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Socket 7 M-Board for left-over CPUs (modified 0 times) ckbone Profile I've been looking into finding some good socket 7 boards to build several cheap computers. I've got several RISE chips, a k63-333, and some k62+-450s. I found this Gigibyte board(about $60)....according to documentation on this and other sites, it should work with all three types. Anybody know anything about this board or company? http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/products/ga5smm.htm 04-13-2001 16:36:35

RE:Socket 7 M-Board for left-over CPUs (modified 0 times) BadFlash Profile | Email Gigabyte makes good quality boards. Best $/Quality ratio for the hacker is PCCHIPs if super high performance is not required. PCCHIPS is the king of the no-name board and usually if you can't figure out what you have, it is made by them. They make lots of integrated sound/video board like the M571/M598/M599 series boards. All the M5 boards are socket 7. Setup is a little rough on the older boards, but I can help you with that. Certainly no worse than an IOPENER. For around 50 buck you get a 450Mhz cable board with IDE, floppy, sound and video, and in some cases LAN and modem for $40-$70. Excellent entry level systems. PCCHIPS makes Amptron, Alton, Ability Matsonic, Houston Tech, Eurone, Zeta, Pine, 04-13-2001 20:05:27

RE:Socket 7 M-Board for left-over CPUs (modified 0 times) Tackhead Profile And if you've got an old Asus TX97-series board from your Pentium-I days, there's a BIOS upgrade (Beta BIOS 0112) that allows the use of lower core voltages. On a K6-III-333 (from an IO), I had to back off the FSB to 60 MHz to get the CPU to run stably at 360 MHz - 400 didn't work. A K6-2+-450 should be fine at 400, and if the stuff on your PCI bus can handle the overclock, 6x75 = 450 or 6x83 = 500. Not feasible if building anything new, but if you've got a surplus store that has old Pentium-I boxen, a handy thing to know. 04-16-2001 11:42:42

RE:Socket 7 M-Board for left-over CPUs (modified 0 times) boykster Profile | Email If you can find one, the best socket7 board I've ever used (still using with one of my k6-II+ @500) is .... Asus P55-T2P4 But...back to topic...gigabyte makes really good boards, IMHO. My first homebrew pc was built on a gigabyte 486 board to use the AMD 5x86-133 chip....man those were the days :P cheers, boykster 04-16-2001 12:09:05

RE:Socket 7 M-Board for left-over CPUs (modified 0 times) ckbone Profile Thanks for the help....Basically I'm looking for a board with on-board audio and video (to cut down the cost of the complete system). Requirements: must support all cpus I have lying around (see above). UDMA33/66, at least 3 pci slots, 4 slots max so it'll fit in a small case, ATX form, at least 2 dimm slots, 2 USB ports. I'D like to avoid pcchips boards, if only to elimimate extra cables. Here's one I found (about $70). Never heard of the company though....Jetway 531cf http://www.jetway.com.tw/evisn/index.html 04-16-2001 19:08:58

RE:Socket 7 M-Board for left-over CPUs (modified 0 times) buyplenty Profile Fry's has a SuperSocket 7 MB (w/audio and video) plus, wait we have more, an AMD K6-III-333 all for $64 at the Oregon/Wilsonville store. I plan to get one tomorrow. I'l either have a left over mb or cpu ... depending on what I do. 04-16-2001 19:42:58

RE:Socket 7 M-Board for left-over CPUs (modified 0 times) Skypilot Profile | Email Buyplenty - sounds like you're from my neck of the woods. Look at my profile and drop me a note if you want to chat. Skypilot - "Keep the blue side up" 04-16-2001 22:57:26

RE:Socket 7 M-Board for left-over CPUs (modified 0 times) BadFlash Profile | Email Ckbone, I don't get the "avoid extra cables" thing. My M599LMR has all of that stuff. 04-17-2001 11:18:10

RE:Socket 7 M-Board for left-over CPUs (modified 0 times) ckbone Profile Badflash....To be more clear, every PCChips board I've ever seen had extra short cables to attach the USB ports to the case, other cables to attach the modem if it had one, another cable to connect the sound ports to the case.....I want to avoid that setup, as I am going to be using very small ATX cases with only four open slots to match the pci/isa slots. I think using a PCChips board, would end up taking up the only available slots with these small boards. I built a computer last year with a board that had an SIS 530 video chip, a Solo1 sound chip....It ended up being a screamer with a K62 450. I think I may go with the Gigibyte board....If it works with all my different cpus I'll report back. 04-17-2001 16:35:45

RE:Socket 7 M-Board for left-over CPUs (modified 0 times) BadFlash Profile | Email With the M599LMR the sound, video, ports all come out the back of the standard ATX gasket. The modem and LAN are daughterboard that plug in to plugs and come out a slot in the back, no cables. 04-17-2001 19:50:25

RE:Socket 7 M-Board for left-over CPUs (modified 0 times) ckbone Profile OK....I got several Gigibyte boards(GA-5SMM). I'm having problems getting a K62+450 to boot. According to the documentation it is a supported chip. The voltage is set at 2.0, with a 4.5x multiplier, 100fsb. During the boot process the CPU is identified correctly, but the system hangs at "Verifying DMI Pool Data". I've tried the BIOS and Setup default settings with the same result. Any ideas? I have yet to try the RISE chips. 05-03-2001 03:47:07

