Are there any jumpers on the mobo that set the speed of the FSB? Perhaps it's set to a number greater than 100, for example 133.

retro games 100 wrote:

Are there any jumpers on the mobo that set the speed of the FSB? Perhaps it's set to a number greater than 100, for example 133.

The speed is set to 133mhz FSB which this board is classified to run at hence the name BX133.

I'm starting to suspect the CPU is toast somehow but It runs Windows 98SE fine which I manged to install yesterday but now when I want to install winxp so I can dual boot win98/XP I can't get into the BIOS to change to boot from cd...arghh

What is the FSB rating of the P3 1Ghz CPU you are using? Is it a slot 1 CPU, or a "slotket adapter" based CPU? Also, have you tried a couple of other graphics cards?

Also, have you got a "simple" P3 CPU you can temporarily try, such as a P3 ~500 Mhz? If so, you could clear the CMOS, try a "simple" P3 CPU, and also set the mobo's FSB back to 100. -Just to get back in to the BIOS set up area OK, to make sure your settings are not abnormal (eg too aggressive advanced chipset timing settings), and also to run some tests to ensure that everything else is working OK - such as a Memtest, etc.

retro games 100 wrote:

What is the FSB rating of the P3 1Ghz CPU you are using? Is it a slot 1 CPU, or a "slotket adapter" based CPU? Also, have you tried a couple of other graphics cards?

Also, have you got a "simple" P3 CPU you can temporarily try, such as a P3 ~500 Mhz? If so, you could clear the CMOS, try a "simple" P3 CPU, and also set the mobo's FSB back to 100. -Just to get back in to the BIOS set up area OK, to make sure your settings are not abnormal (eg too aggressive advanced chipset timing settings), and also to run some tests to ensure that everything else is working OK - such as a Memtest, etc.

http://www.thetechzone.com/reviews/motherboar … aid/index.shtml
It's a 1000/133/256 PIII so it's rated for 133mhz

Tried some different gfx cards, just using the BIOS default which are loaded automatically when you clear the CMOS

Going to pop in the 933/133/256 PIII again to see what happens

By switching to my 933mhz PIII I can get into the BIOS again.

The PIII 1ghz I was using was SL4MF stepping...have an SL52R stepping I'm going to try also.

This board can take up to 1.13ghz PIII's btw with the latest BIOS

ah, some kind of bug then in the BIOS....

Just wondering, but have you checked the board thoroughly for signs of bad capacitors? That BX133 was known to have problems with that, and I don't think they would always visibly bulge, so it might not be immediately obvious.

It would make sense with the symptoms you're seeing... the 1ghz PIII requires a bit more voltage and is a bit more picky about stable power, so if you've got some parts that are bad or even borderline, it could be enough to make the difference between booting and not. I suspect if that's the case, then you'd also run into stability problems when running the 933 under heavy load.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

Just wondering, but have you checked the board thoroughly for signs of bad capacitors? That BX133 was known to have problems with that, and I don't think they would always visibly bulge, so it might not be immediately obvious.

It would make sense with the symptoms you're seeing... the 1ghz PIII requires a bit more voltage and is a bit more picky about stable power, so if you've got some parts that are bad or even borderline, it could be enough to make the difference between booting and not. I suspect if that's the case, then you'd also run into stability problems when running the 933 under heavy load.

Two of the caps are quite bulged.

The system was rock solid in Windows 98SE, I even ran some benchmarks as 3dmark2001se before I cleared the CMOS and weren't able to get into the BIOS again 😜
It might be a BIOS bug as Keropi says but it's weird that it exists on the latest BIOS version which is from mid 2001
My plan is to use the infamous 1.13 ghz PIII on this board which is should support...it seems like only the first revision was troublesome.

It might be a BIOS bug as Keropi says but it's weird that it exists on the latest BIOS version which is from mid 2001

The simplest explanation is usually the right one, and when you have obviously failed hardware components, which are well known for causing the exact problem you're seeing, that's the simplest explanation. Replace the capacitors and you'll be good to go. It's not a BIOS bug.

That's a super sweet BX board, too bad you can't get it running. I remember my mouth watering back when it debuted.

Here is another exotic BX mobo: the AOpen AX6BC Pro II Millenium Edition.
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1111

Amigaz wrote:

The speed is set to 133mhz FSB which this board is classified to run at hence the name BX133.

No not really. If it's 440BX and you put the FSB at 133 MHz, then AGP will operate at 90 MHz. PCI can be kept at 33 MHz though because 440BX does have a 1/4 divider for it. There is nothing special about Abit BX133's 440BX chipset beyond the misleading name they gave it. I suppose they may have tried to "certify" it to be able to run at 133MHz, but you still overclock your AGP card.

A friend of mine gave me his BX133 way back. Most of the caps went bad and burst, just like on my BF6. The BX133 stopped working completely but my BF6 still worked ok (I recapped it eventually).

I think that you are either seeing instability from bad caps or from 90 MHz AGP. Try a PCI video card. Also try only one RAM stick as that's most stable.

I think that you are either seeing instability from bad caps or from 90 MHz AGP. Try a PCI video card.

