How YOU Enhanced (Slightly Hacked) Your AP5T Rev 2.x/3.x Mobo To Run The AMD K6-2/K6-III CPUs New

Calling all fellow AP5T Enhancers!
E-Mail ([email protected]) what you did to enhance your AP5T mobo to me, and I'll put it on my homepage here, including your name and email address. If you don't want your email address published, let me know. Please try to be as accurate as possible, and give at least these details :-

(1) Exact AP5T revision - Example: 3.1.
(2) BIOS version.
(3) CPU type and speed - Example: AMD K6-III 400MHz.
(4) Bus Frequency and Clock Multiplier.
(5) Core voltage rework.
(6) BF2 rework for Revision 2.x mobos.

Success Stories

1. AP5T-3.4 & K6-2 400MHz
2. AP5T-3.4 & K6-2 400MHz - Case #2
3. AX5T-3.4 & K6-2 417MHz - An ATX Cousin
4. AP5T-3.4 & K6-III 412.5MHz
5. AP5T-2 & K6-III 458MHz
6. AX5T-2 & K6-III 450MHz - An Upgrade Gone Wrong
7. AX5T-2 & K6-2 450MHz
8. AX5T-3.1 & K6-III 400MHz
9. AP5T-3.5 & K6-2 400MHz - Youngest In The Family?
10. AP5T-3.1 & K6-2 450MHz
11. AP5T-3.4 & K6-III 412.5MHz - Play It Again Sam

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1. AP5T-3.4 & K6-2 400MHz

Contributed by : Dea7h
Email : [email protected]
Date : September 26, 1999

Thanks largely to information from your site, I was able to breath life into my faithful AP5T. It has been about 72 hours after the *hack*, and although there was brief moment of initial instability (due largely to a different problem with win9x) I have not noticed any grief problem.

Initial setup:
1) AP5T-3.4 (purchased in Dec 1996)
2) Bios R1.80
3) Cyrix PR200M2 (66Mhz x 3 Mutilplier)
4) Vcore=2.5V
5) 64MB TI PC100 DIMMS

Enchanced setup:
1) AP5T - 3.4 (manufactered on 1996)
2) Bios R1.80
3) AMD K6/2-400 FamilyID=5 ModelID=5 SteppingID=12 (66Mhz x 6 Multiplier)
4) Vcore~=2.3V
5) 64 MB TI PC100 DIMMS
6) A RJ with 13.58 KOhm was used on JP11(5-6).
7) CPU benchmark with SiSoft Sandra: (with Write allocation enabled)
1009 MIPS
468 MFLOPs

Thanks...

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2. AP5T-3.4 & K6-2 400MHz - Case #2

Contributed by : Craig Brown
Email : [email protected]
Date : October 1, 1999

Hey there Adrian,

Well so far everything has been running without problems for over a week, and I finally have time to put together my success story for your web page.

Thank God for weekends or I wouldn't have any free time at all!

Here we go:

1) AP5T Revision: 3.4 (purchased January '98)
2) Original BIOS 1.60, upgraded to 1.80 (1.82 reported an error and wouldn't flash)
3) CPU: AMD K6-2 CXT 400Mhz
4) Bus Speed: 66Mhz Multiplier: 6x (actually 2x)
5) My J11 jumper 11-12 was labelled 2.1V. After measuring, it turned out to be 2.0. Tested jumper 5-6, was getting ~2.9V. Used 10K OHM resistor and 1 3.3K OHM resistor, brought voltage down to ~2.21V.

Notes: System has been running flawless so far. Windows95 OSR 2 requires a patch available from Microsoft in order to run with K6 processors over 350Mhz, so once this was applied it was smooth sailing all the way. A very noticable difference in speed and performance, have not benchmarked it yet however for exact numbers.

I want to thank Adrian for his excellent web site and the time he spent answering my questions and concerns. I would have never been able to have accomplished this without him, and I have successfully added hopefully another couple years to the life of the PC.

Craig

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3. AX5T-3.4 & K6-2 417MHz - An ATX Cousin

Note :
The AX5T is the ATX version of the AP5T mobo. It seems to be very similar to the AP5T, and I've received a couple of questions about whether the AX5T can be enhanced too. So here I've included Brad's report for our information.

Contributed by : Brad
Email : [email protected]
Date : October 6, 1999

--- Brad <[email protected]> wrote:

I thought I would let you know that I used your advice on my AX5T motherboard and it worked great, only wish I saw your web site before I brought a K6-2 350. I would have brought a K6-3 400.

