Rebirth of a Pentium II - P6DKF Retro Build

[Uranium-235]

Re: Rebirth of a Pentium II - P6DKF Retro Build

@ 66FSB, sdram isn't really any better....I mean gee, what were you expecting here!!

which is why you use 100fsb

[ratdude747]

Re: Rebirth of a Pentium II - P6DKF Retro Build

which is why you use 100fsb

Which wasn't a thing when this board was made. 100FSB wasn't until Deschutes came out.

Yeah the later chip was a lot better performed. But that's why later chips are made

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Rebirth of a Pentium II - P6DKF Retro Build

3 is a weird number for computers yet it comes up now and again.

(Now why there are so many boards out there with only 3 SDRAM slots, why...)

from what i can gather, i think its probably a mem controller design limitation. the 815 series of chipsets were designed to handle 6 mem banks max so its either 2 double sided modules or 3 single sided modules. not sure about the earlier 430 and 440 series chipsets for pentium 1 and 2 that support sdram. do those have 3 ram slots also?

then there's also the via chipsets as well. those also have 3 ram slots as well. it could also be a signalling issue. more ram sticks/slots could also mean more noise from more modules so more filtering could be needed on the mobo ram slots and nb chipset. this also increases cost of manufacturing of the motherboard so it looks like a cost vs benefit issue as well.

Don't blame the site: the original Supermicro manual mentions the 400MHz speed aswell.

The inaccuracies were the FX chipset supporting 100FSB. I could see how they made the mistake, based on the manual saying '400MHz'; as there was no other way to to get there other than a Descutes 400/100 CPU....but yea...knowing the FX chipset, at no point was there ever 100FSB support there, so I knew that was just plain wrong.

so to settle this, it means supermicro basically screwed up when they wrote the manual or they were given misinformation by intel. intel never intended to release a 66 mhz fsb p2 chip with a x6 multiplier to get 400 mhz. i ass-u-med it was because their internal testing showed that the 66 mhz fsb bottlenecked the 400 mhz cpu and it was better to have the 400 mhz cpu with a 100 mhz fsb for performance and marketing reasons.

Yeah the later chip was a lot better performed. But that's why later chips are made

yeah if anyone bothers to notice, intel always releases an earlier and latter (improved) version of a cpu line or family they make. this was called their "tick tock" strategy. the klamath was the 'tick' pentium 2; deschutes was the 'tock' pentium 2. ditto with the core 2 line. conroe was the 'tick' core 2; penryn was the 'tock' core 2. there are many other cpu lines and families that do this too but i wont mention them for brevity's sake.

[Topcat]

Re: Rebirth of a Pentium II - P6DKF Retro Build

so to settle this, it means supermicro basically screwed up when they wrote the manual or they were given misinformation by intel. intel never intended to release a 66 mhz fsb p2 chip with a x6 multiplier to get 400 mhz. i ass-u-med it was because their internal testing showed that the 66 mhz fsb bottlenecked the 400 mhz cpu and it was better to have the 400 mhz cpu with a 100 mhz fsb for performance and marketing reasons.

Actually, they can both own a little of it. Any retro PC enthusiast (the nature of the site) would know that the FX chipset never supported anything above 66FSB; thus only EDO SIMM slots (no SDRAM). The FX chipset was molded around the Pentium Pro; and the Klamath P2 was basically a P-Pro with 'the bug' fixed and the chip on a SECC cartridge instead of a ZIF socket. I didn't have to read the manual to know that anything Deschutes would not run in this board...or atleast 'run right'.... Supermicro wrote the manual ASSuming Intel would release faster Klamath CPU's; thus had jumper settings for the higher multipliers...but of course Intel did no such thing....so there were jumper settings for CPU's that didn't exist.

The rest of your analysis, you are correct for the most part (the 'tick-tock' thing)....but there's definitely a few lapses in it..

[lti]

Re: Rebirth of a Pentium II - P6DKF Retro Build

What was the Pentium Pro bug?

[Topcat]

Re: Rebirth of a Pentium II - P6DKF Retro Build

What was the Pentium Pro bug?

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-indus...ntium-pro-bug/

[ratdude747]

Re: Rebirth of a Pentium II - P6DKF Retro Build

yeah if anyone bothers to notice, intel always releases an earlier and latter (improved) version of a cpu line or family they make. this was called their "tick tock" strategy. the klamath was the 'tick' pentium 2; deschutes was the 'tock' pentium 2. ditto with the core 2 line. conroe was the 'tick' core 2; penryn was the 'tock' core 2. there are many other cpu lines and families that do this too but i wont mention them for brevity's sake.

