Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

[gdement]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

If I understand correctly, there may be some interest in a 440GX Slot-2 board with Coppermine support and ISA? ISA is pretty normal there, but the Coppermine support can be difficult to determine since 440GX boards generally predate the Coppermine. Even if you have a compatible voltage regulator, the manufacturer still needs to have bothered updating the BIOS. I was researching that for my Kayak board a while back, and found the BIOS is a problem in my case.

This site lists 3 440GX SuperMicro boards that apparently support Slot-2 Coppermines (the ones advertising 700MHz):
http://www.flytech.es/Supermicro/Ima...%20XeonIII.htm

The 440GX boards shown don't claim to go up to 1GHz, but that doesn't necessarily mean they won't work. The big question is whether their newest BIOS will accept the newer core stepping that you'd probably have on a 1GHz.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

Not exactly.

He wanted a board for some P3 133MHz FSB Xeon CPU's he found that has ISA slots.
ISA and 133MHz FSB don't seem to go together with P3 Xeons so I gave an alternate idea.

I think when this kid gets a car it will be a 72 Pinto with a 350ci Chev a Peterbuilt trans and Mopar bumpers.

.

[zandrax]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

I think when this kid gets a car it will be a 72 Pinto with a 350ci Chev a Peterbuilt trans and Mopar bumpers.

Only if you force him watching Grease for a whole month. Go Danny
The Pinto seems a nice car - better use an Edsel

Zandrax

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

Back when I had a shop for that stuff I helped a friend (he didn't have a shop) build his car. Was a 1965 Chevelle body. We did frame-off restore of the body and started with sandblasting the frame. We used a Vette front suspension, a VERY built Caddy 500cid engine built to someone else's blueprint, tranny modified with RV and drag parts, engine had a custom intake plenum to accept a modified Ford 460 fuel injection setup. It dyno'ed at around 700HP. (And got < 3 MPG.) He drove it to work for a couple years until he got into motorcycles.
.

[zandrax]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

Back when I had a shop for that stuff I helped a friend (he didn't have a shop) build his car. Was a 1965 Chevelle body. We did frame-off restore of the body and started with sandblasting the frame. We used a Vette front suspension, a VERY built Caddy 500cid engine built to someone else's blueprint, tranny modified with RV and drag parts, engine had a custom intake plenum to accept a modified Ford 460 fuel injection setup. It dyno'ed at around 700HP. (And got < 3 MPG.) He drove it to work for a couple years until he got into motorcycles.
.

Hmm: I think car homologation directives in Usa aren't as restrictive as in Europe. Your friend's creation wouldn't be accepted by Moreover your friend built this monster a lot of years ago: nowadays a 3 mpg mileage would be too expensive to sustain (I hope it was 3 mpg at full power, because it's a F1 standard consumption!).

Zandrax

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

It was only 9 or 10 years ago.
The car is still legal and in use. (Just not as often.)

I dunno what "F1 standard" is.

Homologation is only regulated by the Smog equipment laws.
The specific laws vary by state but in most states a 1965 car would be exempt.
Some states regulate by the engine vs the chassis but even that (a 1972 I think it was) would be exempt in most states.

.

[zandrax]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

It was only 9 or 10 years ago.
The car is still legal and in use. (Just not as often.)

I dunno what "F1 standard" is.

Homologation is only regulated by the Smog equipment laws.
The specific laws vary by state but in most states a 1965 car would be exempt.
Some states regulate by the engine vs the chassis but even that (a 1972 I think it was) would be exempt in most states.

.

Sorry, apparently I didn't complete the sentence (and I'm asking myself why I did so!). National counterparts of US DoT check emissions, comformance to rules, safety and a lot of things: the italian one is especially severe, blocking a lot of tuning enthusiast from changing their cars, it doesn't allow to modify any relevant part (body, engine, ...) because the result has no resemblance with the original vehicle. You can use homologated equivalents for minor parts (e.g. brakes, suspensions, wheels, bodykits ...) or let the whole vehicle to be re-homologated if it stills complies to laws. The latter is a really expensive path.

