Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Did some more diddling around, found a spec sheet that Intel never published for this board with some 'undocumented jumper settings'. First one was the multiplier, which 'officially' only goes to 3.0x. I already found 3.5x on my own, but there's also 4.0x, which allowed the CPU's to run @ 266/66.....but that was a failure, the CPU's were not stable....and I wasn't really expecting them to be. Historically with the P6 core, 233 was about as high as they would ever run stable.

The second one was a FSB tweak, which allows 60FSB bumped to 63, and 66FSB bumped to 70....it's basically an undocumented 'turbo' function....which from 3.5x @ 70FSB, the CPU's are @ 245MHz, which was also unstable.....but the golden ticket will be the overdrive 333's, which are locked @ 5.0x multipler, so changing that won't affect anything....but hey, it *might* run @ 350/70FSB. Yea, nothing to get overly excited about....but it's still fun to tinker with stuff even the manufacturer didn't tell you about!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

IIRC, from the horses mouth, (Intel) the floating point bug only exists in Pentium 100s and earlier, except for possibly the 120s.

Looks like it was fixed by the time the 133 consumer chips came out.

There was a different FPU bug that affected the p-pro.

After the microprocessor was released, a bug was discovered in the floating point unit, commonly called the "Pentium Pro and Pentium II FPU bug" and by Intel as the "flag erratum". The bug occurs under some circumstances during floating point-to-integer conversion when the floating point number won't fit into the smaller integer format, causing the FPU to deviate from its documented behaviour. The bug is considered to be minor and occurs under such special circumstances that very few, if any, software programs are affected.

The Pentium Pro P6 microarchitecture was used in one form or another by Intel for more than a decade. The pipeline would scale from its initial 150 MHz start, all the way up to 1.4 GHz with the "Tualatin" Pentium III. The design's various traits would continue after that in the derivative core called "Banias" in Pentium M and Intel Core (Yonah), which itself would evolve into the Core microarchitecture (Core 2 processor) in 2006 and onward.[8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_Pro

I think I may have found a pair of Overdrives.....still working on it though.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

IIRC, from the horses mouth, (Intel) the floating point bug only exists in Pentium 100s and earlier, except for possibly the 120s.

Looks like it was fixed by the time the 133 consumer chips came out.

[momaka]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

I really like the progress there.

The case looks really nice!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Diddled around with this a little today...... Notice something awesome that's filling the formerly empty PCI slot?

I spent $10 on ebay and grabbed a Matrox G450 PCI....those are very close to period-specific and were great 2D cards for the time. 3D will be handled by the mystery card under it.



Atleast now I can have it in True Color above 800x600! MUUUUCH BETER!



Things just kind of sitting...and what it'll look like when assembled. I still haven't grabbed any enlight drive rails yet, the bottom 2 drive trays are just sitting in there....the rails are ~$10/pr on ebay.



More later!

[momaka]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Laying the groundwork for Build # 2.
...
The case isn't 'officially' an eATX, because of the 5.25" cage; a REAL eATX board would not clear the cage at all...but the lower half has all the appropriate motherboard mount points for an eATX board...the 'notch' of this board saved the day! The board fits this case like a glove, and NOTHING had to be modified! Every mount point on the board has the correct corresponding mount point on the case backplane, and it clears everything....albeit, close in a few places....but get a load of this!!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1574031618

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1574031618

Wow, now how was that for awesome fitment!!

Noice!!!
Don't you just love it when you have a bunch of "random" parts for a project that all by coincidence happen to fit together perfectly?

It's like that motherboard you had was made exactly for that case... or the other way around. Either way, that looks like it will be its permanent home, I'm betting.

Now for the goofy non-standard IO shield.....which I don't have, and after a year of looking I haven't found one....so....hmmmm
...
I'm going to have to attempt to ratdude one from a blank....I got 4 of them so when I completely hose one I've got spares, they're cheap....Missing IO shields are one of my biggest pet-peeves.....it makes the system look so shoddy & incomplete.

Lol. Most of my PCs are missing the IO shield. Actually, for many of them, I have the IO shield, but I never installed it simply to allow for "extra cooling" on some of my builds.

The only times I regret not installing IO shields is when I try to plug stuff on the back of the computer without looking (typically due to not being able to move the PC or access its back easily.) In these cases, the IO shield helps me guide my hand to find the ports.

This will be a fun one!!

No doubt.

The permanent drives (not yet installed). I need to find some more Enlight drive rails, I'm out of them it seems... The drives are a pair of 18gb 15k RPM Cheetah's.