That wasn't a thing until right before Core2 (Cedar Mill P4)... before that, the strategy was "do whatever works"... If it was something they could do to improve things, they'd do it. It was with core2 that they "officially" adopted the tick-tock strategy (alternating new microarchitectures with die/process shrinks).

Not to mention that they abandoned it a few years ago due to the slowing pace of die shrinks (due to the fact they they don't make miniature atoms )... now it's a three stage process with an optimization stage between the architecture and the shrink.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Rebirth of a Pentium II - P6DKF Retro Build

I'm not above sending it to Sweden if you want to take a crack at it.

That's very nice of you, I'm like TechGeek though: no case to put it in.
But for sure if it's going to end up as e-waste let me know beforehand!

[momaka]

Re: Rebirth of a Pentium II - P6DKF Retro Build

Awesome build once again!

Man, you keep churning them out like those custom car shows on TV.
Pretty cool and unique stuff.

Hopefully someone new to retro PCs doesn't think this is what we had as standard back in the days.

In '99, my family bought a 400 MHz PII, which was still considered pretty good back then. I remember a number of my classmates (and myself) drooling when we got this computer. Sure may not have been the fastest thing around... but for a year at least, it was considered plenty fast. Don't think I even knew dual CPU systems existed back then.

I was never a 486 enthusiast, I had no intentions of doing a build with it....

Same.
No disrespect for 486, though - it was just before my time. Heck even the first Pentium was. I mean, I was only a little kid around that era and barely remember anything about the machines back then or using them. It wasn't until we got the aformentioned PII above that I got "better" with computers... and really not until early 2000's until I got my skt 462 PC that I started messing with them on my own (and Windows XP!)

I only kept it for the case....which someone dropped off for recycling years ago.

Good save.
There are a few beige cases that I got many years ago off of Craigslist and similar and then wondered why did I even pick up such old junk back then. Now I look back and think, why didn't I look harder and pickup more.

It POST's and in the BIOS. No, I did not set the date/time!! It was only off by a few hours....the RTC chip/battery is still good!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1679799171

Reminds me of the "Sniper" skt 7 mobo I got from an old HP Pavilion ages ago - I never removed the CMOS battery when I found it and it just kept the time all these years in storage until I randomly decided to power it one day. Not only did it hold all of the settings, but battery was spot-on at 3V too.

Now those are some good CMOS chips! These days, you'd be lucky to get a few years out of them if the mobo is kept unplugged. And some OEM boards from Dell and HP from a few years back are known to have CMOS "power hog" chips - they'll drain in a year or less.

It's only drawing from the +5V rail. Idled around ~3A. Loaded 'troubleshooter', and under testing never went above 6A. Apparently these aren't power hogs.

Not surprised.
Given the small heatsinks on old hardware, 30 Watts of total system power used seems pretty legit.

I don't remove the case badges anymore like I used to....they add a charm & elegance that's long gone these days.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1679799171

In my case, I just couldn't care enough to remove them... so probably a good thing and how some of my beige cases got to preserve their "personality".

I couldnt believe that filter cleaned up and not just disintegrate in my hands as I cleaned it in hot water with simple green. The water looked like chocolate milk!!

That's pretty amazing.
Foam is not known as a long-lasting material at all. Usually 15 years is enough for it to start degrading, if not fall apart already.
Whatever "formula" they used for the foam in this case, it certainly is superior. And maybe that combined with optimal storage conditions, of course.

Now for the power supply. It's a 'topower' rated at 300W...

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1679799171

QC sticker says it was manufactured in September of 1986! Wowza! Makes me wonder if this 486 wasn't the first system in this case; as that is dated ~1992 according to the BIOS and other data suggests 1993 as well.... A mystery that will never be solved perhaps....

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1679799171

PSU inside.... The way this is laid out, any normal AT or even ATX PCB could be mounted in here....good to know if the PSU ever dies and I can't fix it.... It is loaded with 'Fuhjyyu' caps, which of course is a big red flag!!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1679799171

Looks a bit "lousy" for a 300 -Watter. Those 330 uF caps certainly won't help it get there. Because of them, I'd say 150W would be a more realistic rating. Maybe 200, tops. Otherwise, the main traffo looks OK for 200-250W, and the BJTs on the primary certainly won't have any issues with that. The output side also looks a bit weak, though - not too many filtering caps. Probably fine with no or light load like you tested it, but I don't think it can do 30 Amps on the 5V rail with ripple staying in spec.