F1 means a Formula One sport car: these cars consume about 180-200 litres of fuel during a 300 km race (source: f1technical.net), so their average consumption is 1.5 l/km or 3.5 mpg.

Zandrax

[pentium]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

I think I am starting to confuse everyone here.

Remember that I was at first just looking for a board that would suit hardware I already own. Over time I had to give in and drop some of these demands (the CPU type being one of them). When I said that this board was perfect, I was saying that while it was not the board of my dreams it was close enough.

As for the 72 Pinto, would a Pacer be okay instead?

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

Yeah, but I don't think Formula 1's weigh in at 4000 pounds.
LOL
.

[pentium]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

Uh oh. Did I miss something?

Anyways, if someone finds another of those Tyan boards, I would like to talk to them and see what they want for it.

[zandrax]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

Yeah, but I don't think Formula 1's weigh in at 4000 pounds.

Whoa, I thought only sturdy off roads vehicles weight that much! BTW Formula 1 cars weight at least 605 kgs, about 1330 pounds, driver, oil and fuel included.

Anyways, if someone finds another of those Tyan boards, I would like to talk to them and see what they want for it.

There are other dual 370 boards with an isa slot. Supermicro offered its 370DLE and P3TDL3 / P3TDLE (they share the same pcb, but the former has a Scsi controller onboard).

Zandrax

[pentium]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

There are other dual 370 boards with an isa slot. Supermicro offered its 370DLE and P3TDL3 / P3TDLE (they share the same pcb, but the former has a Scsi controller onboard).

Zandrax

None of them seem to be any better as they all lack the AGP pro slot we see on the Tyan board.

[zandrax]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

None of them seem to be any better as they all lack the AGP pro slot we see on the Tyan board.

What ?
First you stated the Agp slot wasn't mandatory, then I found some alternatives in case you had hard time in finding a ThunderHE and you end writing they lack Agp: pentium, I don't like sick jokes.
I don't want to seem rude in quoting your post but I'm getting really mad:

Okay, here is one last question.

Did they ever build a board (ATX or proprietary) that accepted four of these and also had one ISA slot? AGP (or AGP pro) is not necessary (but might be nice) and so long as it does not use RDRAM I'm okay in the way of ram. Just put the image of SGI's VW 540 in your mind but then make it less proprietary and add a single ISA slot.

So tell me straight: the Agp slot is nice or is necessary? If you need it, it has to be the plain or the Pro version?
Even better: what do you surely need? What is necessary (e.g. Isa slot, minimal computing power) and what desirable (e.g. it would be nice to reuse cpu and memory if possible or plausible, but other solutions are acceptable as well). Can I refer to a simple wishes list?

Zandrax

[pentium]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

Okay, Let me put it this way and restate some things I already said.

When I first started this thread I was looking for a board that would allow me to cut corners by using existing hardware.
A page or so later we determined however that the exact specs I wanted did not exist (at least in a single board) so I then started looking for a board that was close to what I wanted and along the way I had to make changes to the specs I wanted (EG. the type of ram).
You guys kept feeding me links and model numbers and I compared them all but none were up to what I really wanted (yes, call me picky).
When I made the post that said that the board did not have to be of the ATX standard I just wanted to see if the board I wanted existed in a proprietary style board.

First you stated the Agp slot wasn't mandatory, then I found some alternatives in case you had hard time in finding a ThunderHE and you end writing they lack Agp

Whoops, I guess I forgot about that. Sorry.

So tell me straight: the Agp slot is nice or is necessary? If you need it, it has to be the plain or the Pro version?
Even better: what do you surely need? What is necessary (e.g. Isa slot, minimal computing power) and what desirable (e.g. it would be nice to reuse cpu and memory if possible or plausible, but other solutions are acceptable as well). Can I refer to a simple wishes list?