Cool.
Those should be plenty fast for that system. Maybe even over the top, but why not. I do have some more "era-appropriate" SCSI drives that I am planning on sending your way. Probably not the fastest things in the world, but might be good for their "cool" factor? I just cleaned/zero'd two more SCA drives last weekend. Now I need do the same with the 50-pin SCSI drives. Don't know if I have the right hardware, though.

I do have a 15" 4:3 LCD here, but its ancient and hideous to look at.

Yeah, same here.
On mine, the panel still works just fine (1024x768 resolution max ), but the backlights are shot. This thing ran 24/7 for 10+ years, as far as I know. The CCFLs were so worn out that the entire image was barely visible and all orange-pink hued. If I replace the backlights with LEDs, it should still be good for another 15-20 years, given how the rest of it is build. But I don't know if/when that will be. It's one of those super-old LCDs that is not quite so "slim" and actually weights quite a bit - less than a CRT of equivalent screen size, but not that much less (maybe half at best, LOL.) Good reliable equipment, but way too outdated.

That just hurt my soul a little..... :-/

Well, some good news regarding that...
Turns out, those PCI and ISA cards that I thought were SCSI, are NOT that - AT ALL!
Unfortunately, I had to find this the hard way: plugged one into a test PC of mine, then connected an HDD to it with a 50-pin cable.
Results: SMOKE!!

I always set up my test PC so that I'm near its power plug, though. So I was able to unplug the PC within seconds. This was still enough time to melt a few wires in the 50-pin cable. But luckily, that is all that seems to have been damaged. The HDD I tested this with appears to spin up and do a self-test just fine, though. Probably survived, but can't tell until I have the right hardware to test it out for sure.

Nevertheless.... Ooops!

At least my bench has a "proper" electronics smell now.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

A little today...I'm limited as to what I can do....I don't have a good GPU for this system, my selection of PCI video cards is limited pretty much to junk....so I'll have to look around...and I still haven't found the CPU's I want....but I did begin a little assembly & testing....

I opted not to attempt a second IO shield, the first one did just fine.


Motherboard mounted and a test mockup set. The test GPU is a 512k Matrox Millennium....weaksauce! The IDE drives are just temporary.





Installing Win2k.


The permanent drives (not yet installed). I need to find some more Enlight drive rails, I'm out of them it seems... The drives are a pair of 18gb 15k RPM Cheetah's.


More later....

[eccerr0r]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Maybe someone should make a website that has paper templates for all the ATX IO shields for every motherboard out there... then if you need one, download and use that to cut...

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

This stuff is epic. I'm not sure I was even born when this spec was released.

This stuff is all circa mid-late 1990's; 1998 give or take a year...

Ok, first attempt at the IO shield, free-handing with a dremel....

Marked, using some random IO shield for port patterns, that were measured off the actual board.



...and afterward.... Fitted outside the case....things lined up good....but in the case may tell a different story....



Nope, still lined up!!





Not sure if I'm going to take another crack at it to 'clean it up' a little....it's not perfect (and no hand-made IO shield ever will be).....but it came out pretty darn good!

[Gergely_madbad]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

This stuff is epic. I'm not sure I was even born when this spec was released.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Laying the groundwork for Build # 2. This one will be a little ongoing, as I'm in search of some Overdrive CPU's that fit the Socket-8....but they're harder to find and pricey. This board already has a pair of 200MHz 512k L2 CPU's that OC to 233 just fine.....but I've already got a Pentium Pro system with those specs, which you already know if you've followed this thread....so I've got to be even more unique for extra cool points! The Overdrive 333's pop up regularly on ebay, but go for $200-ish (I need 2)....I'm not spending that much, so I'll search & scour and I'm sure eventually find a pair cheaper than that! They're basically Pentium2 333's with full speed L2 caches & MMX instruction sets...and of course the infamous Pentium Pro FPU bug fixed. I want to run Win2k and some other stuff on this one, unlike the other running NT4. A pair of 333MHz CPU's, 512mb RAM, and a good GPU will run Win2k very smoothly!

The above said, I had to conquer the first hurdle....a case that can handle this board. It's a primative eATX, I think it was originally intended for some proprietary Intel server case, given the way it's 'notched'...but by modern standards, its basically an eATX. I wasn't going to waste a high-end modern Supermicro eATX case on this....but I did have an Enlight beige case that looked like it might be a match. It was housing a VP6, but a VP6 will fit in anything, so I stripped it out. It was also the lab rat for the bromine yellowing removal experiment, and it held up well! The case isn't 'officially' an eATX, because of the 5.25" cage; a REAL eATX board would not clear the cage at all...but the lower half has all the appropriate motherboard mount points for an eATX board...the 'notch' of this board saved the day! The board fits this case like a glove, and NOTHING had to be modified! Every mount point on the board has the correct corresponding mount point on the case backplane, and it clears everything....albeit, close in a few places....but get a load of this!!





