Heh, found an old review of the SE440BX-1 Motherboard at AnandTech, worth reading IMO. I remember watching his videos back in the day. Anyways I think I will try to add original review links for the hardware I choose to better explain my choices.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/148

I have a new Pentium III 600EB CPU on hand. The problem is of course that the SE440BX-2 is too smart not to run it at 450-MHz, it just gives a nice beep error and fails to post. The same CPU tested in another BX board (Gigabyte) posts just fine at 450-MHz. Digging into the Intel P3 technical docs shows that for a 100-MHz Bus only system BSEL1 should be grounded. I am willing to bet that the Gigabyte board doesn't look at BSEL1 (Has it grounded on the motherboard) but that the SE440BX-2 does as Intel produced newer revisions for the P3E series but didn't want users to accidentally run P3EB CPU's in them. It seems to me that grounding BSEL1 (Pin A14) should produce the desired results, the same way disconnecting BSEL0 (Pin B21) forced the Celeron 300A from a 66-MHz Bus to a 100-MHz Bus. Here is the logic for BSEL.

66 100 133
BSEL0 0 1 1
BSEL1 0 0 1

So, if disconnecting BSEL0 tricks a motherboard into thinking a Celeron 300A should be riding a 100-MHz Bus then grounding BSEL1 should trick the motherboard into thinking a P3EB CPU should also be riding a 100-MHz Bus. Luckily nearby pins A10 and A18 are grounds according to datasheet. So today I should have time to break out my soldering iron and magnification visor and put the theory into practice. End result if it works? I will have a P3-450E which means almost half the power and heat of a non-E CPU with plenty of power to play the games I want.

Well tying A14 to A10 had no effect. I am assuming it is detecting CPU by ID. I will look at what CPU I want to get for the system, hopefully something NOS.

In the meantime I have populated all three DIMM slots with NOS Micron 128MB, PC-100, SDRAM DIMMS. Part# MT16LSDT1664AG-10EC7. I put in a P3 500 I had lying around to start doing a thorough RAM test for 24-hours using Memtest86+ v4.20.

4. RAM: 3 Micron (Crucial) MT16LSDT1664AG-10EC7 128MB, PC-100, SDRAM DIMMS (384MB total)

Why? Because I want to stay under the 512MB issues with Windows 98 SE without having to do anything. These are low density (16x8MB) DIMMS and there shouldn't be any compatibility or stability issues with the motherboard. Micron (Crucial) was used heavily by the big OEMs back then with good reason, quality. They produce the RAM chips, the DIMM PCBs and assemble them. As far as I know they are the only RAM maker that does this and it leads to awesome quality control.

Status: Brand new RAM installed and undergoing a 24-hour burn-in test using Memtest86+ v4.20.

I found a home for the system. I was able to get two old Gateway 2000 cases that are beige, solidly built, ATX and in decent shape. There are scuffs on the outside but I'll just have to live with it and clean it as best I can. I will be taking the best from both to make one case for the system. I guess I will need to open a photobucket account to start adding inline pics, I am just too lazy today. A little rewiring is in order for the power switch, power LED and hard drive LED to get rid of the single proprietary header for Gateway motherboards. I went ahead and stripped one down and gave the metal a thorough cleaning. I will clean the plastic tonight or tomorrow.

Dear Diary,

Tommy is so mean! Today at school he made Julie eat a worm! Gross!

XO,
Stull

P.S. This might be too slow for your liking, but it's NOS: http://www.ebay.com/itm/PII-400MHZ-SL1-512K-4 … L-/200807485833

Hehe,

I ended up grabbing a NOS P3-450 (SL364) for $14.00.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/80525PY450512-SL364-D … I-/160769822128

As a side note I just won a Socket7 Pentium 200 MMX CPU retail, new in the box... another project maybe?

Get a PII 450 and compare them in regards to SSE using games and other applications! 😀

I have to say that I like the lack of Enix in your username, by the way 🤣

Ordered a video card tonight. Was a tough time trying to decide between dedicated 2D plus dedicated 3D cards or a single 2D/3D solution. I have to keep reminding myself that this box will not do everything and I will build another box for older DOS games and the newer 32-bit games will of course run fine on a newer system. I decided on a single solution card, the 3Dfx Voodoo 3. It's a NOS HP OEM Voodoo 3 16MB AGP(guessing 1000) card. http://www.ebay.com/itm/310320932421 I had a Voodoo 1,2 and 3 in the 90's and loved them all and I do remember playing all the games I loved on them. I also remember having to set environment variables for the Voodoo 3 to play some of the older games, basically tricking it into acting like a Voodoo 1 but that's no big deal. Very fast 2D, good DirectX support (at least until version 6), Glide and pretty fast. There was a particular game I played back in the 90's (I'll have to think of the name) that was a War type first person shooter. I remember crawling through the grass and thinking how awesome the grass looked, I am guessing around 1998-99. I actually had to revert to older DirectX after another game installed a new version to get it working right again. I will post back when I think of it's name.

OMG I found it, Delta Force - 1998. That was many a fun hour.

