1st ever PC case found - Pentium 166 MMX win98 build/rebuild - Ram issues

Beankp60

Beankp60

Beankp60

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I had been thinking about an old PC build for a while and then i noticed this old girl pop up on market place.

Screenshot_20251016_081757_Facebook by Bean Beano, on Flickr

Screenshot_20251016_081803_Facebook by Bean Beano, on Flickr

20251015_212731 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

20251015_195910 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

It was the same case as my very first PC build which my Grandad built for me when i was about 11 years old around 98 i guess.
Turned out the guy was happy to post it.

The spec of it was

Soyo SY-5VD mainboard
Intel Pentium 166 MMX processor,
S3 Virge video card
32 meg ram (mix of edo ram and sd ram)
Quantum Fireball 2.6 gig hard drive.
Virge S3 PCI Graphics card.
Creative Soundblaster 16 ISA sound card.
3.5 inch floppy
40 speed CD drive.
Windows 98 second edition freshly installed

It turned up not long after and it would not post at all. I took it all apart gave everything a clean and removed the dirt and dust. After lots of messing about it seemed the pc had a mix of 2 EDO ram sticks and one SD ram stick. With the SD ram stick inserted it would only post odd times. Removing the SD ram the PC would boot up fine showing 16mb of ram. I tried cleaning the SD ram slots with contact cleaner and a tooth brush but nothing seemed to get the SD ram to allow the pc to boot.

I also noticed the CPU was running at 233Mhz not 166mhz which the seller mentioned.

20251016_211503 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

I thought maybe the stick of SD ram was failing so i bought 2 sticks of 64mb pc133 Sd ram to max the board out to 128Mb. With these inserted the pc is back to not booting at all.
20251027_201429 by Bean Beano, on Flickr


I wondered if the over clock was causing some issue with the SD Ram. So i tried to set the dip switches back to 166Mhz but 2 of the tabs broke off. So I ordered some new Dip switches, de soldered the damaged one and replaced with a new one. Set the dip switches and i am now back to stock CPU speed of 166mhz. But i still cant get the board to post with the SD ram inserted. Or if it does post it will not recognise the full amount of memory and it posts saying "memory test failure".

New dips installed, i had to cut down an 8 way set.

20251027_200501 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

Im wondering there is a Bios settings i need to change or if anyone has any other ideas? I am reluctant to order more ram sticks incase i have the same issues.

20251027_200910 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

20251027_200739 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

The plan for this PC was to load some of my old games and also do a few upgrades. I have now fitted a ATI Rage 2 Pro 3d card, a USB rear panel port connected to the header on the Motherboard so i have USB now. I also have another sound card but i havent tried that yet.

h6uqOaw7 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

jbKnGwtA by Bean Beano, on Flickr

Any suggestions on how to resolve my Ram issues would be much apprecaited or any tips at all on this build, i was thinking of a 120GB SSD with some sort of IDE to SATA adapter but ive not looked into that much yet.
 
Cenedd said:
Definitely a blast from the past this. A lot of it not good memorys to be fair. Can't help with the RAM issue but one thing I remember that's worth checking you do, is that in that era the edges of the steel where the case was pressed were usually not rolled over to give a nice safe edge. They were usually left as-pressed and razor sharp. If you pick the case up from one of those edges, you'll find it slide through your fingers like a hot knife through butter. You needn't ask why I remember this! :D
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Yep that was a lesson I learned many years ago also. This case is the same very sharp edges.
 
NetMan said:
Yikes its been a long time since I've had a MX class CPU and I'd fogotten how bad getting RAM to work was until I had a quick search online.

RAM density was an issue back then because newer RAM modules had IC's that weren't supported by older motherboard chipsets like your VX's.

There's also a problem where increasing the amount of RAM above a certain limit caused it to run slower so maxing out your mobo might not be the best idea but you will need to look that up.

Fast Page and EDO RAM ran at a different voltage to SDIMM, your mobo might support running both at the same time but most didn't and had a voltage switch near the RAM slots.