Here is my overclocked setup
1. AX5T v3.4
2. Bios flashed to R1.92
3. CPU AMD K6-2 350
4. Overclocked to 417 MHz (83.3 MHz x 5)
5. J11 jumper is 2.2 V and was fine for 375 MHz (75MHz x 5) but to run at 417 MHz required 2.35V (8.2K ohm resistor on jumper 7-8)

NB The system is very stable running windows 98 This was one cheap upgrade with excellent results Thanks mainly to you web site.

Brad

--- Hacked Mobo <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Brad,

Good work! ;)

I just have a few questions for clarification :-
1. For 2.2v, I presume you used pins 11-12 of JP11?
2. How long has it been running stable?

Thanks
Adrian

--- Brad <[email protected]> wrote:

Adrian,

Yes pins 11-12 of JP11 is 2.2V as the motherboard is the English version 'O'.
The system has been running at 417MHz for about a month with no problems.
I did even try higher 450MHz (75Mhz x 6) but I had to increase the voltage to 2.55V (5.6K ohm on pins 5-6) The system was a little unstable and voltage a bit too high, so common sense got the better me and I went back to 417MHz.

Brad

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4. AP5T-3.4 & K6-III 412.5MHz

Contributed by : David A. Cooley
Email : [email protected]
Date : October 7, 1999

Hi Adrian,

Thanks for the great site/info.
I purchased my AP5T-3.4 from Tiger Direct in 1997. Initially it had a Cyrix 6x86 MMX 200. It was ok, but left that nagging need for speed!
In early 1998, I upgraded it to an AMD K6-300. JP11 11-12 was 2.2V and it worked out fine, but still wasn't as impressive as I thought. I finally saw your page and started looking for a deal on an AMD K6-3 400. I found it at ComputerZone for $116.00. I set the motherboard up and jumpered JP11 7-8. I saw 2.9V Tried 6800 ohms and it said 2.42V, but after installing the CPU and checking from underneath, the voltage had risen to 2.59V. I changed the resistor to 8000 ohms and saw 2.45V at the chip.I set the jumpers initially for 66MHz bus and 6X multiplier. Bios and windows 98SE saw it as a K6-3 400. All was well! I got brave and jumpered it for 75MHz bus and 5.5X multiplier. 75 had caused problems with my drives before, but this time it performed flawlessly!

Here are the before and after results:

Prior config:
AP5T-3.4 MB
Bios 1.82
AMD K6-300 (333MHz)
JP11 11-12, 2.2V
66MHz bus, 5X multiplier (333MHz)
128M ram
ATI Mach 64 PCI graphics

Enhanced:
AP5T-3.4 MB
Bios 1.82
AMD K6-III 400 (412.5MHz)
JP11 7-8, with 8000 ohm RJ 2.45V
75MHz bus, 5.5X multiplier (412.5MHz)
128M ram
ATI Mach 64 PCI graphics

Benchmarks:

Winbench 99 CPUmark 99:
K6-300 : CPU 12.8 FPU 1050
K6-3 412.5: CPU 39.4 FPU 1390

SiSoft Sandra:
only after mod...
CPU Dhrystones: 1284 MIPS
CPU Whetstones: 488 MFLOPS
Multimedia:
INT MMX : 1094 it/s
FP 3DNow: 819 it/s

Winbench 96 CPUmark32: 1100

Thanks,
Dave

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5. AP5T-2 & K6-III 458MHz

Contributed by : George Dunn
Email : [email protected]
Date : November 4, 1999

Hi Adrian,

I have successfully gotten my AP5T to run an AMD K6-3.

Exact AP5T revision:
I have a revision 2 motherboard, purchased in late 1997.

BIOS version:
The board shipped with bios 1.40 and has been successively flashed with each bios revision to version 1.80 where it remains. For some reason, I have been unable to flash bios 1.82 (either before or after the hack) which consistently fails and reports an error occurred. I understand others have also had difficulty with this particular bios revision, so I don't think that USE (User Stupidity Error) is the problem here.

CPU type and speed:
Before the hack, I used an AMD K6-166 which I overclocked to 208 Mhz (2.5 * 83.3 Mhz). It ran fine with the addition of a larger heatsink and fan.

The computer now has a K6-3 450 Mhz chip running at 458 Mhz (5.5 * 83.3 Mhz).

Core voltage rework:
I made a jumpered resistor using a single 3.3K resistor applied to pins 11-12 of JP7. On my revision of the AP5T, these pins give 2.5 volts. The additional 3.3K resistance lowers that to the 2.4 volts needed for the K6-3.

BF2 rework for AP5T-2:
I initially set the jumpers to the 2x setting which the K6-3 interpreted as a 6x multiplier. I knew about the patch that was needed to run win95 on high speed k6-x processors to avoid "Windows protection errors". I had read that this was not a problem with Win98.

