1.4 GHz Tualatin PIII CPU /w adapter for all 133FSB boards... opinions wanted.

[Ben333]

So, I already pulled the trigger... and I don't think either way I'll beat myself up too much for it (maybe pat myself on the back??) haha

There's a seller in Korea selling 1.4 GHz Pentium 3 chips, which appear to be pressed / soldered into some kind of PCB width shim... which would appear to maybe move a couple pins around, or connect them to different places. And... maybe also do some voltage regulation...?

I threw out most of my old hardware probably 5+ years ago, and the only thing I ever come across free now is Pentium 4 or newer. I have one 133FSB board, and it is totally reliable right now running a 1 GHz Coppermine CPU. I'm going to pop this thing in it, but I'm going to be a little disappointed if weeks or months later either the board or CPU dies... Normally I'd slap someone in the face for spending $30 on a CPU that's over 10 years old (almost 15) but the fact that the adapter is included, AND that the seller has sold over 150+ units in the last few months gives me some confidence.

If I deem it unsafe, I guess I could always stick it on ebay myself. With a disclaimer. And I'm sure I could get my money back just for being a seller out of the USA. (That's what I wanted, but would have been with a different (better?) adapter and buying the chip separately.

But anyway, the board is an Intel d815eea, but it has a Gateway BIOS, and I've been unable to flash any version of Intel's BIOS to it. I'd like to do that.

Link to the ebay page:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/281238323137

Most importantly though, I don't want there to be a possibility of this setup killing the VooDoo 5 5500 that I got for $10. I don't think that's likely but again, that is why I'm looking for input.

 

[SF101]

just wondering why you would be building such a pc?

 

[JLK03F150]

My questions to the seller would be can the shim/pwr adapter be removed, and what, exactly, does it do. I saw on Ark that the default VID for that CPU is 1.50v & his info says '1.45v fixed', so yeah maybe there is some voltage regulation. Double check shipping too. It might end up costing you $55-60 for what should be a $10 CPU.

I was thinking last night about my tualatin celeron 1.4GHz in a slocket. That PC was great for some vintage gaming. Sadly, it's long gone.

 

[Ben333]

just wondering why you would be building such a pc?

Just to have a glorious machine that one would have drooled over in 2000 / 01 ish. And I enjoy playing Unreal / UT and Quake 3... other games of the time aswell. The machine mostly runs Windows 98 SE, and I run it on the internet / network. Can do light browsing using Opera via KernelEX and media playback with VLC. Also have Office 2000 on it. I use it whenever I feel like, and it feels good! Have it on a 17" viewsonic CRT, it's my time machine

My questions to the seller would be can the shim/pwr adapter be removed, and what, exactly, does it do. I saw on Ark that the default VID for that CPU is 1.50v & his info says '1.45v fixed', so yeah maybe there is some voltage regulation. Double check shipping too. It might end up costing you $55-60 for what should be a $10 CPU.

I was thinking last night about my tualatin celeron 1.4GHz in a slocket. That PC was great for some vintage gaming. Sadly, it's long gone.

Well, I already paid and it has already been shipped. But that's a good point! If the info I'm looking for isn't readily known it wouldn't be rocket science to take it into my own hands and just check that adapter out. I guess ultimately that's what I'll have to do if I wanna be smart... or just risk my board.

And the shipping was free / included. Customs fees may be another story... If that's a big surprise I might simply refuse it and ask for a refund. eBay caters to cry baby buyers, trust me, I've been on the seller end before

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

Sub'd because I rock 2 Tualtins!

So you have an [non Tualtin compatible] FC-PGA board and you bought this Tualtin PIII that comes with an adapter right?
If the adapter is built right I can't see it killing anything. Mr.Scott should find this thread (only a matter of time! ) and he'll be able to provide more details on this stuff.

Personally, I'd try and see if there's a way to remove the adapter first..
EDIT: Ohhhh I see. Looks like he soldered the adapter to the CPU itself!
Hmmmmm.

Wonder if you can find a cheap BX board or something to test this CPU in first. No sense in risking your good board eh?

Also why can't you flash the BIOS? Some error preventing you from flashing?

 

[wingman99]

That is going to be a nice time machine.

 

[Ben333]

Sub'd because I rock 2 Tualtins!

So you have an [non Tualtin compatible] FC-PGA board and you bought this Tualtin PIII that comes with an adapter right?
If the adapter is built right I can't see it killing anything. Mr.Scott should find this thread (only a matter of time! ) and he'll be able to provide more details on this stuff.

Personally, I'd try and see if there's a way to remove the adapter first..
EDIT: Ohhhh I see. Looks like he soldered the adapter to the CPU itself!
Hmmmmm.

Wonder if you can find a cheap BX board or something to test this CPU in first. No sense in risking your good board eh?

Also why can't you flash the BIOS? Some error preventing you from flashing?

Well, the "just plug it in" thing is all dandy and such... but it's a cheap Chinese... (err.. Korean...) jobby... and IDK what the heck it really is. How's I do know someone is stickin up for the small number of guys running ancient dinosaurs around the interwebs?? Basically I came here to ask how crappy "crappy" can be, and considered maybe someone here had used this adapter or something similar.

