• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

My Dual Athlon MP Build Thread

H

hunterjwizzard

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 21, 2020
Messages
1,400
Ok, finally getting back into the swing of things after a mild illness and several small home disasters. But I finally had time to start building this dual Athlon MP workstation!

First, goodbye to the old board:

ZZeMNY7.jpg


Dual slot1 PIII. It will be going back to the anti-static bag for the forseeable future. Someday I'll get a matched pair of 100mhz FSB CPUs for it.

In the meantime, I appear to have failed to take and pictures of the bare new board before mounting it, but here are a few:

X9HsU8s.jpg


Q7yLG3d.jpg


Real nice HSFs.


And the finished board mounted in case:

3Yc7ehO.jpg


And that's as far as I got before discovering my PSU lacks an 8-pin CPU connector. I'll be grabbing an adapter soon.

I had wanted to make this an all-SCSI system, but try though I might I cannot find the 40gb U160 SCSI drive I was saving. So it'll be running on PATA for now. The plan is to run Windows 2000 and have some fun.
 
That looks like a fun build including nice components. The all-copper heat sinks are cool (see what I did there?). What speed are the Athlons? Anything specific you're going to run for fun?

I remember running Windows 2000 back in the day, and that it was pretty stable (for me). Would've been on my Pentium 3 450 MHz, lots of fond memories of that machine I had during undergrad.
 
Good question. I recently discovered I never actually played all the way through Might & Magic 8. A former coworker of mine(who is at this time recovering from a stroke) actually worked as a developer for 3DO back in the day and is part of why the later MM games run natively on Windows 2000. In tribute to him I plan to play through MM8.
 
hunterjwizzard said:
my PSU lacks an 8-pin CPU connector.
Click to expand...
WAIT STOP IMMEDIATELY. I don't know what board you have, but check its not the ATX-GES standard. https://old.pinouts.ru/Power/atx_ges_24_pinout.shtml

If it is, buy a standard EPS12V Supply + an extension, and rewire it. Ablecom is Supermicro BTW. Often cheaper on the bay than the fancy ones.

The tyan i860 (Dual P4 Xeon) uses yet another standard with the EPS 8pin connector wired in REVERSE!

I have a tyan thunder K7 that has ATX-GES. Not sure about the 8pin power on that.
 
mR_Slug said:
WAIT STOP IMMEDIATELY.
Click to expand...
Warning is much appreciated.


Let's see. The specific board I am using is a Tyan S2462 Thunder K7. The standard ATX PSU I used did fit, and the user guide only says to use an "APPROVED, 400W or more, power supply". I cannot find anything in the physical manual(which is so cool to have) that mentions ATX-GES.

On to the linked website. It mentions the Tyan Thunder K7 (S2452 series) and Tyan Thunder K7X (S2468 series), but mine is a S2462.

So on to The Internet, and Tyan's surprisingly comprehensive website:

Form Factor
• Extended ATX footprint (13" x 12")
• One 24-pin and one 8-pin power connectors for
ATXGES Power Supplies only


Ok then. Looks like this project is going back into the mothballs for a little bit. A quick search of the Bay of E found none. On the plus side I can use that displaced standard ATX PSU in another project.

Funny part is I'm about 40% sure the PSU I'm using now drove my old Dual Athlon MP ages ago. But that was a workstation build on an ATX(not EATX) board.
 
From what i recall, they released the ATX versions with standard ATX PSA and EATX with the GES nonsense. only the last EATX based board on the 760MP platform has EPS12V.

Tyan S2462

Tyan S2462 is a motherboard based on the AMD 760MP chipset. Get specs, BIOS, documentation and more!
theretroweb.com theretroweb.com
That has been reviewed by at least 2 other people. Its not in the manual though. I'm sure i have the pinout somewhere.

Mine is the K7 i think, never got round to building it. built the Xeon system instead. Think there is a thread on vogons too about the K7.
 
I'm not comfortable re-wiring things. Is there any hope on this earth of finding an ATX-GES PSU?
 