These links might help, good look you are going to need it because you might have just picked up one of the worst chipsets for RAM compatibility issues that was ever made:


Socket 7 Builds - Vogons Wiki

vogonswiki.com vogonswiki.com
(Scroll down the page to the section on RAM)

Soyo SY-5VD & SD RAM \ VOGONS

www.vogons.org www.vogons.org

Help with 32MB SDRAM Selection for ECS P5VX-A VER 1.0 \ VOGONS

www.vogons.org www.vogons.org


Basically the RAM modules you purchased are probably too new and you need older modules with lower density IC's and possibly 2 clock modules as well.
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I must have spent hours looking through ebay for pairs of ram sticks. I might be better off just getting a sligtly newer motherboard. Otherwise im going to have to keep buying ram to try until I get something that works. I hadn't realised I needed 66mhz ram tbh. So everything of the forum posts ive read mention using bigger ram sticks in the hope that half of the capacity is recognised but it seems like a lucky dip if it works.
 
NetMan said:
Somewhere I think I've still got a spectrum emulator on floppy disk for when the games get really bad...



Hahaha yes every case should have come with a pack of plasters.




Started with a ZX81, then a 48k spectrum, got to play on my uncles computer from time to time which I think was an Atari ST playing frogger and sun dog (which some guy has been trying to remake for PC), then got use of a xt (I think) from a friend of my dads with a CGA(?) screen.

Then I did an awful lot of paper rounds and got a 286 with a green screen and a dot matrix printer before getting a VGA monitor and later being given a dell 386sx and spending a fortune on a 200MB hard drive and having to buy a new BIOS chip to detect it...



I'm not sure whether it needs to be 66mhz ram or not but the new sticks you got have 8 IC's on each side so I think the RAM density problems kick in so you need sticks with less IC's; do the original ram sticks just have 8 chips on them or 16 like the replacements you got?

I imagine most of this stuff has ended up in computer heaven and its only retro collectors or the occasional garage / loft find so there isn't a lot of the stuff around but looking online there is some edo ram which "might" work in your PC.

How much ram do you need, have you tried running it with just the 2 sticks you have that are working?
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the edo ram has chips on both sides, the sd ram i bought has chips on both sides. The sd ram the board came with just has chips on one side.
Ive read everything i can find about this board and ram issues but im still none the wiser and not really sure what to now. Currently it is running fine on just the 16mb of edo ram but i want to get a good bit more than that installed. The manual says it can support up to 128mb but can only cache 64mb. So maybe i should try to just get 64mb running.
Its strange it must have ran on with the mix of edo ram and sd ram for the seller as the picture he sent showed 32mb showing in windows.
 
NetMan said:
The problem with old stuff is that it can break, the RAM might have been fine for years but stuffing the PC in a shipping crate sending it to you, then you remove it to clean it, refit it etc all it takes is a dry joint or something.

I helped someone swap a PC over and copy their files over, the old PC worked fine until it was moved to the other room then it wouldn't boot; turned out the HDD was failing the case was one of those SFF desktops that can be stood on their side or used flat and the PC would work fine if it was flat but wouldn't boot if the case was stood on its side...


The second comment on the third link I posted above says RAM density is limited to 16Mbit with your VX chipset Mobo:

Help with 32MB SDRAM Selection for ECS P5VX-A VER 1.0 \ VOGONS

www.vogons.org www.vogons.org

Now I don't remember this back in the day but if it is correct and you extrapulate his formula then:

The RAM you purchased:
64-MByte DIMM with 16 chips: 64*8/16=32, NOT usable with Intel VX.

"32-MByte DIMM with 16 chips: 32*8/16=16, usable with Intel VX."
32-MByte DIMM with 8 chips: 32*8/8=32, NOT usable with Intel VX (the post I linked says this will be detected as 8MB)

16-MByte DIMM with 16 chips: 16*8/16=8, usable with Intel VX
16-MByte DIMM with 8 chips: 16*8/8=16, usable with Intel VX
16-MByte DIMM with 4 chips: 16*8/4=36, NOT usable with Intel VX

8-MByte DIMM with 16 chips: 8*8/16=4, usable with Intel VX
8-MByte DIMM with 8 chips: 8*8/8=8, usable with Intel VX
8-MByte DIMM with 4 chips: 8*8/4=16, usable with Intel VX

This is before you even start to consider whether it runs at 66, 100 or 133 and the RAM timings


RAM was very expensive back then Windows 98 recommended RAM was 16 MB, 98SE was 24MB home PC's wouldn't have had anything like the 128MB your board says it can take and I wouldn't go over the 64MB because of the cache issue mentioned.

