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K6-III mod w/adjustable Vcore for V1
K6-3 mod w/adjustable Vcore for V1

New MessageK6-III mod w/adjustable Vcore for V1 (modified 0 times) Tackhead
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Props to: Turbo3 and Las_Vegas for their research that enabled me to get a K6-III running on a V1 and V2.

There are many useful threads on this subject in the Technical area of the BBS. Almost all of the credit for what I did in this mod belongs to others. It is only by standing on the shoulders of giants that I can see far with my opened-I.

Pictures of my mod are at:

http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/tackhead_1999?d&.flabel=fld14&.src=ph

Summary of my mod (based on Las_Vegas' hack)

1) Move R60/61 to R184/5 to enable split pane voltage.

2) Remove R202 to give Vcore equal to value from resistor divider network

3) Lift pin 3 of U16.

4) Connect the lifted pin 3 to the junction of a 100K resistor and a 50K pot. The other end of the 100K resistor goes to GND. The other end of the 50K pot goes to a 2.5V reference from the Maxim chip.

4.5) (If you don't have a pot, a 27K resistor should give you a Vcore of ~1.97V. I tested the hack with a 27K resistor and went to a pot when I wanted to explore higher speeds.)

5) WITH THE CPU SOCKET EMPTY, test your Vcore by powering up and measuring from GND to the Vcore pads of the now-empty R60/61. If Vcore is "safe" for your CPU, install the CPU and boot. If not, check your work and try again. Do not try to run a K6-3 at voltages higher than 2.2V.

6) Optional: Adjust SW1 (R327, R130, R328) to set CPU multiplier.

7) Optional: Adjust SW2 (R208, R329, R330, R331) to set front side bus (FSB) clock.

Linuxguru has a thread in the main board with a even simpler Vcore mod:

http://www.linux-hacker.net/cgi-bin/UltraBoard/UltraBoard.pl?Action=ShowPost&Board=technical&Post=1638&Idle=0&Sort=0&Order=Descend&Page=0&Session=

09-05-2000 16:09:55

New MessageRE:K6-III mod w/adjustable Vcore for V1 (modified 0 times) Kudzu
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Two questions.

1. How is the pot hooked up in your picture? Which is positive, and which ground?
I have a similar pot., 1st positive, 2nd GND and 3rd (?)

2. Could nail polish be used to insulate the pad under pin 3, so as to avoid any accidents? If not, can you suggest anything better for the job?

Thank you!

Kudzu

09-12-2000 20:15:57

New MessageRE:K6-III mod w/adjustable Vcore for V1 (modified 0 times) Kudzu
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NM on 1, it worked by using pin 2 for 2.5v and 3 for GND + 100k Resistor and pin3 wire.

I did try this on my v3, and I ran into one problem. When I go to check the voltage, it comes up at .67? Did I fry something?

Thanks.

Kudzu

09-12-2000 23:59:10

New MessageRE:K6-III mod w/adjustable Vcore for V1 (modified 0 times) Tackhead
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Kudzu: Re: pot on V1.

Short answer is "I dunno" - pots don't really have "positive, GND and other" pins.

My V1 hack uses only two pins of the pot. I have a variable resistance between 0 and 50K between those pins. The other resistor is still a 100K to GND.

Basically - look at my "100K and 27K pot" picture, then mentally substitute "2 pins of a 50K pot" in place of the 27K pot to get my adjustable mod. The easiest way of figuring out which pins to use for your particular pot is to have an ohmmeter sitting on two pins while you tweak the pot.


For your V3, I recommend the original Turbo3 hack, available in the ~100-message thread on "sw2... sw3... what's the right setting?"

http://www.linux-hacker.net/cgi-bin/UltraBoard/UltraBoard.pl?Action=ShowPost&Board=technical&Post=1528&Idle=0&Sort=0&Order=Descend&Page=0&Session=

Turbo3 has pictures of his V3 hack at:

http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/turbo3pictures

In a nutshell, Turbo3's hack puts the resistor divider network entirely on U16.

You can see the differences in board layouts near U16 by looking at my V1 (tackhead_1999) and Turbo's V3 (turbo3pictures) pics on our Yahoo briefcases.

R342 and R343 do not exist on a V1, so I had to go the other route (building the resistor divider network on the SMT cap near the power supply) suggested by Las_Vegas in this thread:

http://www.linux-hacker.net/cgi-bin/UltraBoard/UltraBoard.pl?Action=ShowPost&Board=technical&Post=1624&Idle=0&Sort=0&Order=Descend&Page=0&Session=

Las_Vegas has a pic of his V1 hack here:

http://www.lvcm.com/lna/images/vcoreadj.jpg

The only thing he's done differently is he got his GND from the other end of C248, and I got my GND from the other end of C257.

For lifting the pad of U16, nail polish should do the trick, with the caveat that it'll be difficult to remove. I went for hot glue, which, given the delicate nature of U16, will probably be impossible to remove without breaking the pin.

As I see it, the risk isn't that the pin will "drop" down onto the pad, but that something (like the wire you send to the pin!) will eventually wiggle or strain or break the pin off. Holding it in place so that it can't move is probably the better way to protect against damage. But the better you hold it in place, the less-reversible the mod will be.