There's hope...but not much. I looked 15 years ago and found one at a too high price. Any ATX-GES psu in a generic case has probably been tested and tossed because it failed to power a standard ATX m/b, As noone knows what ATX-GES is. There's this:

RCB1066-4U 4U 24-inch to 19-inch rack reducer brackets

RCB1066-4U 4U 24-inch to 19-inch rack reducer brackets
www.iaenclosures.com www.iaenclosures.com
Looks like the 8pin connector is non-standard too.
 
What do you plan for sound on that wonderful Tyan board, are there any 64bit sound cards out there?
Now that story of audio over SCSI that we had some time ago looks like a solution :)
 
Zare said:
What do you plan for sound on that wonderful Tyan board, are there any 64bit sound cards out there?
Now that story of audio over SCSI that we had some time ago looks like a solution :)
Click to expand...
The is definitely a question worth asking.

I will probably end up using a standard 32 bit PCI card in there to start. I know. I know. Not a great solution. But since I can't FIND my SCSI hard drives, and I now have to buy a new PSU and $20 adapter for this mamajama, that is the solution we are looking at in the short-term.

Long-term - maybe USB? I know I eventually want to have only 64-bit PCI cards in there. I don't think anyone made a 64-bit PCI sound card(and eBay barely understands 64 bit PCI exists, so searching is slow going) I don't care about sound very much beyond having it, so an older USB sound card with win2k support might be my best choice. That also has the handy value of being useable in multiple projects.
 
An EPS PSU can be had for about $40, so at least that's easy. I probably have one but am unwilling to play "Musical Power Supplies" to find it. I wanted another PSU anyway. When my wife asks, I will tell her mR_Slug told me to buy it.

Kidding aside I'll have to hold off a bit. That'll give me time to dig out the rest of the parts.
 
So I just got through removing the Antex EA-650 Green from the case and discovered a pair of 4 pin connectors tucked away behind the drive cage. Did some digging and it looks like this is an EPS power supply. Yay!

....now I need that $20 adapter.
 
USB is probably the best choice.
But I can't recall cheap dongles being available back then. USB 1.0 Sound Blaster is cheap tho https://www.ebay.com/itm/166919326431 .

32-bit PCI? Used E-Mu Systems 0404 and m-Audio Delta 2496 on Win2k. The Delta supports from Win98 to 7, which is great as I still have it and works :)
They're not so cheap nowadays but if you're looking into something else than usual suspect PCI soundcards. The sound is pristine, but you need an external amplifier.
 
Zare said:
What do you plan for sound on that wonderful Tyan board, are there any 64bit sound cards out there?
Now that story of audio over SCSI that we had some time ago looks like a solution :)
Click to expand...

There are monstrosities like this mislabeled PCI-X as a PCIe sound card on Ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/186656929616
www.digigram.com

VX882HR – Support - Digigram

@ET-DC@eyJkeW5hbWljIjp0cnVlLCJjb250ZW50IjoicG9zdF90aXRsZSIsInNldHRpbmdzIjp7ImJlZm9yZSI6IjxoMT4iLCJhZnRlciI6IjwvaDE+In19@
www.digigram.com www.digigram.com

But this is a high end professional audio card that does way more than just basic audio.

There's really no point to having a 64 bit PCI/PCI-X sound card, there was no sound chipset ever released that would take advantage of it. Even the PCI bus is grossly overspeced for sound chips.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
There's really no point to having a 64 bit PCI/PCI-X sound card, there was no sound chipset ever released that would take advantage of it. Even the PCI bus is grossly overspeced for sound chips.
Click to expand...
Ha. You're assuming there's a point to anything I do.

But seriously a PCI-X soundcard is not in my future. That one you linked is $100, lacks a bracket and a breakout box, and as you said does way more than basic sound. I will stick with USB. Its just easier.
 
We all have our crazy nonsense projects.

I have a Quadra 605 overcooked to 40 MHz with a real 68040. One day I'll get the cache upgrade interposer for it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top