You might have had an easier time if you had picked a slightly newer platform for you retro build; your board has got 4 slots for FP / EDO and two 72 pin slots it might be easier to get four 16MB EDO sticks working.
Click to expand...

Thanks for working all that out for me, nice one! The edo ram is maybe the way i will end up going. ive bought these on ebay Compaq/Siemens 16MB 72-pin EDO SIMMs RAM/Memory x2 [32MB Total]

Hopefully i have some luck with them. The current working Edo ram has siemens chips on it so hopefully i get lucky.

Yeah i maybe havent picke dhte best system for this build, but i recognised my original pc case and had to get it. I will see how i get on but i may end up building or buying something slightly newer if i get chance. I have quite a lot of old computers and im looking to get them all setup in a room above my garage im currently finishing off.
 
Vestas said:
On personal hardware I went from a 200MB IDE drive to a 4GB SCSI-2 drive connected to of all things a Soundblaster card which had an Adaptec SCSI controller in it. Bought that at Brum NEC - some PC show which was common at the time.

The difference in performance on the single-core processors* of the time made me buy a proper Adaptec card.

The IDE drives of the time destroyed cpu performance as you couldn't queue/offload transfers.

*I went from 386SX to 486SX25 to a (smuggled) Pentium 60+m/b I bought in the USA on holiday ;)

Edit - I had multiple OS's on it so Windows/DOS limitations of the time didn't matter. All the decent OS's resided above 2GB....
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Thats a fair leap there! i remember buying my 3.2gb fireball, at the time we were going to get a 2.6gb drive but they were sold out. I think my grandad split the price difference with me as i didnt have enough money at the time. He said 3.2gb was huge at the time. Back then it didnt take long for newer hardware to come out though and a pc could be lagging behind after maybe a year.
I used to go the computer fairs regulary when they were going. My grandad was often building PC's for people buying components and it was the only place to go for good deals. Some things were mega cheap. You could pick up cheap keyboards new for £2 you would just find the odd few keys were moulded togther which needed a little bit of plastic broken off between them, i wonder if they were factory seconds. All the prices of components were wrote on big boards in pen. I remember the main company we used was one called Gold Chip. He would always knock a bit extra off the prices on the boards for us due to often buying parts from him. Great times, then Burger King on the way home usually!
 
a few updates for you guys. I won an auction for a new old stock BenQ cd writer still in the box for a tenner so i got that yesterday. When it turned up the drive was open slightly. I installed it but it would only open about 20mm and not fully close either. So i removed it, took it apart and couldnt get the tray opening mechanism to work properly. I thought it was going to need to be sent back but i kept going with it and eventually just gave it a good pull and it made a horrible sound but the tray opened and closed now. I put it back togther with not much hope it would actually work but it works great. its a really nice quiet drive and the tray is really smooth! The drive the PC came with didnt seem quite right when i tried some cd's in it. I also added the cd audio 4b pin wire from the drive to the sound card as it was missing from the old drive.

Cd drive swapped over.

4 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

I also got a 120gb ssd hard drive, drive tray and IDE to SATA adapter. Ive fitted the drive in the tray and put it inside the case but i havent connected it up yet to load windows on. i thought i would wait until the ram came which i ordered.

SSD installed ready for when i get chance to sort a win 98 SE install cd.

5 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

I had seen a post about someone with this motherbaord or maybe a similar one installing some higher capacity ram and the board would not see the full amount but it worked ok. I thought it was worth a chance for a fiver and bought this set of 2x128mb sticks.

