3's/SDRAM Thunderbirds can be a bit slow using XP.

SavantStrike wrote:

The VIA slot 1 boards max out at 1.5GB. […]
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Tetrium wrote:

The only problem is, BX maxes out @ 1GB. The only way to get past 1GB on a Deschutes is by trying a VIA Slot 1 board me thinks. […]
Show full quote

SavantStrike wrote:

Reading about the 4GB cacheable memory limit on the later PII's makes me want to try that though, but only on 2k or above as 9x is limited to 2GB 😀. 64GB for the PPro and the Xeons is really impressive.

The only problem is, BX maxes out @ 1GB.
The only way to get past 1GB on a Deschutes is by trying a VIA Slot 1 board me thinks.

leileilol wrote:

512MB won't make XP smooth.

True that. I prefer to give XP at least 1GB or more, but 512MB (and even 384MB) is doable if you use it for an offline retro rig. For a fully updated XP 512MB is somewhat sluggish.

The VIA slot 1 boards max out at 1.5GB.

For 4GB on a Deschutes, one would have to go for a server chipset. As luck would have it, I have access to an old Dell slot 1 leviathan (well, not really a leviathanz, more like glorified mid tower) with a serverworks chipset. I can confirm it will run fine with 2GB of PC133 and a coppermine, but I don't have 4 1GB pc100/133 sticks of memory, so I can't test this to it's logical conclusion, but I can state it probably would work.

It would be pretty hot to have twin 450mhz PII chips with 4GB of ram.

The problem with server boards is that many of them don't allow for a decent video card. I have a Tyan board here with dual 3.2ghz Xeons with an AGP Pro slot, but many server boards from the PIII era and earlier only have PCI or PCI-X slots. If you're trying to run Windows 9x with only a PCI slot for video then your choices are going to be extremely limited. A Radeon 9200/9250 on the AMD side or a GeForce 6200 for nVidia. Those are the last PCI cards to have official Win 9x driver support. Some do have onboard video, but they are usually limited to ATi Rage graphics which isn't much for the games of the PIII era but is good enough for monitoring a server.

sliderider wrote:

The problem with server boards is that many of them don't allow for a decent video card. I have a Tyan board here with dual 3.2ghz Xeons with an AGP Pro slot, but many server boards from the PIII era and earlier only have PCI or PCI-X slots. If you're trying to run Windows 9x with only a PCI slot for video then your choices are going to be extremely limited. A Radeon 9200/9250 on the AMD side or a GeForce 6200 for nVidia. Those are the last PCI cards to have official Win 9x driver support. Some do have onboard video, but they are usually limited to ATi Rage graphics which isn't much for the games of the PIII era but is good enough for monitoring a server.

I want to say V5 5500 PCI, but frankly I'd be full of crap 😁. A single higher performance chip with 512MB of ram is going to spank a pair of 1.4ghz Tualatin PIII chips with 4GB of ram for anything of that vintage.

So, you're right, by the time you get to titles that will support multi threading, you're going to be limited by the PCI bus. I know there is a Geforce 8400GS PCI edition. That might work out okay, but the PCI bus is going to seriously hamper it's ability to do anything. It would make a fine box for office productivity though.

I guess unless it's a really old box though, I feel like one should eclipse 512MB. It causes problems on Win9x without fixes, but it's just cool 😁. OTOH, one has to be careful not to end up with less performance.

*insert long RAM talk here*

So after getting this thread derailed by RAM talk, it's time I bring it back on topic.

I've almost finished recapping my Shuttle AV61V40 motherboard, although I just got a Soyo SY-6BA+ motherboard courtesy of my mother(she's awesome - if ever I need old computer equipment, she'll be sure to get some for me). Looks to be a better motherboard than my Shuttle AV61V40; it has one AGP slot, 5 PCI slots, 2 ISA slots, and most importantly, it has both an SBLink connector and an Intel 440BX chipset. I've put the bare minimum to test the motherboard(power supply, 266MHz Pentium II, single 64MB RAM stick, 3DFX Voodoo 3), but I need to know one thing before I test the motherboard: does it need -5V? If it does, what could happen if there's no -5V being provided by my power supply?

EDIT: Never mind, I found a power supply that outputs -5V. Now to test this motherboard.