Okay, since it looks like I have confused everyone, I'll update the specs for the board I wanted:

-Processor: support for one (or two) Pentium III, 1Ghz+ processors (either coppermine or that other one I can't remember) or two Pentium III Xeon, 1Ghz+ processors (either slot or socked based)
-Ram: Support for at least 1Gb of DDR or Sdram (Does not matter if it needs registered memory)
-Graphics:
-----------Acceptable: 32 bit PCI slot
-----------Preferred: AGP 2X or better slot
-----------Best: AGP PRO 1X or better slot
-Expansion:
----------Two or more PCI slots (can be either 32 or 64 bit or both)
----------At least one 16 bit ISA slot (EISA is also okay)
-Storage: Either Primary/Secondary IDE/ATA bus or any type of SCSI bus
-Floppy: support for at least one 1.44Mb 3 1/2" Floppy drive
-Form Factor: Regular, micro or extended ATX boards okay. Proprietary boards are the other option but I have to cut up a case or at least buy the proper case.
-USB: Optional
-Serial: at least one serial port
-Onboard Sound: Not necessary, I have a spare Sound Blaster Live! card.
-Onboard networking: Optional
-PS/2 and Parallel: required
-AMR slot: No way. I hate them with a passion.

The reason I liked the ThunderHE so much was because not only did it fit most of those specs but it also included things that I said were purely optional (like the AGP PRO, the multiple processors and all the PCI slots being of the 64 bit variety).

When you posted links to those other three boards they too fit the bill HOWEVER compared to the ThunderHE they were not as equally good and while I said that a PCI slot was okay, it was going to mean that I would be severely limited in what graphics cards I could use (I am building a rendering station after all). A PCI slot would only let me use my older Intergraph card and PCI geometry accelerator cards while an AGP slot would let me at least use my Wildcat 4000 and an AGP PRO slot would let me use my 3DLABS Wildcat 4110.

Does it make a little more sense now?

[gdement]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

Thanks for compiling that, it really does help.
The combination of RAM and processor cuts down the list quite a bit.
Thanks to Intel's fling with Rambus at the time, there aren't any Intel chipsets that officially support 133FSB processors and 1GB of SDRAM/DDR. The 440BX/GX can support that much RAM but they're officially limited to 100FSB. If you don't mind overclocking then there's plenty of 440BX boards that can do it, but not with dual processors. Intel regarded their 133FSB SDRAM chipsets as budget products, so those only take 512MB.

So you're left with VIA and ServerWorks chipsets, and if you don't mind paying for it then obviously the latter is more desirable. The Tyan you picked makes sense.

It gets easier/cheaper if you settle for 100FSB, but that limits your individual processor speeds. I think the fastest P3 100FSB that's easy to find is 850MHz. Still, if you get dual processors then that can beat the performance of a single 1GHz board.

[zandrax]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

Okay, since it looks like I have confused everyone, I'll update the specs for the board I wanted:

-Processor: support for one (or two) Pentium III, 1Ghz+ processors (either coppermine or that other one I can't remember) or two Pentium III Xeon, 1Ghz+ processors (either slot or socked based)
-Ram: Support for at least 1Gb of DDR or Sdram (Does not matter if it needs registered memory)
-Graphics:
-----------Acceptable: 32 bit PCI slot
-----------Preferred: AGP 2X or better slot
-----------Best: AGP PRO 1X or better slot
-Expansion:
----------Two or more PCI slots (can be either 32 or 64 bit or both)
----------At least one 16 bit ISA slot (EISA is also okay)
-Storage: Either Primary/Secondary IDE/ATA bus or any type of SCSI bus
-Floppy: support for at least one 1.44Mb 3 1/2" Floppy drive
-Form Factor: Regular, micro or extended ATX boards okay. Proprietary boards are the other option but I have to cut up a case or at least buy the proper case.
-USB: Optional
-Serial: at least one serial port
-Onboard Sound: Not necessary, I have a spare Sound Blaster Live! card.
-Onboard networking: Optional
-PS/2 and Parallel: required
-AMR slot: No way. I hate them with a passion.