6 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

I put one of them in without the edo ram and it posted showing 32mb, woohoo! so i added the second stick and it went up to 64mb! great stuff. Got lucky there! I also ordered a set of 2x16mb edo ram sticks and a set of 2x 32mb sd ram sticks. Basically if they were cheap auctions i thought i would just give them a go and hope i got lucky. I can either relist the other sets or maybe keep them for another build at some point.

3 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

https://flic.kr/p/2rCDudU

1 by Bean Beano, on Flickr

I also found out why the internal speaker wasnt working, one of the wires was cut, maybe it got caught in the cpu fan. So i soldered that back togther also.

Ive also got a sticker coming for the case which seems to be taking a while which should finish the case off a little.

Ive got some games installed so far and these are running.

Carnage
Doom
Doom2
Jazz Jackrabbit 2
Duke Nukem 3d
Duke Zone 2
Duke Xtreme - not fully tested yet
Outlaws.

A few more i plan to try are

Wolfenstein and spear of destiny
Rise of the triad
Star wars dark forces.
Various SCUMM adventure games like day of the tentacle, indiana jones - fate of atlantis as i never finished this when i was a kid. Sam & max, Full throttle, the dig ect
Im sure there will be others.

I might also put the CPU back to 233mhz eventualyl but i will see how it performs first as i might not need it any quicker.
 
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Cenedd said:
Worth benchmarking the CPU with and without the overclock. Just that a 40% overclock seems like a lot for the era. Might be you got a 233 capable chip sold as a 166. Also worth checking what it does to temps with a cooler of that era too.
I know I ran a Pentium Pro 200 at 240 in that era but that's a 20% overclock and I thought even that was good!

The wiring is definitely a blast from the past. Glad it's not so hard to cable-manage these days!
You must have found the one copy of Windows ME that wasn't burned!
Click to expand...

What should i use for the benchmarking? thats something i have never really done much of. Thats really weird i never noticed it says "windows me" in system properties. I think it does that as the USB drivers i used are maybe from Windows Me. Its definetely win98.
 
Cool i will check it out. Im going to leave it at 166mhz for now. I do have a laser temperature reader thing i could use. There also wasn't any thermal paste on the cpu i noticed when i cleaned it so i will add a little.
 
Ive connected the new ssd up using the ide to sata adapter but the bios cant detect the ssd. Ive had a search and it sounds like there is a bios limit on certain hdd sizes? I didn't know ow about this, only the win98 limit of 130 odd gb. Has anyone got any ideas?
 
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Thanks for the offers and the help guys. Im hoping there is a way i can use this new 120gb SSD ive bought. More research is required i think. If i cant figure it out i will have to go with an old IDE drive i think.
 
Vestas said:
This is probably the board you've got -


Noticed this about memory : "Provides 2 x 168 Pin DIMM to support SDRAM/EDO DRAM/Page Mode DRAM-supports "Table Free" configuration so that DIMM and SIMM can be installed in any combination up to 384Mb, except that SIMM 1, 2 and DIMM 2 can not be installed at the same time"
Click to expand...

That looks a similar board but this is the one i have. Soyo SY-5VD
 
CaptainRAVE said:
I think it’s the nostalgia, but that’s sexy as hell. Wish I had pictures of my first PCs.
Click to expand...

I got lucky spotting it i think. The chances of randomly coming across the same case as my first pc must be pretty small.

Ive quite a collection of old computers at this point

Acorn BBC Micro 32k - two of these with MMC.
Acorn A3000 Archimedes with 4mb ram, DOM with usb port.
Amiga 500 with 500k expansion board and a gotek.
Atari ST
ZX Spectrum
A Panasonic toughbook running windows XP
An old Dell latitude laptop running XP
A really old fujitsu laptop - not tried this in years.
Sure ive got a laptop running windows 7 also.

I think thats about it for the computers.
 
I just found this

Patched bios for large HDD's!

It has one for my SY-5vd board.


Ive updated bios on newer boards like AM3 and simialr ones but i canbt remember flashing and bios on any board as old as this. I need to have a look into it. Im sure i remember it was done with the bios file on a floppy using dos??
I also have a chip programmer so maybe thats an option??
 
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