At best, I guess I was lookin for a "Don't do it!" lol

Getting a BX board would be somewhat counterproductive... Although... I probably have some 100 MHz FSB boards lying around. I don't think that helps me. Even with a slotket, I wouldn't be able to test this 133 MHz FSB chip. What I REALLY have lying around with recent donations and such is 66 MHz Celly / P II boards... and that's even more useless

My Intel D815EEA is supah sweet, but has no bells and whistles. If something bad happens, I'll have a good excuse to do my research and pick out something better... (Though I do dread spending > $20 on 2000s tech)

Any Intel utility says I have the "wrong" version to flash my BIOS. The software is wrong... not me...

What board do your run Silver Pharaoah? Does it have AGP?


@wingman99

It sure will be! It already is a fantastic, speedy "oldschool" build. I'm just imagining how much cooler she'll be sporting an extra 400 MHz... 140% of what it is now!

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

Well, the "just plug it in" thing is all dandy and such... but it's a cheap Chinese... (err.. Korean...) jobby... and IDK what the heck it really is. How's I do know someone is stickin up for the small number of guys running ancient dinosaurs around the interwebs?? Basically I came here to ask how crappy "crappy" can be, and considered maybe someone here had used this adapter or something similar.

At best, I guess I was lookin for a "Don't do it!" lol

Getting a BX board would be somewhat counterproductive... Although... I probably have some 100 MHz FSB boards lying around. I don't think that helps me. Even with a slotket, I wouldn't be able to test this 133 MHz FSB chip. What I REALLY have lying around with recent donations and such is 66 MHz Celly / P II boards... and that's even more useless

My Intel D815EEA is supah sweet, but has no bells and whistles. If something bad happens, I'll have a good excuse to do my research and pick out something better... (Though I do dread spending > $20 on 2000s tech)

Any Intel utility says I have the "wrong" version to flash my BIOS. The software is wrong... not me...

What board do your run Silver Pharaoah? Does it have AGP?


@wingman99

It sure will be! It already is a fantastic, speedy "oldschool" build. I'm just imagining how much cooler she'll be sporting an extra 400 MHz... 140% of what it is now!

Ahh I see. I've never used and adapter for these chips, but ebay has ones that work for $35 USD....
What I meant about the BX board is grab any board just to see if this CPU thing would fry it. Rather fry a cheap board than a good one eh?

Looking at your manual there seemsto be some BIOS recovery mode.... you have to change a jumper and insert a "rescue" floppy that has the flash program and the BIOS IIRC. 2 beeps means it worked. Wonder if there's a BIOS flasher that can force a flash? like an AMI dev flasher...

My board? I paid $77 USD for it, it's a Gigabyte GA-6ETXDR server board. Dual Tualtin support. It's my server right now
There's NO overclocking in it whatsoever save for memory timings..... Mr.Scott was able to look inside my BIOS and confirm there's no hidden OC options

 

[DaveB]

Ah, Tualatins. Found this old photo of my dual Tualatin rig from back in the day. The motherboard was an MSI Pro266TD Master-LR VIA chipset with DDR memory.

 

[Mr.Scott]

The adapter is basically a non adjustable Lin Lin adapter soldered right to the CPU. Personally, I would have just got a Lin Lin and then you could use a Pentium S Tualatin instead of the cheap Celeron.
Note that the adapter adds a little bit more than a millimeter to the overall height of the CPU. It'll make the HS clip really tight to snap down so be careful installing.

 

[Ben333]

Thanks SP, yeah.. that's a bit out of my budget, but I'm sure I'll look it up just out of curiosity! Do you have a thread with details or pics? I'd like to see it. Good suggestion with the jumper settings or flashing via a floppy. I may have to do that if this chip doesn't work. Other than that, I just didn't want that damn "GATEWAY" splash screen spoiling my custom build :s

DaveB, Thanks Man! Cool stuff! I had no idea you could run P3s with DDR... Awesome!

Mr Scott, this is the 133 MHz FSB Pentium III, not the 100 MHz FSB Celeron. And since 1.4 GHz is the highest they made, the adapter being non removable is not an issue. I'll give my HS clip some love with the pliers to make sure it's not too tight... Or possibly remove the IHS from the new chip. Either seems like an easy fix.

What the heck... I'm gonna try it. I bet it'll work great.

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

Thread is long since it was a suggestion thread too (like what parts to buy etc.) but page 11 has a final pic of the server. There's more in the thread. Pics of the ECC RAM, CPU, mobo, case...

It was not cheap since dual PIII with Tualtin support are hard to find in today's world. (Well at least the better boards are )
I almost killed that board by shorting some pins too!


Definitely loosen up the clip on the heatsinks.. My screwdriver slipped installing mine and scratched the PSU a bit!
I'm still wondering how I'm gonna remove those clips to changed the TIM one day... They are on there really, really tight.

 

[Ben333]

Definitely loosen up the clip on the heatsinks.. My screwdriver slipped installing mine and scratched the PSU a bit!
I'm still wondering how I'm gonna remove those clips to changed the TIM one day... They are on there really, really tight.

