appiah4 wrote:

2. The board I have is unmarked and I can't figure out what it is other than that it's a 437VX.. Could anyone help me identify this? http://i.hizliresim.com/aX5N8O.jpg

Is anything written on the back of the board? Also, did the board come with a Pentium MMX CPU installed? I'm asking because 430VX boards often don't support these CPUs. This board seems to have the necessary voltage regulator, but better safe than sorry.

If the board actually came with the original CPU and RAM (and you have an AT PSU, a VGA card and an AT keyboard), you can just turn it on and look for a BIOS ID string. This will give some additional info to identify the board.

appiah4 wrote:

3. Is the Mystique 220 + Voodoo 2 combination good enough for 2D/3D?

Yes, it's pretty good. There are few DOS games that have compatibility issues with Matrox cards, and some early glide games might require a fix or a workaround to run on a V2, but mostly you should be fine.

appiah4 wrote:

4. Is 32MB too little for a P166MMX build, especially for Win95/98SE?

Should be OK. If you want some extra speed, use Windows 95 with IE4 (Active Desktop) update. It will be faster, but you won't be able to use certain applications that integrate into Windows Explorer (Daemon Tools, for example).

64MB is the maximum amount of RAM this board will be able to cache — more RAM, and you might actually lose some performance.

The board didn't come in the mail yet so I haven't been able to check the back of it 🙁 It actually came with a regular Pentium 166 on board, the 166 MMX is another chip I happen to have at hand. I guess double checking compatibility would be wise before assembly with the MMX?

I lack an AT Keyboard to get a POST I'm afraid 🙁 I'll check the back of the board and report back.

I'll keep my eyes open for some 16MB EDO RAM sticks then.

Is an ESS SB16 clone a terrible sound card for this system? I saw one at a garage sale and grabbed it for next to nothing. I'm hoping I can get an SB AWE 32 or 64 at some point..

appiah4 wrote:

The board didn't come in the mail yet so I haven't been able to check the back of it 🙁 It actually came with a regular Pentium 166 on board, the 166 MMX is another chip I happen to have at hand. I guess double checking compatibility would be wise before assembly with the MMX?

Yes, I'd wait until you identify the board before you switch the CPU.

Is an ESS SB16 clone a terrible sound card for this system? I saw one at a garage sale and grabbed it for next to nothing. I'm hoping I can get an SB AWE 32 or 64 at some point..

Sound is really subjective. It depends upon what you're into — e.g., FM synthesis music (Ad Lib/OPL3), General MIDI/Wavetable or tracker music. There is really no card that excel at all of those things, so you gotta figure out what you really need.

That being said, I like ESS (as many others here do). It's easy to configure, has nice FM synthesis and can work with MIDI equipment/daughterboards really well.

Well JP6 seems to allow for setting vcore to MMX levels so I'm kind of hoping MMX CPUs will work. I'd have to move the A jumper to C for 2.8V to use a 166 MMX right? And I'd keep JP6 F and G closed, JP7 B closed for 2.5x multiplier and 66MHz Bus for 166 MHz anwyay?

FWIW, ESS cards don't provide SB16 functionality. They do SB Pro with ESS 16 bit/44.1khz mode available as well.

appiah4 wrote:

Hi, first post here

Welcome 😀

appiah4 wrote:

1. My chances of finding an AT case are next to none. Now, I'm reading online that most mATX cases can house a Baby-AT mainboard […]
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1. My chances of finding an AT case are next to none. Now, I'm reading online that most mATX cases can house a Baby-AT mainboard. If this is true, would a simple mATX mini-tower or horizontal case be good enough for this build? I realize ATX power switches won't work, but I can remove that and replace it with an AT power switch mod somewhere on the case..
2. The board I have is unmarked and I can't figure out what it is other than that it's a 437VX.. Could anyone help me identify this? http://i.hizliresim.com/aX5N8O.jpg
3. Is the Mystique 220 + Voodoo 2 combination good enough for 2D/3D?
4. Is 24MB too little for a P166MMX build, especially for Win95/98SE?

Thanks a lot 😀

You'll probably need a full-ATX case due to both AT and ATX (full ATX) boards being larger due to them having 7 expansion slots or so (AT may even have 8 slots), while mATX boards typically have only 4 slots. mATX cases kinda end where the bottom 3 slots are supposed to go and will not physically fit (It's kinda hard to explain, not native English here 😊 ).