Using the 6x multiplier with the 83.3 Mhz bus speed, the bios reported a 500 Mhz k6-3. However, I could not boot win98 SE which kept complaining about a "Windows protection error" (!!!). Oddly enough, I had no problem running DOS at 500 Mhz. I am at a loss to understand this and suspect a software problem. [See note]

Reducing the speed to 292 Mhz (3.5 * 83.3) eliminated the problem of loading Win98, but was an unsatisfactory solution for a CPU rated at 450 Mhz. To get multiplier values between 3.5 & 6.0, I had to short the CPU pins as outlined on this site.

I approached this with some unease. I got some thin speaker wire and separated the filaments making up the wire. I took a single filament and snipped a tiny piece about 1 cm long, bent it into a "U" shape and inserted into the specified holes in the ZIF socket using needlenose pliers. I carefully checked and rechecked to make sure I had the wire inserted into the correct holes.

Then I reset the k6-3 into the ZIF socket. With the short wire filament in place, it didn't automatically drop into the socket, but did so easily with a very gentle push. I closed the lever and powered up the machineat the old 3.5 multiplier setting (which now a 5.5 multiplier). The machine booted with the bios reported a k6-3 450 Mhz (actually 5.5 * 83.3 = 458 Mhz).

Winn98 SE now booted without any problem.

What a difference! My Norton SysInfo rating was typically about 90 before the hack. It's now typically about 220 with write allocation enabled by setk6v3.exe.

The system is subjectively *MUCH* faster than before the hack, consistent with the Norton benchmark.

Wintune yields this info on the hacked machine:

Summary
AMD K6-III
(1) 458 MHz
Windows 98 4.10.2222 A
ATI-264VT3 (English) (DirectX)
1024x768@16bits/pixel
1248_0.072(0.0058%) MIPS (Integer operations)
548_3(0.55%) MFLOPS (Floating point operations)
112_0.14(0.12%) (Integer application simulation)
59_0.008(0.014%) (Floating point application simulation)
107_0.025(0.023%) (MMX application simulation)
38_0.066(0.17%) Video MPixels/s
7.9_0.027(0.34%) OpenGL MPixels/s
20_0.059(0.29%) Direct3D MPixels/s
119_0.48(0.4%) Direct3D Null driver score
23_0.014(0.059%) Direct3D Primary driver score
857_2.6(0.3%) RAM MB/s
99_0.57(0.57%) cached disk MB/s
3_0.02(0.65%) uncached disk MB/s

System Details

BIOS: Award 08/06/98
Bus: PCI,ISA
APM: Version 1.2 Flags 0x7
Possible 'hog' apps running: (none)
Other apps running: Run selected tests; VShieldWin_Class; QuickRes; DDHelpWndClass; ATI Tray Icon Application; ATI Schedule; ATICwd32; Power Meter; MS_WebcheckMonitor

CPU Details

CPU load: 0
low MIPS: -1
CPUID: 0x0591 0x8021BF
MMX Present: True
3DNow Present: True
Streaming SIMD Extensions Present: False
Processor Serial Number Present & Enabled: False
dhrystone time (s): 1.6
whetstone time (s): 0.018
Integer time (s): 3.5
Floating point time (s): 6.1
MMX time (s): 4.4

Video Details

AccOpt: Normal
Total video time (s): 16
Window open time (s): 0.017
Text scroll time (s): 3.7
Line drawing time (s): 2.5
Filled objects time (s): 2.4
Pattern blit time (s): 2.1
Text draw time (s): 0.64
DIB blit time (s): 4.9
Window close time (s): 0.013

OpenGL Details

Time (s): 10

Direct3D Details

DirectX Version 600
Time (s): 6.3
Null device test time (s): 4.2
Primary device test time (s): 21
Secondary device test time (s): 0

Memory Details

Memory Read Speed (MB/s): 1038
Memory Write Speed (MB/s): 940
Memory Copy Speed (MB/s): 593
Installed RAM (MB): 64
Free RAM (MB): 7
Memory used (%): 62
Page File Driver: 32-bit
Total Page File (MB): 348
Free Page File (MB): 319
Read speed, 4 KB blocks, MB/s: 1724
Read speed, 8 KB blocks, MB/s: 1736
Read speed, 16 KB blocks, MB/s: 1738
Read speed, 32 KB blocks, MB/s: 1720
Read speed, 64 KB blocks, MB/s: 1160
Read speed, 128 KB blocks, MB/s: 1145
Read speed, 256 KB blocks, MB/s: 451
Read speed, 512 KB blocks, MB/s: 271
Read speed, 1024 KB blocks, MB/s: 230
Read speed, 2048 KB blocks, MB/s: 216
Write speed, 4 KB blocks, MB/s: 1727
Write speed, 32 KB blocks, MB/s: 1719
Write speed, 256 KB blocks, MB/s: 236
Write speed, 2048 KB blocks, MB/s: 96
Copy speed, 4 KB blocks, MB/s: 1520
Copy speed, 32 KB blocks, MB/s: 716
Copy speed, 256 KB blocks, MB/s: 85
Copy speed, 2048 KB blocks, MB/s: 60