RE:Socket 7 M-Board for left-over CPUs (modified 0 times) BadFlash Profile | Email My guess is a hard drive problem with detection. I've seen this lots of times. Try unhooking the hard drive & setting drives to none in the bios and see if it boots from a floppy. Try the IOPENER trick too. Clock it down to 300 and see if that helps. 05-03-2001 10:49:38

RE:Socket 7 M-Board for left-over CPUs (modified 0 times) ckbone Profile Well I got the gigabyte board to boot with the AMD K6II+ 450. I guess my eye-sight is going....I had the fsb set at 112, rather than 100. Damn those small dip switches. I haven't tried any other cpus on this board, but in the documentation...the RISE 266, Winchip2, pentiums, Amd k6II/III to 550 are supported. This is a neat board, small, fast...I only needed to add a modem. I used a left-over websurfer modem...works great. I wonder how it will work with a RISE chip....I'll check it when I put this next board together. 05-07-2001 06:00:11

RE:Socket 7 M-Board for left-over CPUs (modified 0 times) ckbone Profile FWIW...Check out pricewatch...A 512mb pc133 chip is down to $93. You can build a fast computer really cheap. The AMD K62+450 is about $30. The small cases I got at a show for $22. Now is the time if you're going to build. http://www.pricewatch.com/ 05-07-2001 06:09:35

RE:Socket 7 M-Board for left-over CPUs (modified 0 times) Kudzu Profile Tossing in my two cents. The Asus P/I-P55T2P4 must be board revision 3 to run a k62+ natively, with beta bios 0207 from asuscom.de. If your board is not revision 3, you will need to purchase a voltage adapter from powerleap or the CM175-UNIV voltage adapter from Concept MFG at 650-365-1162. The only true downside to these two adapters are the 400MHZ speed limit, but if you really need the extra 50MHZ just buy a different board. The ram is at a very good price, but make sure it is certified for an intel bx or socket 7 board. Some of them use a different type of chip which is only compatible with some via boards. 05-07-2001 17:36:18

RE:Socket 7 M-Board for left-over CPUs (modified 0 times) Tackhead Profile Asus TX97 boards (e.g. TX97-E, plain ol' TX97, etc.) will go down to 2.0Vcore with beta BIOS 0112. I'm currently running a K6-2+-450 from TigerDirect at 6.0x83 = 500 and doing software-based DVD decoding. Works great. - ASUS TX-97 mobo - 64M "old-sk00l" SDRAM (i.e. "before it was called PC66", though it's probably equivalent to PC66) - Pioneer DVD-104S (IDE 10X drive, slot-loader) - ATI Rage II+ PCI card, TV-out, "hardware motion compensation", but no real MPEG-2 decoding capability - SoundBlaster 32 (ISA soundcard) - K6-2+-450 o/c to 500 (6.0x83) - Fresh Win98SE install Total hardware cost, $34.99 for the K6-2+ Results: Minor skipping under WinDVD 2000, because I'd forgotten to enable DMA mode on the DVD-ROM from within W98SE device mangler. I used the tool at http://www.simmtester.com to verify that the RAM could work at 83 MHz. A K6-III-333 from Fry's will boot Windoze only at 360 (6.0x60) on this mobo. I have not tested software-based DVD decoding with this config, but would suspect it might also work. Given how low-end this system is, I suspect any 430TX-based motherboard capable of running a K6-2+ (gotta be the "plus" version of the K6-2) or K6-3 mobile will have a good shot at doing software-based DVD, even with integrated video. (Did any boards of this era have integrated NTSC-out?) The K6-2+ (128K of L2 on-die) and K6-3 mobile (256K of L2 on-die) didn't exist in 1997 - so all those FAQs about "you can't do software-only DVD without a high-end chip" don't necessarily apply. This hack has me sufficiently intrigued that I'm gonna spend some time tomorrow seeing just how "slow" I can clock this thing and still get good playback. Suggested torture-test for anyone else who wants to play with software DVD - the "chopper smashes into building" scene in chapter 32 of "The Matrix". 05-08-2001 11:14:23

RE:Socket 7 M-Board for left-over CPUs (modified 0 times) ckbone Profile I uploaded a few pictures of the Gigabyte board I used. It handles a K62+-450 with no BIOS upgrading. I don't know if it handles software dvd...never tried. Notice the location of the IDE, floppy, and power connectors....makes for a very clean install with absolutely no ribbon cables hanging over the board. It supports UDMA33/66. Voltage is adjustable from 1.3v to 3.5v. Multipliers from 1.5 to 5.5. FSB from 66 to 133. Supports three 256mb sdram chips. I've installed WinME...no sweat. Fast setup...you can build this computer for less than $250 with 128meg ram, 15gig H/D, mouse/keyboard, using all new parts off E-Bay and elsewhere. Pictures here: http://photos.yahoo.com/ckbone63123 05-10-2001 17:20:01

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