Newer ATX cases may not have any mounting holes for AT boards, but I do remember that ATX cases had AT mounting spots on the motherboard tray for years after AT had been succeeded.

If you really want to find out the maker of your board, you could opt to try finding it in th99 using the visual method (it's a lot of pics though 😵 ). The board does seem pretty clean at first sight, but I prefer my stuff to not have been cleaned right before postage due to it possibly messing up the actual hardware and I'd rather clean it up myself.
But personally I'd wait till the actual board has arrived as often there are hints about the maker and model number of your board on the back or (as is more common from that era) on a sticker on the bottom side of the bottom ISA slot. If you want, you could upload a (detailed) pic of the back of the board and of anything that has any text or numbers on it.

Btw, the white plastic stand-offs on your board are used for AT cases and even though you may never find such a case, I'd hold on to them for sure!

The Mystique 220 + Voodoo 2 seems like a pretty good start actually. I'd be more worried about your AT PSU due to its age and because PSUs of that era typically weren't as safe as modern (good quality) PSUs are. I'd inspect it before using it as it may damage your hardware if the PSU is malfunctioning.

You could use an ATX PSU with the help of an adapter, which looks something like this.

Tetrium wrote:

Newer ATX cases may not have any mounting holes for AT boards, but I do remember that ATX cases had AT mounting spots on the motherboard tray for years after AT had been succeeded.

Apparently there were also ATX I/O shields that had a single hole at the bottom for the 5 pin DIN plug.

If OP doesn't mind drilling and tapping some M3 holes in the motherboard tray... It should be fairly simple to unscrew the existing standoffs, line up the motherboard with the expansion slots, and use that as a template to mark/drill/tap new holes for standoffs on the motherboard tray.

OMG OMG OMG among all boards I've seen this one is the closest to the one in my first PC. I've been searching for 20 years and this one has all the features I can remember: two gold square heatsinks at the corner, VX chipset, 4PCI and 3ISA, 4 SIMM no DIMM, no COAST slot. I sure hated the board to the guts! No DIMM, no COAST, no FSB support beyond 66MHz. And it was paired with an AMD K5 CPU! Had I known anything about computer internals back then I would never have some one built my computer with this boring board. It would be delightful if I can finally learn its name; after all, it's sweeter to swear at the name of your bore than swear at "the guy I hate".
Well that's enough rant. The board has jumper for voltage as low as 2.5V (JP6 A-D?) so I reckon it supports MMX CPUs. I was running Win98 with exactly the same amount of RAM (24MB) and K5-133 for about one year (1998-1999) and it didn't leave me much enjoyable memory. I suggest 64MB RAM.
Voodoo2 might be an overkill for P166MMX but at least it won't be a bottleneck. One of my tech buddies back then had Voodoo2 on his P166MMX machine so it should pass the period correctness check. He got a 430TX board, though.

phosgene wrote:

Apparently there were also ATX I/O shields that had a single hole at the bottom for the 5 pin DIN plug.

If you find some or know a supplier that can make some, interested parties want to know.

gdjacobs wrote:

phosgene wrote:

Apparently there were also ATX I/O shields that had a single hole at the bottom for the 5 pin DIN plug.

If you find some or know a supplier that can make some, interested parties want to know.

I used to see these pop up on eBay from time to time. No longer, though..

lazibayer wrote:

OMG OMG OMG among all boards I've seen this one is the closest to the one in my first PC. I've been searching for 20 years and this one has all the features I can remember: two gold square heatsinks at the corner, VX chipset, 4PCI and 3ISA, 4 SIMM no DIMM, no COAST slot. I sure hated the board to the guts! No DIMM, no COAST, no FSB support beyond 66MHz. And it was paired with an AMD K5 CPU! Had I known anything about computer internals back then I would never have some one built my computer with this boring board. It would be delightful if I can finally learn its name; after all, it's sweeter to swear at the name of your bore than swear at "the guy I hate".
Well that's enough rant. The board has jumper for voltage as low as 2.5V (JP6 A-D?) so I reckon it supports MMX CPUs. I was running Win98 with exactly the same amount of RAM (24MB) and K5-133 for about one year (1998-1999) and it didn't leave me much enjoyable memory. I suggest 64MB RAM.
Voodoo2 might be an overkill for P166MMX but at least it won't be a bottleneck. One of my tech buddies back then had Voodoo2 on his P166MMX machine so it should pass the period correctness check. He got a 430TX board, though.