Then again, it's all a moot point, considering the 486 board it came with doesn't go much above 30 Watts / 6 Amps on the 5V rail. I imagine even the dual PII 300 MHz CPUs won't be power-hungry enough to draw anything more than 70-80 Watts max, if even that.

So this old AT PSU is probably fine for just about any AT system out there.
Good to see you recapped it. Despite not looking like a top-end unit, it's still worth saving, IMO. I imagine you could make a few $$ selling it online to someone who needs and AT PSU for an old AT system.

Also, I don't know if we can say that Fuhjyyu was better at making caps back then... but at least they didn't fail by themselves just from sitting all these years. A lot of cheap garbage brands can't do even that. So a short moment of applause for those old Fuhjyyu caps.
Might have been interesting to save them and put them in a newer (but junk) PSU that needs caps to see how long they'd last. I imagine they'd still beat Chang/ChongX and CapXon.

I knew there was a reason I didn't miss dealing with AT cases....those silly plastic standoffs they all used!!

Ah, so it wasn't just my PII's case being cheap then. I guess it was somewhat common practice to use plastic standoffs back then?
In any case, I'm not a fan of them either. My preferred mounting method is always brass standoffs.

I didn't know Fuhjyyu had been around that long, and it's surprising to see a 300W power supply that's that old.

Agreed.
I always thought those older AT PSUs only went up to 200 Watts max, if even that. Goes to show how little I know about AT stuff.
Like I said, I was too little back then and wasn't quite into messing with PCs yet (and they were expensive back then too, so I couldn't have even if I wanted to.)

That 486 system has 4x 4mb 70NS FPM RAM....yea, anyone remember that?!? ...but a total of 16mb RAM was a big deal back in its day!

Hey, that could run Carmageddon under Windows!

Looks like it was born there!!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1679883720

That feeling when a bunch of random parts come together to make a perfect fit.

Now for something old, worthless, cool, and new!! A Matrox G200 G4 quad display GPU. I got it for peanuts on fleabay, new old stock. These were fabulous 2D cards back in the era of this motherboard.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1679883720

Shiny & new.....even if it is ~25yrs old!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1679883720

Actually, it's a pretty decent card even for 3D. Maybe not up to nVidia and ATI level (and certainly not VooDoo's), but good.
This should make a stellar mid-90's workstation and DOS gaming machine.

That board is in such nice condition, would make for a very nice 486 build!
And with a 30 year old still working RTC module, that is just begging to be rebuilt!

I second this notion.

This is where all that ribbon mess would have been. I did install a USB header since it's running Win2k....although USB1 and Win2k are pretty useless for anything besides say a keyboard or mouse.

Meh, it's not *that* bad.
My PIII laptop that I used in university (early 2010's) only had USB 1.1... and yeah, big file transfers were long and boring. But for word documents, small PDFs, and similar, it was quite OK.
I still used it frequently to transfer music/MP3s and sometimes CD ISOs. But those were start the copy/paste process and leave the computer do its 'thing' for a few minutes while doing something else.

Specs are as follows:

Supermicro P6DKF Motherboard
2x Pentium II 300MHz 66FSB Klamath CPU's
512mb EDO RAM @ 50NS
Matrox G200 x4 32mb
Adaptec AHA2940U/UW SCSI Controller
Creative SB16
Realtek 10/100 LAN
Plextor UltraPlex 12x SCSI
Plextor PlexWriter 4x SCSI

Those Plextor drives are neat too. If selling this computer, you should include a spindle of good CD-Rs too. Would be a shame to see such drives not be used much.

I still burn music CD-R's for my car and wherenot. Occasionally, drivers and utilities for older / retro PCs too. Never warmed up to burning or using DVDs too much. Only do it if I have to. CDs seem more reliable long term too.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Rebirth of a Pentium II - P6DKF Retro Build

I came across a few 1980s Fuhjyyu's, prior to the formula change. Unlike the newer Fuhjyyus like in Antec PSUs, these seem to still be working. In fact I used the few old ones I pulled into newer PSUs that had blown caps and they're still holding up just fine.

[Topcat]

Re: Rebirth of a Pentium II - P6DKF Retro Build

That's very nice of you, I'm like TechGeek though: no case to put it in.
But for sure if it's going to end up as e-waste let me know beforehand!