Thanks pentium, that's what we need.
Just some comments:
- I think single processor boards aren't worth much considerations because the world is plenty of them, cheap and in working state. You want some performance, so dual cpu are the preferred ones; otherwise, you can look for some Asus (made very good products until 1999, then its decline started), Supermicro, I-will or Tyan boards, stable and fully featured;
- Coppermine's successor is the Tualatin core: while the Coppermine is always SMP capable, only the Tualatin-S is while the plain Tualatin is not. While sharing the same socket, Tualatins have a different pinout so require Tualatin-aware boards or an adaptor to work with older Coppermine-only ones. Moreover Tualatin-S are quite expensive even used (some german ebay sellers sell them for 70-90 euro each!). In short, they are worthly only if you have them or manage to buy a board+cpus combo;
- as for single cpu boards, I think agp-less boards aren't really an option otherwise you'd look for Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 industrial mobos which feature everything you need (and a lot of power more) except the agp slot;
- proprietary boards shold be paired with their cases: you can buy a Compaq or a Dell server / workstation, and I'm quite confident there is something close to your needs, but never buy a proprietary mobo alone: usually connectors are proprietary too, the board has less features than atx ones (e.g. crippled bios, no fsb jumpers, ...) and both airflow and cabling is based on the original case. They are workhorses but not much configurable;
- AMR, CNR and ACR slots were born to replace ISA for low-bandwith devices (audio cards, modems, ...) while avoiding the expensive FCC certification, so in all boards I've seen their presence mutually excludes ISA and any ISA slot excludes these as well.

The reason I liked the ThunderHE so much was because not only did it fit most of those specs but it also included things that I said were purely optional (like the AGP PRO, the multiple processors and all the PCI slots being of the 64 bit variety).

When you posted links to those other three boards they too fit the bill HOWEVER compared to the ThunderHE they were not as equally good and while I said that a PCI slot was okay, it was going to mean that I would be severely limited in what graphics cards I could use (I am building a rendering station after all). A PCI slot would only let me use my older Intergraph card and PCI geometry accelerator cards while an AGP slot would let me at least use my Wildcat 4000 and an AGP PRO slot would let me use my 3DLABS Wildcat 4110.

Does it make a little more sense now?

Yes, it does: I think you would buy any board available if you hadn't to look for agp support, am I right?
Well, I can search for some dual cpu boards with an isa slot, then I can divide them for graphic card support (Pci only, Agp and Agp Pro): however those having both isa and agp are more common than ones with isa and agp pro.

Thanks for compiling that, it really does help.
The combination of RAM and processor cuts down the list quite a bit.
Thanks to Intel's fling with Rambus at the time, there aren't any Intel chipsets that officially support 133FSB processors and 1GB of SDRAM/DDR. The 440BX/GX can support that much RAM but they're officially limited to 100FSB. If you don't mind overclocking then there's plenty of 440BX boards that can do it, but not with dual processors. Intel regarded their 133FSB SDRAM chipsets as budget products, so those only take 512MB.

Right: the 440BX can handle 133 MHz in overclocking (most overclockers brought them at 150+ MHz so this isn't a real issue) but the minimal Agp divisor, which draws the Agp frequence out form the fsb, is 2/3 and not 1/2: any agp card wold run out of specifications at 89 MHz and only nVidia TNTs are told to run at that speed. The 815E, which runs at 133 MHz, can't manage more than 512 MB of ram. Server chipsets are 100 MHz versions too.

So you're left with VIA and ServerWorks chipsets, and if you don't mind paying for it then obviously the latter is more desirable. The Tyan you picked makes sense.

It gets easier/cheaper if you settle for 100FSB, but that limits your individual processor speeds. I think the fastest P3 100FSB that's easy to find is 850MHz. Still, if you get dual processors then that can beat the performance of a single 1GHz board.

100 MHz Coppermine Pentiums can run up to 1100 MHz (11 * 100), but are quite rare.

Zandrax

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

The Tualatins physically fit fine in any socket 370 board.
The "pin compatible" deal has to do with a pin (I think used for VID) that is used on the Tualatins but was not used (aka 'reserved') in earlier socket 370 chips.

I think it was only the *slot version* of *100FSB* that stopped at 850MHz.
I in fact have a socket 370 100FSB 1GHz coppermine.
100 MHz x 10 = 1GHz are only 'a little' rare and you can find them if you are patient.
Not many look for them so they don't usually cost much.