Wow, now how was that for awesome fitment!!

Now for the goofy non-standard IO shield.....which I don't have, and after a year of looking I haven't found one....so....hmmmm



I'm going to have to attempt to ratdude one from a blank....I got 4 of them so when I completely hose one I've got spares, they're cheap....Missing IO shields are one of my biggest pet-peeves.....it makes the system look so shoddy & incomplete.



Test fitting with drives in place....

Opticals clear the board in the corner by ~2mm.....Fanned HDD holder clears by more than plenty.







Now the lower fan holder & 3.5" cage....all clear! There's a good inch between the board and the 3.5" cage, ribbons may be a little tight in there, but it's no biggie. There will be no IDE devices in this system, it'll all be SCSI. The only ribbon that will be connected there will be for the floppy, and it'll clear by plenty. The fan holder isn't a clearance factor at all.







This will be a fun one!!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Ugh, why 1280x1024 on a CRT? That's a 5:4 resolution. Proper 4:3 for 1280 pixels wide is 1280x960. Not that it should matter much for desktop use... but it just itches my inner OCD when I see that 5:4 resolution on a CRT.

That aside, I wouldn't go past 1152x864 on a 17" (16" viewable) CRT. Text just becomes too small for my eyes to read, especially with older software that doesn't really know how to scale up to high resolutions too well.

1280x960 @ 85 Hz (or even 100 Hz, if it can do it) will be absolute killer on this CRT for gaming, though. Been there and still doing that on my current CRTs.

You're correct.....just force of habit I suppose....I rarely deal with CRT's anymore....and pretty much all LCD's that aren't widescreen are 5:4. I do have a 15" 4:3 LCD here, but its ancient and hideous to look at.

My company threw out a big box of various interface cards (of which at least half was PCI/PCI-X/ISA SCSI 50-pin cards) - some still in their unopened anti-static bags.

That just hurt my soul a little..... :-/

We bring our scrap electronics stuff to a recycler that doesn't pay us anything.

...where they'll be shredded...uhgg... I only send the true 'trash' to the recycler....the stuff that's broken and not repairable.... I do my best to repurpose/re-home anything that still works.

[momaka]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

...and this build got a little more 'retrofied' today.....in ways you'll appreciate! Pics coming soon!

Something that's been sitting in the attic for a while....

Oh I see what you mean now.

Yup, it truly is appreciated.
Love it when old CRTs come back to life.

I forgot how difficult it is to photograph a CRT monitor....and this is @ 85Hz refresh!

It is in a bright room. But if you increase the exposure time on your camera and take a picture at a dim or mostly dark room, the image on the screen will come out pretty nicely.

Much better.....but LCD > CRT...but to keep everything period-specific....

Oh, you know I will say that I very strongly disagree here.

To be fair, though, I think it really depends on your application.

For regular desktop use, I'd also take an LCD any day, as it is much easier to see in an office/well-lit/work environment.

But when it comes to gaming and watching videos... nah, LCD doesn't come even close. I've tested high-end "professional" Dell LCD monitors, ultra-low response gaming monitors worth several $k, and even bleeding-edge OLED monitors at my previous job. Of these, I consider OLED as the only one that actually beats a properly-calibrated CRT in terms of natural color rendering with true deep black colors. And then there is also the "motion-rendering" aspect. A CRT will always look smooth and never produce any visible "tearing" on the screen, because the full image is not actually rendered on the screen, but in your eyes/head. With LCDs, you really need to go with the 120 Hz or higher panels with very low pixel lag. And even then, they will screen-tear some if not using v-sync. Problem is, only gaming monitors tend to offer that high refresh rate and ultra-low pixel lag combo... but these monitors tend to have terrible backlight bleeding and color rendering.

So you can't really have the best of everything in one single monitor technology - not yet, at least.

Anyways, enough rambling on that matter from me.

Back together....but still doesn't photograph well.... That's 1280x1024 @ 85Hz. It will do 1600x1200 @ 75Hz, but for a 17", that's just too high (things are way too small).

Ugh, why 1280x1024 on a CRT? That's a 5:4 resolution. Proper 4:3 for 1280 pixels wide is 1280x960. Not that it should matter much for desktop use... but it just itches my inner OCD when I see that 5:4 resolution on a CRT.

That aside, I wouldn't go past 1152x864 on a 17" (16" viewable) CRT. Text just becomes too small for my eyes to read, especially with older software that doesn't really know how to scale up to high resolutions too well.

