VOGONS


First post, by pewpewpew

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

In the day, I went straight from P1 to Duron, and my understanding of the P2-P3 era remains shaky.

file.php?id=15664

This one is a Seanix GA-6WMMC7 rev 2.1. Seanix was a rather cruddy Canadian reseller. The three I've had were quite meanly spec'd with the exception of the cases. If people driving over your computer collection is a regular problem, then these are the cases for you.

Meanwhile I've been simply presuming this board is as useless as the others, but perhaps I'm wrong and can be set straight.

First surprise is the 370 socket is accompanied by the 810E, so it can do 133.

it does not have AGP but perhaps this is a good board for the Late Great PCI cards? Again, the late model PCI cards were something I missed -- I jumped from Mach64 to AGP. I've been getting the impression here on Vogons that the combination of a fast P3 and a fast PCI card is a Rather Good Thing.

Previously I've been ignoring this box as "the Celeron 600 with no AGP" and treating it as a doorstop. It is bracketed by 166Pro, 200mmx, P3B-F (no ISA alas), & A7V, so it didn't seem to have a useful place other than third-tier backup.

Reply 1 of 5, by Tetrium

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

I have a couple similar chipsetted boards and have also considered if these could be of any use to me at one time.
It's not that I need to do so (I have plenty of s370 boards laying around with AGP slots), but if I ever were to make a rig based on a 810 board, I'd probably make a low power Voodoo 2 + TNT2 M64 PCI 16MB or a Voodoo 3 PCI rig out of it matched with a very slow Coppermine CPU (say 600-ish MHz) and make it a Windows gaming rig (due to it having no ISA slots).
But I reckon you could put any nice PCI graphics card in there (say a GF2MX or so). I do remember the 810's had some PCI bug though which had something to do with the data throughput or something.

Though this idea never went beyond consideration, I see little use for such a rig for me personally unless I run out of s370 boards which do have proper AGP slots (which is unlikely to happen to me in the near future 🤣).

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!

Reply 2 of 5, by shamino

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

This board should have very low power consumption, especially with a low end Coppermine equipped and using the onboard video and no unnecessary expansion cards.
If you have some suitable task that needs to run for long hours, this would be an efficient board to do it with.
As far as gaming, I guess it could be okay with a PCI card but I'd prefer an AGP board for that.

Reply 3 of 5, by oerk

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

It certainly oozes cheapness. In 2000, that was the lowest of the low end. Not even a passive cooler on the Northbridge.

Reply 4 of 5, by Tetrium

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
oerk wrote:

It certainly oozes cheapness. In 2000, that was the lowest of the low end. Not even a passive cooler on the Northbridge.

True that i810 was a budget chipset, though iirc many i815 boards I've seen didn't come with a chipset HS either.

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!

Reply 5 of 5, by pewpewpew

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Good stuff. Thank you.

If you have some suitable task that needs to run for long hours

Yeah, I originally set it aside to become a Linux Router.

Well the caps are good and I don't have another 370 so I suppose it's best purpose is a spare in case I acquire a 370 P3 with a bum board.

Otherwise back to what it's been doing - filling out the case Most Likely to go to recycling.

We have a quirk in our recycling regs: It is forbidden to bin electronics, but the recycling depots do not accept computer parts. Hence it's useful to have a cruddy case or two to fill with the dead drives etc as they accumulate.

Very glad I opened the box for the pic though. I'd been wondering where the zark my Duron cooler had gotten to. It has a Purpose again now that the A7V is going to be returned to Spitfire form.