SavantStrike wrote:

I want to say V5 5500 PCI, but frankly I'd be full of crap :happyhappy:. A single higher performance chip with 512MB of ram is […]
Show full quote

sliderider wrote:

The problem with server boards is that many of them don't allow for a decent video card. I have a Tyan board here with dual 3.2ghz Xeons with an AGP Pro slot, but many server boards from the PIII era and earlier only have PCI or PCI-X slots. If you're trying to run Windows 9x with only a PCI slot for video then your choices are going to be extremely limited. A Radeon 9200/9250 on the AMD side or a GeForce 6200 for nVidia. Those are the last PCI cards to have official Win 9x driver support. Some do have onboard video, but they are usually limited to ATi Rage graphics which isn't much for the games of the PIII era but is good enough for monitoring a server.

I want to say V5 5500 PCI, but frankly I'd be full of crap 😁. A single higher performance chip with 512MB of ram is going to spank a pair of 1.4ghz Tualatin PIII chips with 4GB of ram for anything of that vintage.

So, you're right, by the time you get to titles that will support multi threading, you're going to be limited by the PCI bus. I know there is a Geforce 8400GS PCI edition. That might work out okay, but the PCI bus is going to seriously hamper it's ability to do anything. It would make a fine box for office productivity though.

I guess unless it's a really old box though, I feel like one should eclipse 512MB. It causes problems on Win9x without fixes, but it's just cool 😁. OTOH, one has to be careful not to end up with less performance.

If you want to use a 8400GS, though, you have to move to 2k/XP because the Geforce 8 doesn't have a Win 9x driver. Nothing in a PCI slot after the Geforce 6 or Radeon R200 has a Win 9x driver. Even if you had an AGP/AGP Pro slot, Geforce 6 would still be the end of the road for nVidia (though you would no longer be limited to the 6200) and Radeon R300 would be the end for ATi.

Whats up with this thread. There are unofficial drivers for 8800GT for win9x, can find out over at MSFN. I haven't tested them personally. Besides Ace is talking about slot 1, not much over a Geforce 4 will work on AGP 2x/4x so that is a limitation.

As for Ace, If you get your hands on a Abit BE6-II, it has a SB-Link and intel 440BX, no yamaha chip though. A note about the SB-Link. it looks like only 1 card really supported the link before creative bought out Ensoniq and used there tech. At that I also read some boards had the provision due to close reference design but the connector really didn't function as it wasn't hooked up in the motherboard itself. Just something to look out for.

Hows the recapping going? I just got Soyo TISU (tualatin socket 370) running yesterday although I need to find some smaller caps for the memory filtering. On cold boot I get continous beeps (memory error) till I power the system on and off a few times. Before I replaced the caps though all I had was Power but no post like your boards.

In a way its better to replace caps as any replacement board you buy will "eventually* go bad anyways and boards are hard to find currently and don't want to deal with that if I don't have to.

I think I need some different 1200uF capacitors than what I have for my Shuttle AV61V40 because they're about triple the width of the original capacitors on the motherboard. Most of the capacitors I found were considerably bigger than the ones originally on the motherboard, so some had to be mounted at an angle in order for them to fit. But I just can't fit 8 of the 9 1200uF capacitors I need to replace. One was next to the slot, which was fairly simple to replace(although the capacitor is sitting at an angle off the motherboard), but the 8 other capacitors are spaced very close together behind the Slot 1 connector, making it near-impossible to fit the huge capacitors I got.

But I think I'll ditch that motherboard as the Soyo SY-6BA+ I got works, although something just doesn't make sense with this motherboard. I tried 3 AGP graphics cards on the motherboard and while the computer POSTs(and I can tell as the lights on the keyboard flash soon after powering up the computer), I get no picture. I tried my second 3DFX Voodoo 3 2000 as well as two different ATI 3D Rage IIC AGP cards and neither of them display a picture. HOWEVER, I put in a Matrox Millennium II PCI graphics card and can get a picture with that. Something's up with the AGP slot, and I highly doubt the capacitors are the problem because they're all intact. Not one has bulged or leaked. Could the slot itself be broken? Or is the AGP slot's frequency wrong? This motherboard can use 45(?)MHz or 66MHz on the AGP slot. What's the proper setting?

But either way, the motherboard works. Now, I need find a good IDE hard drive and decide which sound card to use as the primary sound card in the computer between my Yamaha YMF744 and OPTi 82C930. Both have true OPL3 and both have SoundBlaster Pro support, but the YMF744 has on-board XG synth, something the 82C930 doesn't have. But if I go with the YMF744, I'd need to wire up an SBLink cable. But before I do so, now that it's been mentioned, I will retrace the connections on the SBLink connector to make sure it's actually connected to the southbridge.

Although this is a test computer for all my ISA and PCI sound cards, so I will be swapping out sound cards regularly in this computer.