Dabombinable

Today's goal - figure out why the Voodoo2 runs so poorly on my K6-2 500.

Having to fire up a Windows 98 PC so that I can format a 64GB micro sdcard. Very ridiculous that I can't even do a force format with diskpart.

Just realised that with EDO DIMM, I could in theory also pair them with EDO SIMM on my AT Jetway board:

Just bought a K6-III+ badge for my old AT case, as well as stickers for S3 and ESS (as the respective Savage4 and AudioDrive will live in it).
First time I've felt that it would be appropriate, as this is the first build that I will be finalising.

No idea what I'll do with the AT Slot1 board, considering how slow it is compared to my other 3 functional ATX Slot1 boards (2 of which are in builds). Do have 1 more 200W AT PSU left that could go in another case - but a permanent build with it would kind of suck due to lacking the OG PS/2 connector and the onboard SB16XV.

Note sure what is going on with my STB Voodoo2's performance with the K6-2 500, but I am getting performance similar to that of a 200MHz Pentium Pro (comparing with these results, same settings: https://www.anandtech.com/show/260/8). And yet using the software renderer I'm seeing 24.6fps, which is better than Anandtech managed with their overclocked 560MHz PIII.

If performance changes significantly with the K6-2+/"3+" then it is CPU related. If not, then I'll remove the Voodoo2 and just use the Savage4. Its fast enough anyway and really doesn't scale with CPU that are much faster.

Voodoo2 vs S3 Savage4 GT on my K6-2 500 at 640x480 16bit, under their respective API (Glide and Metal) in TimeDemo1:

• Voodoo2 = 49.6fps
• Savage4 GT = 73.2fps

There are bound to be games where the Voodoo2 is faster on the K6-2. However it definitely does better than the Savage4 with my PIII 1000 (despite the slow motherboard) as the Savage4 barely scales beyond a Celeron 450A or 500 on an SE440BX-2. Even a Pentium III 650 gets near identical FPS out of the Savage.

Edit: 60.4fps in 32bit colours for the Savage. Should compare it to my TNT2 Vanta (125/125Mhz stock clocks).

Because my PC's PSU has a design old enough to not have cables designed with basement cases in mind, I'm going to need to get some SATA splitters as I'm out of my molex to SATA splitters (and molex connectors). There is no way to connect the SATA cables directly to a drive flat on the bottom of the case or on the back of the motherboard tray due to how the cables would push up on a drive's connector.

This will never not be funny:

Bots got lucky and most shots from every attacker hit the head. Crab pilot had a gauss round introduced to their head next turn.

For the Jetway 994AN-L (as by accident I discovered that Ezra-T works):

And for the Jetway J-542B as the BIOS is modded (and it'd run faster+cooler at 550MHz than the K6-2 500):

Good Pairings for the SiS 315 and Savage4 respectively.

Considering the price, and the amount of images showing tests, 90% chance that I'll be buying one of these on Ebay:

They appear to have been thouroughly tested under different versions of Windows. Would run it at stock however.

Really should have read the manual before setting the Jetway SS7 board up. I had plugged the PS/2 cable into the IR header.

Feels good to have a useable board that takes 72pin SIMM. I can actually test the modules that I've had sitting around for the last 8-9 years.

Now that I have a board capable of 2V with a modified BIOS, I really want to find a K6-III+ - preferably 450MHz.

Was unsure if the L2 cache on my SS7 board was functional as programs within Windows couldn't see it, however upon running speedsys I can see that all 512KB is recognised, with the expected throughput (throughput stepping down near 64K and at 512K). Processor benchmark shows the performance sitting between a K6III 500 ad Celeron 500 (I do have the RAM in the BIOS set to fast and 2ns, with Jan's patched BIOS for K6II/III+ CPU and enabled WA support).

The little 60GB Corsair Force LS that I bought years ago as the first upgrade in my first modern desktop, is still going strong. Been in the PC I made for my friend from second hand parts for several years now and it has barely over 14TB of total writes. And being an MLC drive I fully expect that the controller itself will die before the NAND wears out.

This shouldn't actually be working according to every old forum post that references Ezra-T and Coppermine boards:

Sorely tempted to get a Nehemiah CIII, and SS7 compatible WinChip CPU if the "new" board is functional when it arrives.

On another note, on this board I see far higher memory performance than I do even with a PIII 1000 (only trails in memory writes at 167MB/sec). Still makes its memory performance lower than a PIII 650 or Celeron 450 on my SE440BX-2. CIII's memory latency is only bested by my Athlon XP 3000+ on the KT6V-LSR with tweaked DDR400 (139.3ns vs 122.2ns, PIII 1000 only manages 164ns).

$400 AUD with postage, but I took the plunge and bought it. To get everything separately would have cost more:

This may be a bad idea, but the board should be a good enough replacement for the GA-5AA.

With the Jetway, Intel and Asus Slot1 boards, the PCPartner Slot1 AT board was more of a stop-gap. And I also have no idea if the shorted mosfet killed my current K6-2 500.

Edit: Most expensive by far. But seller shows it running with 512MB RAM, and it has the bloody PS/2 connector still installed on the bracket. The good cooler is a bonus - total overkill.

Discovered last night that at least in Windows 11 there is the option to repair Windows via Windows Update/re-installing the current version. Was going to just reset the PC after removing Kaspersky (subscription expires soon) and not being able to get Window's built in antivirus working properly, but that is no longer needed.