('Course, once you've got K6-III in a WinChip-based unit, as long as you keep the speed low enough for Q16 to run cool, you'll never *want* to go back!)

09-13-2000 12:00:00

New MessageRE:K6-III mod w/adjustable Vcore for V1 (modified 0 times) Kudzu
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Thanks a bunch Tackhead, it worked! I found out what the problem was with the voltage, I had inadvertently soldered the 100k resistor and 50k pot to the wrong place.

Quote: As I see it, the risk isn't that the pin will "drop" down onto the pad, but that something (like the wire you send to the pin!) will eventually wiggle or strain or break the pin off. Holding it in place so that it can't move is probably the better way to protect against damage. But the better you hold it in place, the less-reversible the mod will be.

I tried the nail polish method, and it worked just fine. I first coated the pad under the pin and let it fully dry, then I dropped the pin back down onto the pad and attached the wire. An additional coat (or four) secured the pin to the board quite nicely IMO, and the mod still works, with no contact whatsoever between the pins and the pad.

Thanks again!

Kudzu

09-14-2000 14:26:27

New MessageRE:K6-III mod w/adjustable Vcore for V1 (modified 0 times) Kudzu
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I thought I'd point out the other benefit to the nail polish method.

It comes off with nail polish remover, so nothing is irreversible. :)

Kudzu

09-14-2000 14:28:14

New MessageRE:K6-III mod w/adjustable Vcore for V1 (modified 0 times) ASPguy
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kudzu, how did u attach the wire to the pin3 of u16?

From my undertanding, you put nail polish on the pin3 pad, then you brought the pin3 back down, and applied nailpolish on it? when and how did you attach the wire to pin3? and if you had solder, wouldn't that have melted the nail polish?

-aspguy

10-23-2000 14:12:35

New MessageRE:K6-III mod w/adjustable Vcore for V1 (modified 0 times) Kudzu
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kudzu, how did u attach the wire to the pin3 of u16?
From my undertanding, you put nail polish on the pin3 pad, then you brought the pin3 back down, and applied nailpolish on it? when and how did you attach the wire to pin3? and if you had solder, wouldn't that have melted the nail polish?

ASPguy, here's how I did it again. After lifting the pin you need to do this

1st. Apply a coat or two of nail polish to the pad, let dry. Make sure you covered the whole pad, check for voltage with a multimeter if you are not sure.
2nd. Gently apply pressure on pin 3 until it's about halfway down to the pad you sealed with nail polish.
3rd. Solder the small wire on pin 3. After the solder has cooled, drop the pin the rest of the way to the pad.
4th. Apply another few coats of nail polish to the pad and pin to secure the pin to the board.

If you're melting anything, you should give some thought to getting a needle tip for your iron so your joins are a little more precise.

Kudzu

11-12-2000 03:32:31

New MessageRE:K6-III mod w/adjustable Vcore for V1 (modified 0 times) wb8nbs
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I'd like to publicly thank Tackhead for those fabulous pictures on the V1 core voltage mod. They couldn't be better and I'm typing this now with a new K6-3 in my IO. The only problem I had was Linux not booting. I had to raise the core voltage to 2.05 to get it to load. So - I took a deep breath and ditched the RF shield to let cooling air in as I don't want to run a fan.

I made a heat sink for Q16 out of a strip of flashing copper about 1"x3" folded back on iself, soldered it directly to the large tab on the transistor. It helps quite a bit. A tip if you are doing this mod, get a 10k wire lead resistor, value actually not important, cut the leads to half inch each, solder one end to the pad nearest the board edge where R60 used to be. Let the other end stick out the edge of the heat sink so you can easily clip on your volt meter to measure Vcore with the heat sink in place.

12-24-2000 18:30:35

New MessageRE:K6-III mod w/adjustable Vcore for V1 (modified 0 times) ASPguy
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i'm afraid to do the amd mod.

i have several mod kits. can you give a suggestion?

i've tried doing it before but it was messy.
how do you get the solder on the resistor to put onto the pads?
how do you solder in the dip switches? how do you tin?
and finally, how did you do the u16 pin 3? was there another way? when i solder my wire to that it broke off the pin3.

much thanks.

12-26-2000 02:53:18

New MessageRE:K6-III mod w/adjustable Vcore for V1 (modified 0 times) Tackhead
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wb8nbs: Thanks for the kind words, and glad you got it running. Yeah, the testing of the HLT instruction in Linux, or any "software CPU cooler" in 'doze requires enough voltage for the CPU to wake up from the HLT.

ASPGuy: Practice, practice, practice.

"Tinning" leads refers to getting some solder on the lead before you actually glom the parts together.

If your experience with soldering tiny things is limited, do *not* attempt this mod (and this goes to anyone else reading) until you've gone to a local surplus store, picked up some junk circuit boards with surface-mount parts, and practiced.

Some keyword searches on google.com or other search engines for "tinned leads" or "soldering techniques" will take you a long way.

Tinning the lead is steps 5 and 6 of http://www.overclockers.com/tips195/

But again - if you're solder-inexperienced, do not try this mod 'till you've practiced on a junk board.

12-26-2000 12:23:10

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