Oh my... more than once, thankfully on crap I didn't care a lot about... When you've just about got the clip over the plastic lug, then bam, you realize you're gouging a flat head screw driver full force across your motherboard at all kinda of fragile little surface mount components and ripping it over traces at the same time. I have both killed and (amazingly) done no damage at all, several times. Now I use extreme care. And a lot of newer clips have screwdriver pockets in them, to prevent that.

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

Oh my... more than once, thankfully on crap I didn't care a lot about... When you've just about got the clip over the plastic lug, then bam, you realize you're gouging a flat head screw driver full force across your motherboard at all kinda of fragile little surface mount components and ripping it over traces at the same time. I have both killed and (amazingly) done no damage at all, several times. Now I use extreme care. And a lot of newer clips have screwdriver pockets in them, to prevent that.

Hmmm wonder if I could mod mine?
Already had to chop off a bit of a clip. It was hitting the mobo's ATX power pins
Poor board design there.

Any ETA on when you'll get the CPU?

 

[Ben333]

Estimated delivery Tuesday, Mar 8, 2016 - Wednesday, Apr 6, 2016

But apparently the package is in NY... so why would it even take a whole week from today...

Hopefully I get it sooner! Also, I found a sacrificial test bed... but not really. It's a Dell XPS with a 600 MHz PIII. Didn't check if it's 100 MHz FSB or 133 MHz, I'll know later today when I mess around with it. My money is definitely on 100. And I'd need a slotket... I've only ever owned one, and haven't seen the thing in years. At least if I do blow up my current setup this would make a half way (literally, clock speed wise) decent replacement till I get something better.

 

[Ben333]

Okay, so I got it yesterday. Actually a lot faster than I thought!

To make a long story short, the D815EEA does NOT support Tualatins. I say this, because with the stock BIOS it shows a black screen. And with the latest BIOS it displays "This CPU is not supported on this desktop board"... err something like that.

So I had the 06 revision I believe. And whatever I had was a Gateway OEM BIOS. I guess this board was popular in Gateways and Dells, and had it been the real retail version it probably would have had onboard AC 97 audio and Ethernet.

When you download the BIOS updates to run in windows from Intel's site, they throw errors. "You're gonna brick me, stupid" But when has that ever stopped anyone? So, I make the boot floppy. Those are good for wrecking stuff, right? NO! It knew, and stopped the process again.

What I ended up having to do was pull the CMOS reset jumper. Not move it over, remove it. And then boot the PC with the BIOS update floppy in. I went to revision 11 which gave a screen with the Tualatin installed but then shut itself down each time.

I then found a forum post about running a tualatin in this board, that wasn't even in english. Used google translate, and saw mention of the revision 10 BIOS. Just my luck. 10 and 11 are the only ones Intel provides the floppy utility for. So I downgraded the BIOS from 11 to 10... and BAM, it works!

But now I get a windows protection error trying to boot windows 98. Booted a DSL CD, surfed the net, fooled around... no issues. Tried another HDD I had 98SE on, same problem. Tried putting XP on a fresh drive, "Setup cannot set the required Windows XP configuration information"

So we'll see if this was worth doing or not... My board now says INTEL instead of GATEWAY while booting up, so I guess that alone was worth it.

EDIT: Okay, so Windows NT 4 is also a team player... That's a relief! I think maybe XP just didn't like my SCSI card or something...

 

[wingman99]

Looks good can you surf on the internet and if you can what is it like with a old PC? I use to have a PIII 700 it was my favorite PC.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Looks good can you surf on the internet

Really?
Of course you can.
There are still a billion OEM PIII's running out there.

 

[Ben333]

Well, that honestly isn't a bad question! 10 years ago Pentium 3s were still old... but you could use it every day! I had a bunch of PCs sporting P3s before 2007ish, and they could do everything I wanted them to.

This damn thing has a 1.4 GHz CPU and half a gig of RAM and it manages to chop up a youtube video. They've turned everything on the internet into a complete resource hog... and it sucks.

But to answer your question wingman, Yes! Wikipedia, Google, WebMD, and most text / graphics come up fine. Flash and other crap kills it.

I have a most pleasureful browsing experience under Win 98 SE even with the 1 GHz chip. I use KernelEX to run FireFox 10, and some slightly older version of Opera. Both work well, I prefer opera.

This thing shares files with my new desktop, and surfs the net! On 98SE, NT 4.0, and now XP... just cause I wanted to quickly see if this chip was stable without getting into a huge round of updates / drivers on a clean 98SE install.

Not to mention, I get 117 FPS average on Unreal Tournament at 1280 x 1024

 

[wingman99]

Thanks, so you can run YouTube video smooth, I did not get your meaning?

Really?
Of course you can.
There are still a billion OEM PIII's running out there.

I did not know if he was connected to the internet.

LOL have you seen my Avatar the P3 is my favorite PC, it was so powerful they went back to the architecture with the core 2

I just upgraded 775 because of some problems also it was slow on the internet.