1280x960 @ 85 Hz (or even 100 Hz, if it can do it) will be absolute killer on this CRT for gaming, though. Been there and still doing that on my current CRTs.

So much retro awesome!!

This build is just a cool one!!

No doubt about that.

Yea, I'll take those.... Nothing SCSI should ever be destroyed!

Wish I could do something about that one.
My company threw out a big box of various interface cards (of which at least half was PCI/PCI-X/ISA SCSI 50-pin cards) - some still in their unopened anti-static bags. I saved a few aside, but didn't see how I could take the whole box just like that. Upper management probably would have been okay if I took the time to explain to them what I'd do with these (and if I could find them, as they are always in some sort of meeting.) We bring our scrap electronics stuff to a recycler that doesn't pay us anything.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Something that's been sitting in the attic for a while....After letting it warm up, it was a little out of focus and dark....I let it run a good hour to make sure everything was reformed & up to temp...

Cracked open!!





Diddling around with the screen control and brought it back into focus.



I forgot how difficult it is to photograph a CRT monitor....and this is @ 85Hz refresh! ...but for all of you who make fun of my old test equipment!!



Much better.....but LCD > CRT...but to keep everything period-specific....



Back together....but still doesn't photograph well.... That's 1280x1024 @ 85Hz. It will do 1600x1200 @ 75Hz, but for a 17", that's just too high (things are way too small).



So much retro awesome!!



Of course a butt shot...



This build is just a cool one!!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Not gonna lie: that build is indeed super cool!
And that beige case is a total awesomeness. The way you styled it with the CDROM is perfect - just screams reliable workhorse from the 90's.

It would be interesting to see what games it can handle from that era and how well.

I find it funny how in CPU-Z, there is absolutely nothing under the "Instructions" field. Not even MMX!
Truly an amazing museum piece (and functional, at that), showing how far CPU architecture and design have moved in ~25 years.

On a side note, do you have any use for ISA / PCI 50-pin SCSI controller cards? We have a bunch at work that I think are going to end up being scrapped. Can try to save a few if you have a use. I already saved a few other retro "goodies" that I'm thinking you might find more useful/interesting (for a retro build) than I.

...and this build got a little more 'retrofied' today.....in ways you'll appreciate! Pics coming soon!

Yea, I'll take those.... Nothing SCSI should ever be destroyed!

[momaka]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

but no collection is complete without a P-Pro system in the woodpile somewhere....and I get extra cool points for it being a dually.

Not gonna lie: that build is indeed super cool!
And that beige case is a total awesomeness. The way you styled it with the CDROM is perfect - just screams reliable workhorse from the 90's.

It would be interesting to see what games it can handle from that era and how well.

I find it funny how in CPU-Z, there is absolutely nothing under the "Instructions" field. Not even MMX!
Truly an amazing museum piece (and functional, at that), showing how far CPU architecture and design have moved in ~25 years.

On a side note, do you have any use for ISA / PCI 50-pin SCSI controller cards? We have a bunch at work that I think are going to end up being scrapped. Can try to save a few if you have a use. I already saved a few other retro "goodies" that I'm thinking you might find more useful/interesting (for a retro build) than I.

[stj]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

i skipped the Pentium era,
i went from 486DX4's to AMD K6-2's and then Athlons.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Ok, a few pics to wrap up one of these builds....

Innards!






Nice old desktop style beige case that I had a sleeper build in at one point....but I thought this was a far better build for this case!



POST screen


Gotta love NT!





Not sure when I'll get around to the other build.....but atleast one is finished!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

One of these finally got built.....





....from NT4 & FF2.0.0.2....

It's the MSI MS-6107
2x 200MHz P-Pro CPU's @ 233; 512k L2
512mb RAM
Matrox G450 PCI 32mb GPU
SB16 audio
Adaptec 2940W
9.1gb 10k RPM Seagate Cheetah
6Plex Plextor CDROM
ISA 10bt NIC
WinNT 4 SP6a

Shittin' in tall cotton now....but no collection is complete without a P-Pro system in the woodpile somewhere....and I get extra cool points for it being a dually.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Weird Pentium Pro Builds

Neither of these boards would POST with the FX5500, both beeped 'no video' error codes at me. I thought the card was DOA, but I did try it in something newer (a VP6 I had laying loose), and it POST'd right up. Must be some kind of compatibility or PCI compliance issue....ohh well, $26 gamble and the card was new in box...ohh well, I'll save it for something else.

The G450 PCI on the other hand performs very nice, all things considered......more whenever I tinker with these again....