best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Dan81]

Time to revive this thread. Topcat will love this.

Scored a BP6 + 2x Celeron 333s and some BEEFY coolers for $94, should be here tomorrow.

Recap is in order once I confirm it's working as it's sold as untested. (and I have no reason to not believe them on being untested)

[Topcat]

^
Nice!! Make sure you recap that, including the small ones.

[Dan81]

It's already on the log to recap, along with a LuckyTech P6BX2 that does 133FSB on a BX chipset 😎

I'll make sure to post some of the work here on both boards. The P6BX2 looks like a solid 440BX board, despite being from a quite obscure brand.

That, and it came with a free slotket + 700MHz Coppermine P3.

[Topcat]

It's already on the log to recap, along with a LuckyTech P6BX2 that does 133FSB on a BX chipset 😎

I'll make sure to post some of the work here on both boards. The P6BX2 looks like a solid 440BX board, despite being from a quite obscure brand.

That, and it came with a free slotket + 700MHz Coppermine P3.

Very nice. Good slotkets are getting very hard to come by; the ones that had onboard regulation circuitry for coppermines. I have a pair of upgradeware 'slot-t' models that actually support Tualatins....I just haven't found the right dual board to try them in....which would likely be one with a VIA chipset that could run @ 133FSB. Trying to make a P2B-D of any version run stable at 133 is a futile battle.... Many claim to have done it, and I've gotten them to run ok....but they always had some weird quirks & glitches, they were never 100%.

[Dan81]

Well, it arrived.

The good so far: it POSTs, recognizes all RAM slots, and detects the two CPUs (Celeron 333)
The not so good: it won't power on from the front panel, but will power on fine if I jumpstart the PSU with black and green.

[Topcat]

Well, it arrived.

The good so far: it POSTs, recognizes all RAM slots, and detects the two CPUs (Celeron 333)
The not so good: it won't power on from the front panel, but will power on fine if I jumpstart the PSU with black and green.

I would recap it first and see if any quirks go away.

I've never had a BP6 do that to me (the power-on thing), but I have had several early-era ACPI board do this; the BX chipset would be one of them. IIRC it's the IC that controls ACPI that's bad. The cure was to use an AT-style on/off power switch in line with the green wire of the ATX PSU. Worked perfect without replacing IC's. I did this with a P2B and a couple others that had this issue... ACPI in those days was primitive and dysfunctional anyway. Of course I'm presuming that you verified that the front panel contact pins weren't crudded up and are working as they're supposed to...I've seen that too!

Ohh...and those 333's should run @ 500/100 no problem. Recap it first though. Be careful removing those heatsinks though. The sockets are so close together on these boards it can make getting to the socket latches difficult.... Be careful with them, as you don't want to break the clasp off the socket....

[Dan81]

Well, fixed that issue - Q23 was chipped to begin with. Swapped in one from a J7BXAN during first half of recap (one row of Tayehs replaced with Lelon OCR 820uF 2.5v off a dead Xbox 360 Slim "Trinity" mobo) and quickly tested it. Powered up just great using the front panel! Also patched a few traces that had a very thin corrosion film - scraped them with a fine cutter, tinned up with a lil' bit of flux, cleaned off very nicely with Zippo fluid (does wonders, more than IPA, and isn't smelly)

Heatsinks came out rather nice, they're 462 coolers and have a big slot for a flathead driver to fit in snugly in. They were installed backwards when I received the board 😖. Gotta oil them up and route the wires around.

I'm swapping the Tayehs for polys as I write this, and the Jackcons will get lytics. I don't have much polys left and I don't mind mixing japanese lytics with polys (seen it done on phat Xbox 360 "Jasper" boards and they work fine enough.), as long as it maintains stability in itself. I'll attempt a OC to 500 in the future, if it keeps stable enough with the new caps.

[Topcat]

Well, fixed that issue - Q23 was chipped to begin with. Swapped in one from a J7BXAN during first half of recap (one row of Tayehs replaced with Lelon OCR 820uF 2.5v off a dead Xbox 360 Slim "Trinity" mobo) and quickly tested it. Powered up just great using the front panel! Also patched a few traces that had a very thin corrosion film - scraped them with a fine cutter, tinned up with a lil' bit of flux, cleaned off very nicely with Zippo fluid (does wonders, more than IPA, and isn't smelly)

Heatsinks came out rather nice, they're 462 coolers and have a big slot for a flathead driver to fit in snugly in. They were installed backwards when I received the board 😖. Gotta oil them up and route the wires around.