I've had that exact auction in my Watch List for a while now. According to this it's a Voodoo 3 3500:
http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/bpb12309.pdf

3DX, Voodoo3 – 3500, 16 MB, 147286-001 147908-001 5861

Report back when you get it...maybe you'll finally convince me to order one. 😉

The case cleaned up rather nicely. Trying to decide if I want to refurb the PSU or look at other options. The PSU's in these cases are not standard ATX size. Those Mr. Clean Magic Erasers work wonders. Also tore down floppy and CD-RW for a good cleaning. This case is from an AMD Athlon system (well the side panel anyways) and I have the option of using the duct and 120mm fan exhausting through the grill on the side panel.

I will report back when Voodoo 3 arrives.

Forgot to mention, the RAM test ran fine for 24-hours with no problems. I also installed a NOS Western Digital 160GB IDE hard drive today. It only partitions to 64GB and that's fine with me. I will not be adding a different IDE controller as 64GB is plenty for me and I want to stick with the Intel onboard controller. It might not be the fastest but it is very stable.

Score!

I got a free Gateway VX700 monitor that tests good. I will give it a good cleaning soon.

MY 1st own PC was a Gateway P2 400 so very familiar with these parts.
The case was well designed apart from the bottom 5 1/4 bay. CD drive wont fit as the motherboard gets in the way
I had the 15 inch versión of that screen and was a good crisp picture back in the day, I hope it Works out for you.
Which audio chip does your motherboard have on board

No onboard sound on this one. I have been thinking long and hard on what to do for audio. This machine is primarily for early Win9x games and the late DOS games such as Tombraider, Duke Nukem and so on. I am not interested in anything other than stereo speakers or headphone output and I don't think I will use any 3D sound. That being said I am leaning towards simplicity with an Ensoniq AudioPCI sound card. I will load it up with the 8MB MIDI set and config autoexec.bat for DOS emulation. I seem to remember this card sounding pretty good in DOOM with the 8MB set. I also plan to build an older machine with ISA sound card(s) for old DOS stuff and also a newer machine... maybe Windows 2000 or XP with some reasonably fast hardware. So many choices. I first touched a computer in the late 70's but couldn't own one until 1997. It was a Gateway 2000 Pentium P55C-200, 32MB RAM, 3.7GB HD, 8MB (yes I spent extra not knowing, bigger was better right?) STB Virge video card, Ensoniq ISA sound card and USR 56k modem. Oh the memories, the upgrades, the games... it was a wonderful time.

Wow I completely forgot that Windows 98 SE's FDISK couldn't support larger than 64GB. I should be able to set the partition to 128GB if I am correctly thinking that is the limit of the IDE controller.

I got the Pentium III 450 installed and the power supply cleaned out. Everything working well so far. The NOS Voodoo 3 AGP card was delivered today and I will get it installed tomorrow. I ordered a Yamaha ISA sound card that will be installed where the Sound Blaster 32 sits now and I am having a hard time deciding replacing the Ensoniq AudioPCI sound card with either a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz or an Aureal Vortex 2. Would love some input on that one. I got Windows 98 SE loaded but no drivers or software yet.

I just got done inspecting my new Voodoo 3 AGP card. I will install it tomorrow and test it out. I was very impressed, it was still sealed inside of a static bag, which was sealed inside it's original Compaq parts box and the EBay seller wrapped that inside of bubble wrap and placed in a shipping box. A+ job from the seller.

It appears to be a Voodoo 3 3500 AGP, with 5.5ns (183-MHz) SDRAM. I looked up the RAMS part number online and found its datasheet. I will find out for sure tomorrow as the card only has OEM numbers on it.

If it is, in fact, a 3500 I will probably flash its BIOS to a 2000 or 3000. This thing will be plenty fast for the games I have in mind and bleeding edge timings are a no go on this project as stability is most important. I do want to relive the past but without the crashes while gaming from everything being overclocked and tweaked to the max.

I modified a Gateway Athlon cooler for that case which has a 120mm fan that exhausts out of the side panel. It was fairly loud so I am running it at 7 volts until I replace the fan. I really like it and will post pics tomorrow.

I am running a stability test for 24-hours on the CPU and total system power draw while running a Prime test is about 79-Watts. If we guess power supply efficiency to be 80% then the system is using about 63-Watts at 100% CPU usage. Adding the Voodoo 3 and I should still be well within the 200-Watt limit of the power supply but I will keep an identical one on hand from the second case.

I am really looking forward to playing the Thief series of games again!!!

Any thoughts between a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card and a Aureal Vortex 2 sound card for the system???

I found that the Intel motherboards of that era were too inflexible to be of much use. The Super I/O chip used in this series only supports 1 floppy drive, whereas most mainboards of the period still supported two. The 133MHz bus speed only really overclocked the AGP port on the BX chipset, so using a PCI accelerator would pose no problems. You doubt you can change speeds from 100MHz to 66MHz with these boards.

Back then these boards were inflexible but incredibly stable. Things change though. I do not care that these boards have zero options for overclocking because I will not be doing any overclocking, there is no reason to (faster CPU's are available) and I am interested in stability. One floppy is plenty for a Windows 98 / late DOS era gaming system. The bus speed issue I described was trying to underclock a 133-MHz FSB CPU at 100-MHz FSB but the board didn't like that and that's fine, I installed a Pentium 3 450-MHz CPU.