Wow, I got a really crappy board have I not? Oh well.. I will let you know the make and model as soon as I receive it, which should probably be within the week.

appiah4 wrote:

Wow, I got a really crappy board have I not? Oh well.. I will let you know the make and model as soon as I receive it, which should probably be within the week.

Well, a 430TX is faster and tends to have more features. However:

- your board is pretty small. That's a useful trait if you ever want to use desktop cases, for example.
- seems to have proper onboard cache — so I'm not sure why you'd need COAST.

I'm surprised I don't see a TURBO_SW (turbo switch) header next to those TURBO_LED pins since all three of my VX boards have them (an no 430TX in my collection does) — that would be a nice perk as well.

I'm also not sure why you'd need higher FSB unless you want to use K6-2 or do something crazy 😀

FWIW, it seems to have a 75MHz BUS jumper setting.. As for the rest, oh well. As long as it runs a P166MMX and 32MBs of EDO RAM well, I'll be ok. All I want is a good MS-DOS/Win95(98SE?) Gaming machine to remind me of what I had when I was a teenager. 😀

Considering I will have all parts except for case and keyboard by tomorrow, the question now is assembly.. I've never assembled any PC on my own prior to the Pentium III era, although I've occasionally upgraded bits here and there myself. One thing I can't wrap my head around is cooling. I know that Pentium onwards required cooling, and I distinctly remember my P120 not having active cooling - however the P133 assembled on the board seems to have an HSF (even though the fan apparently lacks a power lead?). Strangely enough, the heatsing doesn't seem to be clamped down to the socket - is it basically stuck onto the CPU? Does that mean I will need a different cooler for the 166MMX? And if so, what kind of cooler should I go for? Finding a Socket 7 cooler would be impossible I'd guess.. But I hear Socket 370 and Socket A coolers will work fine?

appiah4 wrote:

Considering I will have all parts except for case and keyboard by tomorrow, the question now is assembly.. I've never assembled any PC on my own prior to the Pentium III era, although I've occasionally upgraded bits here and there myself. One thing I can't wrap my head around is cooling. I know that Pentium onwards required cooling, and I distinctly remember my P120 not having active cooling - however the P133 assembled on the board seems to have an HSF (even though the fan apparently lacks a power lead?). Strangely enough, the heatsing doesn't seem to be clamped down to the socket - is it basically stuck onto the CPU? Does that mean I will need a different cooler for the 166MMX? And if so, what kind of cooler should I go for? Finding a Socket 7 cooler would be impossible I'd guess.. But I hear Socket 370 and Socket A coolers will work fine?

Looks like a box cooler, so yeah, you won't be able to remove it. I don't think Pentium heatsinks are all that rare, frankly. Here's a quick ebay search.

Tetrium wrote:

<snip> You'll probably need a full-ATX case due to both AT and ATX (full ATX) boards being larger due to them having 7 expansion […]
Show full quote

<snip>
You'll probably need a full-ATX case due to both AT and ATX (full ATX) boards being larger due to them having 7 expansion slots or so (AT may even have 8 slots), while mATX boards typically have only 4 slots. mATX cases kinda end where the bottom 3 slots are supposed to go and will not physically fit (It's kinda hard to explain, not native English here 😊 ).

Newer ATX cases may not have any mounting holes for AT boards, but I do remember that ATX cases had AT mounting spots on the motherboard tray for years after AT had been succeeded.

If you really want to find out the maker of your board, you could opt to try finding it in th99 using the visual method (it's a lot of pics though 😵 ). The board does seem pretty clean at first sight, but I prefer my stuff to not have been cleaned right before postage due to it possibly messing up the actual hardware and I'd rather clean it up myself.
But personally I'd wait till the actual board has arrived as often there are hints about the maker and model number of your board on the back or (as is more common from that era) on a sticker on the bottom side of the bottom ISA slot. If you want, you could upload a (detailed) pic of the back of the board and of anything that has any text or numbers on it.

Btw, the white plastic stand-offs on your board are used for AT cases and even though you may never find such a case, I'd hold on to them for sure!

The Mystique 220 + Voodoo 2 seems like a pretty good start actually. I'd be more worried about your AT PSU due to its age and because PSUs of that era typically weren't as safe as modern (good quality) PSUs are. I'd inspect it before using it as it may damage your hardware if the PSU is malfunctioning.

