Very Computer

Hi all,
I will soon be building a new box and would like to make it SMP.
But am having trouble picking a board, any help ? I have used the
Supermicro P6DBE, 440BX board before, but I get conflicting reports on
it's max speed, some say it's a max at 450, others 700 or even 800MHz...
I love this board and use it in a Dual PII 400MHz NT Workstation, any one
have a board like this for P2 / P3, with IDE ATA66 / 100 ???

Socket 1 or 370 is fine... I just need a reliable Linux board !
And I hate built in stuff...! (Sound / Video / NIC)

Thanks to all,
Rich

I've been using a dual smp board ,the tyan 100(450mhz), for about a year now
and I've had no problems. However, I originally went with a board from
iwill, and it had a bios crash the first week. They wanted me to create a
dos boot disk and type with no video!

Iksrazal

They are all wrong. It's 600 MHz, actually. Haven't you read the manual? But no
coppermines, of course, you would have to get old Katmai P3s.

Quote:> I love this board and use it in a Dual PII 400MHz NT Workstation, any one
> have a board like this for P2 / P3, with IDE ATA66 / 100 ???

> Socket 1 or 370 is fine... I just need a reliable Linux board !
> And I hate built in stuff...! (Sound / Video / NIC)

There are a couple of VIA chipset boards (Tyan, MSI) that have what you are
looking for. Not sure about Linux, but Solaris seems to be running well.
--

Vladimir

Supermicro's web page doesn't agree, they say up to 700 Mhz.  I think part of
the confusion is that when the board was released and the manual printed,
these faster CPUs didn't exist.  They can't really say it's going to support
700 Mhz when the chip didn't exist.  So they say something like 233-450
because at the time that's all there was.  They've got jumper settings for
multipliers up to 9.5x on the web page

This board can work with coppermines, you don't need Katmai chips.  Some of
the older revisions had a voltage regulator that won't work, but the newer
ones do.  Supermicro tells you on their web page how to tell which one you
have.

I have a Tekram P6B40-D which is humming along nicely with dual P3 800 chips
and a gig of RAM. It has a useful facility to nudge the FSB up to 103MHz for a
*y bit more speed without having to become obsessed about cooling [1]. 8x is
as far as this board's going to go so I can start planning my next project :)

I think they might have stopped making it, but you may be able to find one
second-hand.

Cheers

Beavis

[1]...and of course saying that I already have 17 fans in this machine and
planning ways of putting in more.

Killer, hmmmm.  Well then you might look at the SuperMicro 370DLE
(or DL3 if you want SCSI):

http://www.supermicro.com/PRODUCT/MotherBoards/RCC_LE/370DLE.htm

NOT cheap, but has nice Server Works chip set and two 64/66 PCI slots
4 32/33, 1 ISA suports 100/133 FSB, 4 DIMM slots and more.

Also there's a nice Asus board, also a SW chipset with 2 64/66:

http://www.asus.com.tw/products/motherboard/pentiumpro/cur-dls/index....

If you've really got $$, you could try these:

http://www.SuperMicro.com/PRODUCT/MotherBoards/RCC_HE_SL/SUPER%20370D...

or this ($$$)

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunder2500_p.html
Has 6 64/66 PCI, 1 ISA, 8 DIMM .....

Note that I haven't been able to find this board anywhere, though I know It's
being built.

Also note that ALL these boards have ServerWorks chip sets, not that the Intel
8xx junk or the VIA toy stuff.  VIA actually does make a very nice chip set, but
it's aimed at the lower end which is where the volume is.  SW is aimed at the
server
end of the scale.

Best

Cokey

--
------------------------------------------------------------------
Cokey de Percin, DBA            Email:

Quote:> Hi all,
> I will soon be building a new box and would like to make it SMP.
> But am having trouble picking a board, any help ? I have used the
> Supermicro P6DBE, 440BX board before, but I get conflicting reports on
> it's max speed, some say it's a max at 450, others 700 or even
800MHz...
> I love this board and use it in a Dual PII 400MHz NT Workstation, any
one
> have a board like this for P2 / P3, with IDE ATA66 / 100 ???

> Socket 1 or 370 is fine... I just need a reliable Linux board !
> And I hate built in stuff...! (Sound / Video / NIC)

I am using a Tyan Tiger 100 mobo with 2 P3 600 MHz. Don't know how high
the CPU speeds can go with this mobo. It is 100MHz FSB and I have 256
MB memory in it. It is rock solid. I know that it is not the best
performer but I have had no problems at all.

Bruce Forsberg

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.

Quote:> > Hi all,
> > I will soon be building a new box and would like to make it SMP.
> > But am having trouble picking a board, any help ? I have used the
> > Supermicro P6DBE, 440BX board before, but I get conflicting reports on
> > it's max speed, some say it's a max at 450, others 700 or even 800MHz...

> They are all wrong. It's 600 MHz, actually. Haven't you read the manual?
But no
> coppermines, of course, you would have to get old Katmai P3s.

     Wrong.  I have a bunch of them in various servers, running PIII 650
Coppermines.

   They only have a 100 MHz FSB.  Since the multiplier on the chips is
locked, any 100 MHz FSB chip will work in them.

steve

--
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Domain for replies is "codon"
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He might well have read the manual - but which one. Not all P6DBE's are
created equal, neither are the manuals. The max clock speeds cited for
motherboards often just relate to what is the fastest processor currently
available, not what the jumpers can be set to. In fact, the P6DBE can be
set up to 800MHz - according to the manual revision 3.3. This seems to
apply to earlier releases of the motherboard too, even though revision
2.1 of the manual says 600 MHz.

Note that earlier versions of the P6DBE did NOT support the Coppermines,
because the CPU core voltage regulators could not go down to 1.6v - they
might work for a short time though ! Current versions of course do support
them.

All of this can be figured out (with patience) from the Supermicro web site.

Tony.
--

Well, I stuck a couple of P3/800s into mine. Doesn't even boot. I have a fairly
recent version (3.0). New voltage regulator. It seems, jumper positions are
irrelevant (P3s are locked anytway). Whatever I set them to, works the same with
the old P3/450s. Ok, I'll give it one more chance with a BIOS upgrade.

--

Vladimir

Interesting; I've been looking for cases of people running with dual
Coppermines. I have a Supermicro PIIIDME board with dual 733 Coppermines
and Linux 2.4-SMP does not recognise the IO-APICs. In fact, it's
unstable unless I boot with the "noapic" parameter, which is a bit of a
disappointment. What are your experiencies with the Coppermine CPUs?

Cheers,
Chris

"Richard F. Jr." schrieb:

Hi,

I own a Abit BP6 with 2 Intel Celeron 466. And it's a non expensive system -
but fast. The Problem should be to get 2 of the "old" celeron's for the board
(i believe up to celeron 500 it will work). With a Nvidia TNT2 and 128 mb all
works fine.

Sven

You like the SuperMicro boards?  Why not try the SuperMicro 370DLE/ 370DL3.
They have 133Mhz FSB, dual PCI buses (one is a 64bit PCI bus). The DL3 has
an on-board Ultra160 SCSI controller, not sure what the IDE controller speed
is.  It uses the ServerWorks LE chipset which several companies (e.g. IBM &
Compaq) are using in their mid range Intel server boxes (for high end, they
use the ServerWorks HE chipset..)

John

--
John Burton, Ph.D.
Senior Associate                 GATS, Inc.


(757) 873-5920 (voice)           (757) 873-5924 (fax)

I think I found the Tyan board in server "Configuration 2:" here:
http://www.interpromicro.com/sy-server-ISP2u.html