I'm swapping the Tayehs for polys as I write this, and the Jackcons will get lytics. I don't have much polys left and I don't mind mixing japanese lytics with polys (seen it done on phat Xbox 360 "Jasper" boards and they work fine enough.), as long as it maintains stability in itself. I'll attempt a OC to 500 in the future, if it keeps stable enough with the new caps.

I had to look and see where Q23 was....and that being shorted is bizarre....but glad you found it. Q1 & Q2 and Q4 & Q5 like to short, they're the drivers for the fans....so if the fan headers are dead, check/replace those. Look forward to updates and nice save of one of my favorite boards!

[Dan81]

Great news.


And as a bonus, the LuckyTech P6BX2 I got before the BP6 has been poly'd for the most part as well. This one was a scrapper rescue - hence why the SMD FETs on the CPU side aren't its original design and look a bit out of place.





Cap list:

ABIT BP6
- 12x Tayeh 1500uF 6.3v - 8x Lelon OCRZ 820uF 2.5v polymers + 4x Fujitsu FP 820uF 2.5v
- 1x Jackcon 1000uF 10v - 1x Panasonic FJS 820uF 6.3v
- 8x Jackcon 1000uF 10v - 6x Panasonic FJ 1500uF 6.3v + 3x Rubycon MFZ 820uF 6.3v (Xbox 360 "Falcon" pulls as I ran out of Pannies 🙁)
- 2x Jackcon 1000uF 10v (near RAM and AGP slot) - 2x Panasonic FJS 820uF 6.3v
- 8x Jackcon 100uF 16v - 4x Chemicon KMA 100uF 16v (X360 "Trinity" pulls) + 4x Nichicon VZ 100uF 16v (Xbox 360 Falcon pulls)
BONUS - 1x 10uF 25v Jackcon - 1x 22uF 25v Chemicon SME

LuckyTech P6BX2:

- 3x 470uF 16v Canicon - 3x 270uF 16v Fujitsu FP
- 3x 1500uF 6.3v Canicon - 3x 2700uF 16v Rubycon MFZ (X360 "Xenon" pulls)
- 1x 1500uF 6.3v Canicon + 1x 470uF 16v Canicon near RAM slots - 1x 820uF 4v Chemicon PSG + 1x Fujitsu FP 820uF 2.5v (the 16v Canicons were literally overkill in theory)
- 1x 470uF 16v Canicon - 1x Fujitsu FP 820uF 2.5v (near front panel header)

Fun fact: the CPU in the P6BX2 would lead you to believe it's a Deschutes or Klamath Pentium II - it's not. While the shell and heatsink do come from such a CPU, the actual cartridge inside is a 550MHz Katmai P3.

[Dan81]

Boy am I having fun with this BP6. Server 2003 already installed, trying to get SP2 in there as of this post. The CWT ISO PSU I'm using has been recapped and is by far the beefiest I've laid my hands on - I've had an ISO previously (G-Alantic "450W") and it was quite less packed than this ISO. (it did look beefy as well, just not on this 500PP's level.)

Any ideas for a CentOS or Red Hat Enterprise Linux that won't kill its performance?

[Topcat]

Nice work on the BP6. What kind of 'server' are you trying to make of that? I tend to throw 3DFX voodoo3 cards in them and make retro gamers out of them.

[Dan81]

I honestly went with 2003 to try my hand at a semi-home conversion. It has the Theme service started (along with Audio) so far.

It'll run a few games in the 1999 - 2002-3 range - that's why I installed a Geforce 4 Ti4200 on mine, and am reading on how to get some matching Coppers in there (no hopes on Tualatins as they're both rare as hell here and pricey just as such.), while maintaining Mendocino Celeron support as well. After all, it's running a BX. If ABIT managed to do stable 133 operation on the BE6-II Rev1.1 I have, I don't see why the BP6 shouldn't - with the right parts, that is.

