Nice cleaning job on the case! You're really giving it some love. 😁

The P200MMX is definitely a keeper if it stil works, but the VXPro mobo (not a real 430VX) is kind of meh unfortunately.. not recommended. Better to go with e.g. an Intel 430HX if you have/can find an AT version, or 430VX or even 430FX.

What's Cif?

It's a (range of) kitchen/bathroom cleaner product. Used to be called 'Jif' in the UK, until we had the euro brand name forced on us 😀

Nice pictures and post!

Please keep us updated if any of the components also work. The MB seems to have taken a beating.

Nice case but that board not very exciting. I got way to much socket 7 hardware >.< Got stacks of AT/BabyAT and ATX socket 7 boards. Interesting sound card though and that Maxtor drive stands out.

a nice find! kudos on the cleaning job! now the fun part begins: building the system!

this motherboard looks exactly like one I have (with a 166MMX), there is no clear indication of brand, but I think it's form PC CHips/ECS...

anyway, mine have the Intel 430VX, not "VX pro"!?

but Mitac? I think I have one socket 7 MB from this company, with the VIA MVP4 chipset

I like how you managed to make the case look like new 😁
And you can usually tell how much 72p simm memory you have by counting the number of chips (usually 8/9 or 16/18) and counting the number of legs each memory chip has (though I've forgotten exactly how much).

Updates:

Motherboard: Gave it a good cleaning (washing with soap and water) and it works. Before and After pictures. 😀
I know the "VX Pro" boards are pretty mediocre (killed one many years ago) so indeed this will not go into my build, hoping to find something better among my Socket 7 stash.

CPU: Works.

RAM: Works, passes Memtest86 without errors. 80MB in total, a mix of 2x32MB FPM and 2x8MB EDO. Most likely it was built with the 16MB and the extra 64MB came later as an upgrade.

Hard drive: Works. The BIOS is limited to 8.4 GB so I was expecting to find overlay software installed. Instead I found an 8 GB partition and the rest of the drive sitting unused. 🤣
There's a Windows 98SE install without any MS-DOS boot files. My assumption is that it was either booted off a separate drive or that was someone's idea of a 'hard disk wipe'. Strangely, the installed drivers don't seem to correspond with the current PCI cards. Judging by file dates, it seems that this PC was used until 2007.

CD-ROM drive: Works, gave it a good cleaning. Might need a new tray drive belt. Came with a nice surprise inside:

Floppy drive: Doesn't work. Fortunately I have a working replacement on hand.

PCI cards: Cirrus Logic video works. Haven't tested the rest but they should be working too.

Power Supply: Works. It's only 150W but I noticed its good build quality so I took the time to clean it thoroughly and put it back on the case. Compared to the 250W AT power supplies that I have this one has some weight to it, thicker gauge wiring, line filtering components are present instead of jumpered, even the fan is in good working order. This one is clearly of higher quality so I'm sticking with it for this build.

I've replaced the yellow hard disk activity LED with a red one. I still need to find a set of plastic feet for this case.

Choosing a motherboard

Today I had a look at my Baby AT Socket 7 motherboard stash in order to find a better board to base this build on. I have accumulated many Socket 7 stuff over the years so there's gotta be something better. Unfortunately most of them are the same dreaded "VX Pro" stuff I pulled out of this case.

The only candidates I've managed to find yet are the following:

Abit PR5 R2

PCChips M530

PCChips M571

I've also found a 233MHz MMX Pentium which I intend to use instead of the 200MHz one.

