First post, by darry
Hi,
I have been lurking here for years and have learned a lot along the way from all the knowledgeable folks. A great thank you to everyone!
I am currently trying to build a retro rig based around a slot 1 board and would like some opinions in order to try to avoid hitting a dead end .
Basically, I have 2 slot1 boards :
one Biostar M6TBD OEM board based around a 440BX (actually got a spare one of those, just in case)
one Shuttle brand 440LX board .
I also have 3 socket 370 Coppermine CPUs :
Celeron 566Mhz
Pentium III 833Mhz
Pentium III 1 Ghz
I have tried the Celeron 566 in both board with an Asus slocket and am able to see a POST screen with text very similar to "-MMX CPU at 98Mhz" displayed in place of the expected CPU speed and type . At this point everything freezes and the POST process stops and the BIOS in not accessible . I have also tried the 833MHz CPU in the 440BX board and get the same result . I assume this is due to lack of microcode for these CPU types .
My questions are the following :
If I were to patch the BIOS with updated CPU microcode that includes these CPU types, is there a fairly good chance that I might boot one of these boards successfully with said CPUs (at stock clock or underclocked) ?
In other words has someone actually "fixed" a similar issue on an Award BIOS based board with a DIY updated microcode patch ?
I know I am not dealing in certainties here, but I would like to hear about some similar experiences before I spend time/money on older CPUs , an EPROM flasher (or hot-flashing in another board).
P.S. I also have a working CUV4X socket 370 board but it only has 1 ISA slot , whereas the older slot1 boards have 2 or more , which I could definitely use.
Thanks in advance for any comments/suggestions .