Retro PC: Dual Tualaking Pentium 3 on i840 with RDRAM!

[@PileOfEmptyTapes]

Awesome rig! I only ever made it to dual Coppermines (using modded 6905 Masters) on a P2B-D back in the day. The most exotic board I ever had was this GA-686KDX... dual Slot 1 i440FX (!), i.e. EDO/FPM RAM, PII Klamath only. Quirky thing, must have been super short-lived. Last time I checked the battery inside the CMOS clock module was dead, no surprise.

[@SeeJayPlayGames]

OMG your voice sounds almost exactly like mine

[@protistman]

siiiick :) Always wanted to do this.

[@titotech]

Very nice dream retro build.
can run half-life 2 ?

[@mylifect]

Very good

[@kokodin5895]

i am kind of curious, did you ever tryed to run tualatin core processors close to 1,7-1,8 ghz mainly pentium 3 s at 150fsb or celeron 1300 at 133 bus?
that could kick the performance of that dual p3 into universe, but also have you ever heard of that strange mod that can uncouple fsb clock from the rest and run slowest pentium tualatins at ridonculous fsb
i always heard engeneering samples were wild but i could never really confirm that, all i have is a celeron 1300 that can run at 133 fbs (i tested multiple to find one workingat this sp[eed) by jusy covering one pin and big pentium 3 s 1400 with half a meg of cache that don't mind 150fsb on via board that somehow can run pc133 sdram at 150mhz so it keep phase , but pci clock is also overclocked and that makes entire fun pointless
your setup is really interesting but i kind of cringe at that small fan in the middle, couldn't you install it from the side so the flow is not restricted?
then again compared to currebt cpu's it basically siping power while being stone cold so maybe that cooler is enough

[@LXXero]

not on this machine anyway - since it's a compaq motherboard, there's pretty much bare-minimum bios options in terms of any sort of overclocking type stuff.
I do have other motherboards I could probably experiment with, but I haven't dug too far into that yet, I was more trying to get that 440bx-based dual P3 board working recently, but i suspect that also won't be a machine to push for max-speed, as it's really more meant for pentium 2's and i'm already pushing my luck running P3's on it.
I have not heard of the uncoupling mod - however, my other machine i show here is a Via C3 that can clock from 386 to like pentium 800mhz speeds - that is sort of what I use for my "variable speed dos machine" these days. I have numerous AMD K6 3+'s around as well, but my motherboards that work for those are constantly going bad on me it seems....
i have also heard the mythical rumors of the unlocked intel samples - not just tualatin, but in general, most samples were unlocked. They supposedly sell for quite a lot, if you can find one.
the mismatched cooler definitely triggers my OCD a bit too, lmfao, but it's more to keep it quiet - the noctua is just so much quieter than anything else.

[@kokodin5895]

@@LXXero ah i see,, still i did "upclocked" few celerons on oem boards in the past too
absolute champ was celeron coppermine 566 core revision cd0
after riping out both bsel pins most motherboards recognized it as not overclocked celeron 1145 on 133 mkz bus
for most of my other mods i just drilled socket holes bigger and covered those pins with insolation from wraping wire and it also forced any celeron to be recognized as 133mhz bus, this is how you do it on via boards anyway since otherwise they don't divide clocks for pci and agp corectly due to some bug, at least in award bioses
and for many years celeron tualatin 1,1@ a.45ghz runing on moded asus cusl2 board was my main computer somewhere between 2004 and 2010 fun times

[@LXXero]

​@@kokodin5895 i had done that kind of thing more when when i was younger - had a coppermine celeron running at around 1ghz or so, I forget which one it was now though, but I think it may have actually been that 566 you mention....it was 533 or 566 I think?
I might be doing the coppermine SMP mod to get that 440bx dual cpu motherboard going next, although I'm not sure which chips will go into it yet, I think given the voltage limits of that board, I'm probably limited to coppermines and older. These days - it's less about maximum speed, and more about achieving a stable configuration with something that wasn't originally possible.