You could use an ATX PSU with the help of an adapter, which looks something like this.

I can report, from my own recent experience, that the Fractal Design Core 2300 has AT mounting holes and can accommodate a fairly large baby-AT board just fine. You will need a full ATX or EATX case, though - a Micro-ATX doesn't have enough slots. The PSU is a problem - an AT PSU's mounting holes don't line up right - but as Tetrium notes, there are ATX-AT adapters that let you use an ATX power supply; that's what I did. I put the floppy emulator in one of those 5.25"-3.5" bay adapters, then wired my own toggle switches for power and turbo on either side of it. I can't take credit for the idea - Phil showed it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bqqpuJ7M_I&t=423s

Also, if you really want an AT case, they come up on eBay all the time - but expect to pay $200+ after shipping, far more than you'd pay for a skookum-as-frig EATX heavyweight case, even.

appiah4 wrote:

<snip>Finding a Socket 7 cooler would be impossible I'd guess.. But I hear Socket 370 and Socket A coolers will work fine?

Much to my surprise, new-production Socket 7 (and even Socket 3!) coolers exist and aren't especially expensive. I got a good solid copper one from Cooler Master. I'm going to replace the fan because the one on there is loud (not worn-bearings loud, just "this thing really moves some air" loud). It's *also* a Socket 370/Socket A cooler, and Socket A CPUs are known for running hot, so I imagine that's why - it's kinda overkill for a Pentium or a K6.

jade_angel wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

<snip>Finding a Socket 7 cooler would be impossible I'd guess.. But I hear Socket 370 and Socket A coolers will work fine?

Much to my surprise, new-production Socket 7 (and even Socket 3!) coolers exist and aren't especially expensive. I got a good solid copper one from Cooler Master. I'm going to replace the fan because the one on there is loud (not worn-bearings loud, just "this thing really moves some air" loud). It's *also* a Socket 370/Socket A cooler, and Socket A CPUs are known for running hot, so I imagine that's why - it's kinda overkill for a Pentium or a K6.

I actually found this to be true, grabbed a brand new Socket 370/SocketA cooler for two bucks shipped. Probably quite overkill for the P166MMX, but maybe I'll try overclocking it a bit 😀

appiah4 wrote:

FWIW, it seems to have a 75MHz BUS jumper setting.. As for the rest, oh well. As long as it runs a P166MMX and 32MBs of EDO RAM well, I'll be ok. All I want is a good MS-DOS/Win95(98SE?) Gaming machine to remind me of what I had when I was a teenager. 😀

Considering I will have all parts except for case and keyboard by tomorrow, the question now is assembly.. I've never assembled any PC on my own prior to the Pentium III era, although I've occasionally upgraded bits here and there myself. One thing I can't wrap my head around is cooling. I know that Pentium onwards required cooling, and I distinctly remember my P120 not having active cooling - however the P133 assembled on the board seems to have an HSF (even though the fan apparently lacks a power lead?). Strangely enough, the heatsing doesn't seem to be clamped down to the socket - is it basically stuck onto the CPU? Does that mean I will need a different cooler for the 166MMX? And if so, what kind of cooler should I go for? Finding a Socket 7 cooler would be impossible I'd guess.. But I hear Socket 370 and Socket A coolers will work fine?

No it doesn't have 75MHz setting. It offers 50, 60, 66, 55 and that's it; unless you swap out the PLL IC.
P166MMX runs very cool and it doesn't need a fancy huge fan/assembly, and socket 7 boards usually don't have much clearance needed for bulky S370/SA coolers. So if you want to find a S370/SA cooler for it, go for a modest one.

appiah4 wrote:

Wow, I got a really crappy board have I not? Oh well.. I will let you know the make and model as soon as I receive it, which should probably be within the week.

Well it depends on your expectation. It has full support for MMX CPU. The gain of SDRAM over EDO on a 66MHz bus is negligible. PIO4 should suffice for a 2GB drive. It's a solid board if that's all you want. If you want anything faster fancier you can always move to your newer built 🤣
I am sorry for using your thread as a vent but I have held the grudge for too long... Back then I didn't have a second PC and all I could do was drooling at SDRAMs, Ultra-33 drives, CPUs that can run at 83MHz FSB, and motherboards with BIOS updates for the all new K6 processors.