The AGP is ruled out since it works with a 933mhz CPU, which also runs a 133mhz FSB... that would still give the same 89mhz AGP speed.

The one upside of the capacitor problem is that it's usually really easy to diagnose. No sense overthinking things, it really is as simple as it appears. On a PIII board, you're usually looking at 10 or so 1500uf 6.3V and a few 1000uf at either 6.3 or 10V, all probably 10mm diameter. Nichicon HN/HM series make good replacements and are widely available (at least in the US), and the lot of what you'd need should run you 10 bucks or less. A half hour with a soldering iron, and you should be happily on your way at 1ghz.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

It might be a BIOS bug as Keropi says but it's weird that it exists on the latest BIOS version which is from mid 2001

The simplest explanation is usually the right one, and when you have obviously failed hardware components, which are well known for causing the exact problem you're seeing, that's the simplest explanation. Replace the capacitors and you'll be good to go. It's not a BIOS bug.

Since the board runs flawlessly with the 933mhz PIII now it might be worth replacing them but my solder skills suck..I've successfully replaced a bunch of CMOS batteries in the past but that's it

bushwack wrote:

That's a super sweet BX board, too bad you can't get it running. I remember my mouth watering back when it debuted.

Here is another exotic BX mobo: the AOpen AX6BC Pro II Millenium Edition.
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1111

yeah...it's an interesting BX board..that's why I got it 😀

And the built in raid isn't bad either...got two 80gig drives in raid 0 in this setup..it gives a nice speed boost

swaaye wrote:

No not really. If it's 440BX and you put the FSB at 133 MHz, then AGP will operate at 90 MHz. PCI can be kept at 33 MHz though b […]
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Amigaz wrote:

The speed is set to 133mhz FSB which this board is classified to run at hence the name BX133.

No not really. If it's 440BX and you put the FSB at 133 MHz, then AGP will operate at 90 MHz. PCI can be kept at 33 MHz though because 440BX does have a 1/4 divider for it. There is nothing special about Abit BX133's 440BX chipset beyond the misleading name they gave it. I suppose they may have tried to "certify" it to be able to run at 133MHz, but you still overclock your AGP card.

A friend of mine gave me his BX133 way back. Most of the caps went bad and burst, just like on my BF6. The BX133 stopped working completely but my BF6 still worked ok (I recapped it eventually).

I think that you are either seeing instability from bad caps or from 90 MHz AGP. Try a PCI video card. Also try only one RAM stick as that's most stable.

The board isn't unstable as I've stated earlier in this thread...it's just that I couldn't enter the BIOS settings when using the 1ghz cpu

Did try with a PCI card (tseng ET6000) and one stick of 128mb ram with no luck
There's something with this CPU that's causing this "bug" but it doesn't affect anything else as stability etc so it can't be bad caps...overclocked AGP etc then 3dmark woulöd have caused problems

There's something with this CPU that's causing this "bug" but it doesn't affect anything else as stability etc so it can't be bad caps...

Just an analogy here... You have a baseball sitting on the floor, a terrified-looking kid with a catcher's mitt standing outside, and yet you still can't figure out why you have a broken window. Correlation certainly isn't always causation, but it's damn sure the first place you should start looking.

I have personally seen, and repaired, the exact same issue you're experiencing. And I mean identical, where one CPU would seem to work fine, but another wouldn't boot. It's pretty rare to encounter something like that, I've only seen it once out of dozens of boards I've repaired, but it does happen on occasion. (In my case, it was a little more difficult to diagnose, since the caps weren't bulged... they did end up being the problem, though.)

If you want a more technical explanation, what's probably happening is that the 1ghz CPU is more sensitive to voltage than the 933, as it uses a slightly higher VCore to begin with, and, since it's approaching the upper limits of the Coppermine achitecture, requires that much voltage just to work at all.

So, if you've got a lot of ripple in your VCore (and I can absolutely guarantee you do), there still may be enough margin in the 933 chip that it's OK with the fluctuation (i.e., even if it's bouncing back and forth between 1.6V and 1.8V, the 933 probably doesn't mind a bit), but the 1ghz chip isn't going to accept the drops in voltage if it requires a steady 1.7V or 1.75V just to boot. Current draw also has an effect, and the higher power requirement of the 1ghz chip, as small a difference as it may seem, is only going to make the ripple worse by putting more stress on the VRM.

The ripple also may not be detectable with the mobo sensors because they update slowly (and are inaccurate anyway). I think Thrashburg is on point here.

Remember the failed launch of the P3 1133? It was extremely sensitive to board and PSU quality.

Oh, yeah, you're definitely not going to get anything from the motherboard sensors. We're talking milliseconds here... you'd need to poke at the thing with an oscilloscope to actually see the fluctuations. But those quick little drops are definitely enough to throw everything off.

BTW, if the hangup is not being comfortable with your soldering skills, I'd gladly walk you through it step-by-step. My soldering skills aren't particularly masterful either, but once you know the little tricks to it, replacing capacitors is easy. (And it's a very good skill to know if you're going to be messing with older computer parts.)

I 100% agree with thrashburg on this one. Spent too much time chasing down one problem and creating others on motherboards with bad caps.