My list of pros/cons regarding each board:

Abit PR5 R2: stason link
+ i430VX chipset
+ I have the PS/2 header for it.
+ Not PCChips
- CPU frequency tops at 200 MHz

PCChips M530: motherboards.net link
+ i430VX chipset
+ SDRAM slots
- Seems there's no onboard L2 cache and I don't have the COAST module for it
- CPU frequency tops at 200 MHz
- PCChips

PCChips M571: stason link
+ 512KB L2 cache
+ Runs CPU at 233MHz and beyond
- One of the SDRAM slots is broken
- PCChips

Seems like it's a tight choice between the PR5 and the M571. Apparently the M571 is quite decent for a PCChips board. According to that red hill website I have one of the 'bad batches', though. Useless onboard video & sound can be disabled and the broken SDRAM slot isn't a big deal anyway. There's a whole website dedicated to the M571.

What do you guys think? 😉

I'd use the PCChips M571 myself, though if I were you I'd possibly look into replacing the second sdram slot somehow.

That being said, I doubt systems of the time supported dual-channel memory, so it would probably be fine just to stick a 64-128MB module into the remaining slot and be done with it. 🤣

Wow, kudos on the cleaning and restoration of that old PC. Truly excellent job. It's great to press those old rigs back into service.

I have an M530 with a 166 non MMX and a COAST module. Tough little board. It's seen life in so many configurations and my brother put it through a lot of abuse; still rock solid though!

200Mhz is not always a real limit. My 430HX board tops out at 166Mhz, according to the manual. It's stable at 262 Mhz and some people even managed to run 300 Mhz (83 Mhz bus). I'd try Abit.

btw, Do you see a pair of PB cache chips on M571? They're there on stason, but I don't see them on the picture. Can it be that the mobo is also cacheless?

That's one amazing cleanup job there! I've seen dirty, dusty computers before, but this one takes it to a whole new level 😮 . I would also go with the Abit mobo.

That is one amazing cleaning job! 😳

133MHz wrote:

Updates: […]
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Updates:

Abit PR5 R2

What do you guys think? 😉

Noooo, don't use that one, send it to ME! 😁

Hehe, I'm just frustrated that socket 7 boards are getting so hard to find now. Locally, I mean. Motherboards cost too much for shipping overseas.

I can't believe all that stuff worked after you cleaned it up! 😀 Awesome work!

I have tested the three motherboards and here are the results:

Unfortunately the Abit board doesn't support P55C CPUs. According to the manual there's no 3.5X multiplier setting and the only CPU voltages are 3.38V and 3.52V, I think this means no P233 MMX 😢. By the way the manual was quite hard to find, the only copy I could come across was in this ancient Win16 self contained document viewer that made me pull out one of my old laptops just so I could run it, so I have converted it to PDF and uploaded it here to make it easier to find. On the bright side this particular board has 512KB of L2 cache instead of the 256KB that stason says.

The Abit PR5 R2 refused to boot with my CF to IDE adapter so I couldn't run any tests on it.

I tested the apparently cache-less M530 just for the hell of it. Just look at the system summary:

I love that vague and sleazy Cache Memory: W/B Cache On and L2 Cache Type: Write Back. Go PCChips! 🤣

Of course there's no L2 cache at all without the COAST module, but they can't resist the urge to lie on the system summary:

The M530 would sort of work with the CF to IDE adapter, it'd boot bare DOS but not anything else.

The M571 does have 512KB of L2 cache in a single 64kx64 SRAM chip:

It seems that I'll have to stick with the M571. I'll try to adapt the PS/2 mouse header from the Abit board (not pin compatible).

At the moment the hardware lineup is looking like this:

• PCChips M571
• Pentium MMX 233MHz (66x3.5)
• 32MB EDO RAM (4x8MB)
• Seagate 4.3GB hard drive
• S3 Trio64v+ PCI video card
• SB AWE64 ISA sound card

I might even get a PCI USB2.0 port card for easier file transfer with newer systems, thanks to the unofficial Win9x USB mass storage driver. 😁

USB2 was slow on my p1/200mmx machine... you are way better putting a NIC on that pci slot and use windows networking or the MTCP DOS package that offers a ftp server...
speed with usb2 on my machine was 100~150kb/sec under DOS (did not bother with 98SE) and 1+mb/sec with the NIC...