Success!!!

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purrkur
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Success!!!

Post by purrkur »

I've done it. I modded one of my BP6 (ver 1.1) and successfully ran two 866MHz Pentium III's at 650MHz (100MHz FSB).

I have been stressed for time so I haven't had much time to go ahead with the modifications. I wanted to change more of the caps (that still look fine) and the QT6 voltage regulator but because of time problems I decide to modify the NEO's and motherboard and go for it.

Here is what I have:

BP6 version 1.1
2 866MHz PIII's running at 650MHz (100MHz FSB) & 1.70 volts
256 Megs of memory
80 GB Maxtor disk
Nvidia GeForce 256 SDR (NV11) 32Meg graphics adapter
3Com 3C905B-TX NIC

Here comes the real fun part:

Power supply: 250W noname shit PSU.
CPU coolers: One Intel Celeron original and another noname of same size.

I booted up and got the MB up and running and after messing about for some time the computer hung. So what I did was to recheck things an then started it up again. This time it simply worked.

I have been doing tests on the BP6 running various CPU's so I decided to run my tests on the CPU's. I thought that it would freeze again but it didn't. It ran all of the tests and when I done the tests (where the CPU gets a real workout), the temperatures of the CPU's were both below 40 degC. I can also say that it seems like my Vtt was more stable with these processors than when I ran my 366's@550MHz. It kept stable at 1.47V while it would rock around with the Celerons.

Now I just need a good chassi, a real PSU and a better clips so I can get my real coolers onto the PIII's...
2x533MHz@544MHz, 2.0V
640MB PC100 memory
Realtek RTL-8139 NIC
Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB hdd
Debian Linux stable with 2.4.8 kernel
hyperspace
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Re: Success!!!

Post by hyperspace »

purrkur wrote: ...Power supply: 250W noname shit PSU...
That's POS PSU! (piece of shit) :lol:

Which BIOS revision are you using? Are you running Linux on it?

Very nice! A new forum user, phaedrus, posted PIII success just before you did. Something must be in the Air!
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phaedrus
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Post by phaedrus »

Dang, a 250W PSU? And it runs the dual PIIIs? I'm impressed, I had to replace my 250W PSU to get the board to even run dual celerons @366.

I would try the Q6 + EC10 mod, it did wonders for my stability. And definitely get a new PSU (I upgraded my 300W to a 400W out of paranoia, well, that and the suggestion for the GF4 Ti4200 is a 300W, and I already had to upgrade to that just to get the celerons going...).

Jeff
"If it ain't broke, mod it till it is"
They said... and now my BP6 needs new processors... D'oh
Slackware Linux v10.1
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purrkur
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Post by purrkur »

hyperspace wrote:Which BIOS revision are you using? Are you running Linux on it?
Yeah, Debian as usual on lesser hardware like the BP6. Kernel version 2.6.8. RV BIOS....
phaedrus wrote:Dang, a 250W PSU? And it runs the dual PIIIs? I'm impressed, I had to replace my 250W PSU to get the board to even run dual celerons @366.
Welcome to the gang Phadreus! Nice to see another smitten BP6:er running Linux and Slackware at that! It has been awhile for me and Slackware :(

Concerning the PSU, if you needed to upgrade from a 250W PSU to get you dual 366 to work then my spontaneous answer is that either your PS was broken or something else is bothering your BP6. I understand if you got a higher end GPU running on the card as well but I am pretty certain that with a good 200W PSU you should be able to get a dual 366 with moderate amount of add-in cards working without a problem.

We had aninteresting post from Wolfram (a regular around here) where he posted measured power drain by different systems. It wasn't as bad as most people think it is. His BP6 running dual 366@523MHz with lots of stuff on it (SCSI, etc) was only pulling about 161W at full load.

I think the big killer is if you have a bad PSU that either delivers spikes (such will hang your computer), or if they are slow to react to changes in current (this is one of the problems with switched power supplies - their reaction time to changes). Good power supplies simply keep your computer up, even during brown-outs.

I had also posted on how much power dissipation you get from P3's and Celerons and because the P3's are using smaller transistors and lower voltage, their power dissipation is not that off from a Celeron if you don't go for the badasses in the P3 family. For example, a 533MHz Celeron has a power dissipation of 28.3W while a Coppermine P3 running at 1133 has a power dissipation of 29W. It was this line of thinking I was using when I decided not to change the caps that are not broken or the voltage regulator. I may have to revise that in the future because I have only been running the board tonight but we'll see how that goes....

Now for that meeting with my pillow!!
2x533MHz@544MHz, 2.0V
640MB PC100 memory
Realtek RTL-8139 NIC
Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB hdd
Debian Linux stable with 2.4.8 kernel
hyperspace
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Post by hyperspace »

purrkur wrote: ...I think the big killer is if you have a bad PSU that either delivers spikes (such will hang your computer), or if they are slow to react to changes in current (this is one of the problems with switched power supplies - their reaction time to changes). Good power supplies simply keep your computer up, even during brown-outs...
I wonder if bad voltage regulator capacitors could lead to PS failure.
purrkur wrote:Now for that meeting with my pillow!!
later...
Last edited by hyperspace on Thu Jan 27, 2005 8:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Dave Rave »

I had a look in my dual xeon system, generally dusting, and putting a fan over the VRm unit (85-105 degrees is too much)

my xeon system is on a shitty 250w psu. but ...
it did have the little 4 prong power plug, so it's not old shitty.
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Re: Success!!!

Post by davd_bob »

purrkur wrote:I've done it.
two 866MHz PIII's running at 650MHz (100MHz FSB) & 1.70 volts
dang, gota update that SIG yet AGAIN.

congrats on the mod sucess
There are *almost* no bad BP6s. There are mostly bad caps.

No BP6s remaining
Athlon 2800
Sempron 2000
ViaCPU laptop with Vista.(Works great after bumping ram to 2Gig)
P-III 850@100
purrkur
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Re: Success!!!

Post by purrkur »

davd_bob wrote:dang, gota update that SIG yet AGAIN.

congrats on the mod sucess
Thanks :) Once I stop modding and fooling around with it (meaning: doing real work with it then I will go ahead and update my sig!
2x533MHz@544MHz, 2.0V
640MB PC100 memory
Realtek RTL-8139 NIC
Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB hdd
Debian Linux stable with 2.4.8 kernel
davd_bob
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Post by davd_bob »

purrkur
I bet with some luck and hefty cooling on the BX you could get dual 715MHz. That would be 10% overclock on the IDE/PCI/AGP slots though.
You would likely fry the BX if you try dual at 124FSB.
There are *almost* no bad BP6s. There are mostly bad caps.

No BP6s remaining
Athlon 2800
Sempron 2000
ViaCPU laptop with Vista.(Works great after bumping ram to 2Gig)
P-III 850@100
purrkur
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Posts: 687
Joined: Fri Dec 12, 2003 5:57 pm
Location: Sweden
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Post by purrkur »

davd_bob wrote:purrkur
I bet with some luck and hefty cooling on the BX you could get dual 715MHz. That would be 10% overclock on the IDE/PCI/AGP slots though.
You would likely fry the BX if you try dual at 124FSB.
Yeah, I will fool around with it once I am happy with everything I have done. One of the things I have decided to do is to replace all the caps even though they look fine. That is going to take time because I don't have that much free time on my hands to do stuff like that. I love doing it but with work and two small kids, it is going to be awhile before I can sit down and do the work.

But I will play around with overclocking once I am done!
2x533MHz@544MHz, 2.0V
640MB PC100 memory
Realtek RTL-8139 NIC
Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB hdd
Debian Linux stable with 2.4.8 kernel
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