Few Questions for a 1.2ghz

[Concept]

Just bought this Athlon 1.2ghz 266mhz T-Bird at Frys. Stuck it in my MSI k7t pro 2-a, and powered up, and it showed as 900mhz. What's that about?! Anyway, I'm sorta new to the overclocking scene. I HAD a 1ghz Athlon 200mhz, but i tried overclocking that and it fried. Reason was, I forgot to plug in the damn cpu fan before turning it on. Rest assured, I'm much smarter now. Anyway, for the questions i have:

1. Why does, with default settings, the motherboard show the 1.2ghz chip as 900mhz?
2. I wanted to see what would happen if i tried overclocking without connecting the L1 bridges.. I went straight to 1.2ghz with no problems. Bios reports it as that too. Is that just a fake reading (acutally still running at a 900mhz speed)? MBM5 says i have a 1200mhz...I went to 1.3ghz after that time... Ran fine... but i went back to 1.2ghz to be on the safe side. How is this possible if i never connected the bridges?
3. Since the motherboard only supports up to 200mhz FSB, what is happening with my T-BIRD and its 266mhz FSB?
4. I have 320mb of (eck) pc-100 memory. What should I set everything to?
5. Finally... I have a nice cooling system now (thermaltake chrome orb, lots of fans, etc). How high do you think i could overclock it? The MSI manual says it supports up to 1.2ghz but I've heard of running faster. And we all know faster is better. I'd like to get to 1.4-1.5ghz.. doesn't that sound fun? Not sure if my motherboard can handle it though.. it is slightly out-dated..
6. What's the tempature I should be running at? I know about the 15C under-read...

I'm still relatively new to the overclocking scene, but i have a general idea about everything. Any help will be appreciated..

BTW: System Specs

1.2ghz AMD T-BIRD 266mhz FSB
320mb of PC-100 memory
64mb VOODOO 5 AGP
Sound Blaster X-Gamer
MSI K7T Pro 2-a mobo
Windows 2000

[e_storm]

I have not run an AMD computer yet and don't know much about your specific motherboard, but I can tell you what I do know:

1) why it would show default 900mhz?... not sure but I know I've seen that question in the forum before, its probably out there somewhere.

2) How did you get it up to 1.3g?... did you up the multiplier or up the fsb speed? I think connecting the L1 bridge is only to allow you to change the multiplier. You can change the fsb no matter what, as long as the mobo allows it. Also, if MBM stays you're running at 1200mhz, I would believe that... unless you have a reason not to.

3) I'm not real clear on this, maybe someone else could answer it but... I think if you have a 200mhz board and a 266mhz chip, the chip will only be utilizing up to 200mhz and no more. You won't be getting the full 266mhz potential out of the chip. Like I said, not real clear on this one.

4) I'm not sure what thing you want to set (cas settings?, fsb speed?), you'll have to be more specific. Is it good quality memory? or cheapo stuff? If its cheap stuff, that will probably greatly limit you ability to overclock the fsb. You will probably get BSODs upon booting if you go too high. If it can handle it, set it to cas2... although you won't be able to OC the fsb as much at that setting.

5) As long as your chip is an AXIA, you should be able to get fairly high overlocking it.. the things that will limit you are probably the ram, and maybe the board (I don't know how good of an oc'er it is). Move up slowly in fsb and run stress programs to see if it can handle it... then move up more and monitor temps. you usually have to up the voltage at a certain point too.

Good luck, I hope this helped.
Repost with more detail on settings (allowable fsb settings, voltage settings, etc..) and maybe we can be of more help.