There were also SloKets which allow using either 100FSB or 133FSB socket 370 CPU's in 100FSB slot 1 boards. HAVE to do the research with those though. There were many different kinds and some didn't do dual CPU and others didn't allow the 133/100FSB change. Even if you get a good sloket some BIOS's choke with them in. (I actually have several brand new Slokets but I haven't tried them. I got them for two early N440BX boards (max 550MHz CPU) that I was going to try 1GHz Coppermines in. - Said F*it and got some dual Tualatin boards instead.)

I saw somewhere on the web (a while back) a mod that allows using Tualatins on Coppermine only boards. It was quite messy and involved drilling a hole in the CPU socket and insulating a CPU pin (or just cutting the pin off the CPU) and adding wires under the socket on the board. - If I had seen it years ago instead of months ago I might even have tried it...

.

[pentium]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

I honestly do not care about what cpu type is in there. I just want them fast and I want them to work trouble free.

[gdement]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

I think it was only the *slot version* of *100FSB* that stopped at 850MHz.
I in fact have a socket 370 100FSB 1GHz coppermine.
100 MHz x 10 = 1GHz are only 'a little' rare and you can find them if you are patient.
Not many look for them so they don't usually cost much.

Yeah, I was really thinking of the slots when I said 850MHz. Socket-370 makes the processors easier to find, but then it's a lot harder to find a dual 370 board with ISA. A slocket could solve that though...

There were also SloKets which allow using either 100FSB or 133FSB socket 370 CPU's in 100FSB slot 1 boards. HAVE to do the research with those though. There were many different kinds and some didn't do dual CPU and others didn't allow the 133/100FSB change.

Does this account for the locked multiplier? It's easy to run a 133fsb processor at 100fsb, even without a slocket, but it will only run at 3/4 speed that way. Unless you're saying that some slockets provide some sort of asynchronous interface between the CPU and board?
I have a slocket with FSB jumpers on it, but all it actually does is override the processor's "requested FSB" signal (whatever they call it). It's not possible to change the multiplier though.

There's a similar feature for overriding the requested voltage (VID). That's a very handy feature, allowing you to run coppermines on boards with an old VRM that doesn't recognize the newer VID format. Just override the voltage to 1.8V (the minimum understood on such boards), and a coppermine will be perfectly happy, if a little warm. The only remaining issue is to find an updated BIOS to support the CPU, which isn't a problem on well-supported models.

===
If it were me, I'd probably get a dual Slot-1 like an Asus P2B-D (or DS for SCSI). Some of those support coppermine voltages, and some don't. Either way you'll probably still need slockets if you want more than 850MHz processors. I have an IWill Slocket-2, and it works great even with a 1.1GHz/100 I tested on it, but I don't know how those handle duals. If you get slockets, be aware that some were only designed for P2-era Celerons. Finding the best slockets might be tricky.

On such a board, you'd be best to use 4x 256MB registered ECC PC100 memory - but be careful about the fact that some of those have the wrong construction to work on a BX.

If you need more RAM, you could also get an Intel L440GX. Those will take 512 in each slot (registered pc100) and still use Slot-1 pentiums, but no AGP. Combining all 3 of those is the Tyan S1837.
** There isn't much room for a 370 heatsink between the CPU slots on either of those GX boards. I doubt many GX's were designed to make room for slockets.

Slot-2 would be more of a pain I think, as it gives you less options. But if you find some benchmarks telling you that Xeons will help, then it might be worth the trouble.

[gdement]

Re: Did such Mobo configurations ever exist?

Right: the 440BX can handle 133 MHz in overclocking (most overclockers brought them at 150+ MHz so this isn't a real issue) but the minimal Agp divisor, which draws the Agp frequence out form the fsb, is 2/3 and not 1/2: any agp card wold run out of specifications at 89 MHz and only nVidia TNTs are told to run at that speed.

The GeForce1-3 will do it fine, but from what I've read, GeForce4's sometimes have a problem with it. In my family I have a GeForce2 MX, a GeForce3, and a Geforce4 ti4200 which all ran for about 2-3 years on overclocked BX's at 89MHz. It works so easily that I forgot they were out of spec - when I tried to put an SiS card into my computer I couldn't figure out why it didn't work.