As for 3dfx V3 - I have a 3000, though that one is currently paired with the P6BX2 and the "sexy" 😂 custom cased Katmai P3 I've installed on it.

Up next on the recap is another classy - PCChips M810LR, Rev 7. This one I got was rebranded as Totem TM-S730LMR, and the cap choice was... quite interesting to say the least. G-Luxon and Teapo... except none bulged?? What is this sorcery I'm seeing? 😳 (yes, all were in spec - they're the type of Luxons that would usually bulge on failure)

[Dan81]

And the M810LR/Totem board is now recapped, and running HoneyX modded BIOS.

Photo of recap:


Originally this was planned to be an WinME build because PCChips and WinME go together strangely well. Except it wasn't to be, due to Avance Logic's absolutely janky soundchip PCC decided to use, so it sits aside for now until I can think of something else for it. In the meantime, the ME installation done on it went to the P6BX2 alongside a Geforce II GTS, and it has ran crashfree so far.

[Topcat]

Very nice! I think I have a pair of VP6's here somewhere that were recapped but still don't POST. I have so many working ones, I didn't waste any time troubleshooting them. Half tempted to send them to you if you wanted to take a crack at them.

[Dan81]

Would have loved to look over some VP6s...the unfortunate thing is I live across the globe, and at least from what the bay listings show, shipping prices are the show stoppers, from how high the shipping is for a KT7A from Texas.

[Topcat]

Mega neat dropoff today. Gateway SERVER, big blonde case with SCSI hotswap trays that are all present. Dual tualatin server board in it....probably from 1999~2000-ish in near pristine condition. Dropped by the same firm that have dropped off some Kayak & Vectra workstations. As a server, it's pretty useless....but it's eATX....and blonde. Oddity from a very short-lived era that Gateway dabbled in server gear. Me happy!

[Topcat]

Mega neat dropoff today. Gateway SERVER, big blonde case with SCSI hotswap trays that are all present. Dual tualatin server board in it....probably from 1999~2000-ish in near pristine condition. Dropped by the same firm that have dropped off some Kayak & Vectra workstations. As a server, it's pretty useless....but it's eATX....and blonde. Oddity from a very short-lived era that Gateway dabbled in server gear. Me happy!

Tinkered with this a little. It's a dual skt370 with a single 1.13GHz Tualatin-S in it. Serverworks chipset. Case is datecoded 2001, build date is 2002.



This beast makes my Supermicro cases look small, it's an absolute tank!

Now the question is what can I make of this..... It's a standard eATX form factor but with some proprietary quirks. PSU is a redundant rated @ 350w, which means it handle twice that for loads; as redundants tend to be rated based on its ability to run on one module. Very heavy 5v & 3.3v rails and only a fair 12v rail.... It could accept any kind of ATX PSU with very minor modification....but here's what would lock it into an older more retro-style build....the SCA SCSI hotswap cage. This is too old to have a SATA/SAS interchangeable backplane....I searched, and nothin doin....so it's doomed to SCSI....which is fine for hardware up through Netburst era stuff and even Win7 will play nice with most of it. I have a few things in mind, but I won't build the existing board. Lame graphics, no AGP, and to use the second CPU it requires a VRM....I found one for $40....but I don't think it's really worth it.

This one will be back burnered while I figure it out....but what a neat piece of computing history.

[Dan81]

I would personally aim for a dual Tualatin 1.13 VP6 in there, complete with SCSI. 😁
Especially since you got one 1.13 with this board.

[Topcat]

I would personally aim for a dual Tualatin 1.13 VP6 in there, complete with SCSI. 😁
Especially since you got one 1.13 with this board.

I was thinking more of a P3TDDE, which is made for Tualatins out of the gate....they're harder to find though. I have one with a pair of 1.4GHz Tualatins, but it's in a build already with a voodoo5. I've tried running Tualatins in a VP6, I could always get them to run single without issues, but when attempting to run them dual is when things would really come unwound. There were several resistor tricks for the in/out of the frequency control IC and of course mods to the sockets (or CPU's).... I was never able to achieve stability with 2 CPU's.

[Dan81]

Iwill DVD266u-RN if you're feeling adventurous of going DDR and assuming you can find one 😅