No worries, I'd never send something like this to the recycler.... I bagged up the entire config since it's known/confirmed working and stored it away. Eventually I'll find a home for it.

Awesome build once again!

Man, you keep churning them out like those custom car shows on TV.
Pretty cool and unique stuff.

I haven't done one in a while actually.....but I do have a really crazy one on the horizon....a hint: research shows the enclosure to be used was made around 1977.

Hopefully someone new to retro PCs doesn't think this is what we had as standard back in the days.

That just made me LOL!!

Same.
No disrespect for 486, though - it was just before my time. Heck even the first Pentium was. I mean, I was only a little kid around that era and barely remember anything about the machines back then or using them. It wasn't until we got the aformentioned PII above that I got "better" with computers... and really not until early 2000's until I got my skt 462 PC that I started messing with them on my own (and Windows XP!)

The 486 was in its infancy when I first became interested in computer....maybe 1992? When the Pentium came out and then the first 3DFX card, it was a love / infatuation that I should have been committed to the Betty Ford Clinic for treatment....

Good save.
There are a few beige cases that I got many years ago off of Craigslist and similar and then wondered why did I even pick up such old junk back then. Now I look back and think, why didn't I look harder and pickup more.

I am always looking for retro stuff....sometimes it comes to me, sometimes I have to go beat the bushes a little to find it.....but scrap bins for anything beige isn't an option unless its just destroyed.

Reminds me of the "Sniper" skt 7 mobo I got from an old HP Pavilion ages ago - I never removed the CMOS battery when I found it and it just kept the time all these years in storage until I randomly decided to power it one day. Not only did it hold all of the settings, but battery was spot-on at 3V too.

I think this one holds the record for longevity in anything I've seen. It's been sitting here for years and I was told it sat in a garage for years before I got it....

Not surprised.
Given the small heatsinks on old hardware, 30 Watts of total system power used seems pretty legit.

It's neat seeing this kind of data though.... Zero regrets in all the effort of developing 'the oven'.

Looks a bit "lousy" for a 300 -Watter. Those 330 uF caps certainly won't help it get there. Because of them, I'd say 150W would be a more realistic rating. Maybe 200, tops. Otherwise, the main traffo looks OK for 200-250W, and the BJTs on the primary certainly won't have any issues with that. The output side also looks a bit weak, though - not too many filtering caps. Probably fine with no or light load like you tested it, but I don't think it can do 30 Amps on the 5V rail with ripple staying in spec.

I thought that too.....it really did seem a bit shoddy.....but it seems to be holding.... If it ever died, it wouldn't be hard to fabricate something else to fit in that housing. It's mount points seem pretty universal.

Hey, that could run Carmageddon under Windows!

That's another one I have to LOL at....that game....and every time you bring it up.... I remember it at a LANfest many decades ago.....playing that.....very intoxicated.....fond memories!!

That feeling when a bunch of random parts come together to make a perfect fit.

This one did come together nicely and didn't require a whole lot of butchery. It almost went too easy compared to some of the past!

Actually, it's a pretty decent card even for 3D. Maybe not up to nVidia and ATI level (and certainly not VooDoo's), but good.
This should make a stellar mid-90's workstation and DOS gaming machine.

I had a normal G200 when it was flagship, it was great at the time, paired with a voodoo2 in a BP6 with a pair of 300A's @ 450/100. Seems like yesterday that was my 'daily driver' system and browsing the interwebs with netscape navigator on NT4.

Those Plextor drives are neat too. If selling this computer, you should include a spindle of good CD-Rs too. Would be a shame to see such drives not be used much.

I didn't even test the write abilities....odds are it works, it read just fine... I had no buyer in mind....it just went to the back room where there are shelves full of these silly builds.... Yes, I know....I have a problem!!

I still burn music CD-R's for my car and wherenot. Occasionally, drivers and utilities for older / retro PCs too. Never warmed up to burning or using DVDs too much. Only do it if I have to. CDs seem more reliable long term too.

As do I.... I occasionally do a vinyl to digital media conversion and will make an audio CD of that....and of course write driver media for retro stuff....like back in the days when OS's didn't have embedded network drivers.....so it wasn't as easy as just moving it across the LAN.

[RetroComputingGrotto]

Re: Rebirth of a Pentium II - P6DKF Retro Build

Nice to see a proper full-size tower case - you don't see many like that any more!

Amongst many other projects I've started (and yet to complete) I have a P100 desktop mini-tower PC that I'm refurbishing so it's great to see I'm not the only one around here still tinkering around with old tech