Disk Details

Cached Disk, 128 blocks
Open file time (s): 0.00073
Sequential write time (s): 0.0062
Sequential read time (s): 0.036
Random write time (s): 0.00087
Random read time (s): 0.0033
Close file time (s): 0.0013
Open file bytes: 1024
Sequential write bytes: 524288
Sequential read bytes: 4194304
Random write bytes: 65536
Random read bytes: 262144
Close file bytes: 1024
Open file MB/s: 1.3
Sequential write MB/s: 80
Sequential read MB/s: 112
Random write MB/s: 72
Random read MB/s: 74
Close file MB/s: 0.76
Uncached Disk, 2048 blocks
Open file time (s): 0.00073
Sequential write time (s): 0.78
Sequential read time (s): 0.76
Random write time (s): 2.2
Random read time (s): 2.2
Close file time (s): 0.0029
Open file bytes: 1024
Sequential write bytes: 8388608
Sequential read bytes: 8388608
Random write bytes: 1048576
Random read bytes: 1048576
Close file bytes: 1024
Open file MB/s: 1.3
Sequential write MB/s: 10
Sequential read MB/s: 10
Random write MB/s: 0.46
Random read MB/s: 0.45
Close file MB/s: 0.33

Note :
I was intrigued by George's encounter with "Windows Protection Error" in Windows 98 Second Edition, and I had read of some other people having the same problem. So I did some research in Microsoft's Support website. It seems it is possible to have this error in Win98SE. It occurs when loading or unloading a virtual device driver (VxD), so has no effect on DOS.
For more info, look here : http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q149/9/62.asp

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6. AX5T-2 & K6-III 450MHz - An Upgrade Gone Wrong

Note :
Jesper has had a bad experience with his upgrade, but is generous enough to share his experience with us. I've included his sad news here so we can all learn from his encounter.

Contributed by : Jesper Ronager
Email : [email protected]
Date : November 17, 1999

--- Jesper_Ronager <[email protected]> wrote:

I upgraded my AX5T rev 2, bios 1.80, 2.52 V on pin 11-12 from:
Pentium 233MMX
to
K6-3-450

by using
8.45 KOhm on pin 11-12, 75Mhz * (2)6

Norton Benchmark improved from 56 to 158!!

Jesper Ronager, Copenhagen

--- Hacked Mobo <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Jesper,

Thanks for the info. I have a few questions for clarification.

> I upgraded my AX5T rev 2, bios 1.80, 2.52 V on pin
> 11-12 from:
2.52V? Is this "before" or "after" voltage?

> 8.45 KOhm on pin 11-12, 75Mhz * (2)6
Pin 11-12 on which jumper? JP7?

--- Jesper_Ronager <[email protected]> wrote:

*Before* the hack, the voltage was 2.52 V when shortening pin 11-12.

The K6-3-450 CPU is labeled Vcore 2.2 Volt (new version of chip?). [See my K6-III Core Voltage page]

I didn't actually measure any voltages, but used your homepage to choose a resistor of 8.5 KOhm on pin 11-12. [From Nimrod's 2.2V rework of the AP5T-2 on the How? page]

The system runs smothly and stable, now for 80 hours.

Your homepage was most helpful, and I now got a cheep upgrade!!

Jesper Ronager
Copenhagen

--- Jesper_Ronager <[email protected]> wrote:

I reported last week an upgrade of my AX5T board with a K6-3-450 processor running at a bus speed of 75 MHz.
After the system had been running continuously for a week it became increasingly unstable, Windows reporting io-errors.
I lowered the bus speed to 66 MHz, but the system still degraded.
Finally the PC couldn't boot. I removed all cards, put all jumpers back to before the upgrade, and tried my old P233MMX CPU, but the motherboard was dead.
I had to buy a new socket7 board (EPOX MVP3G2) for 100 $!!

--- Hacked Mobo <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Jesper,

Bad news! :(
I doubt it is due to the 75MHz bus. More likely the VR has been burnt ... possibly it was a non-switching one like on the GA-586HX 1.5x. This could have resulted in the VR overheating. Also, I was quite wary that you didn't measure the core voltage.

--- Jesper_Ronager <[email protected]> wrote:

I guess you are right about the VR, the transistor with the heat sink was VERY hot.
The K6-3-450 CPU was not harmed, as it is now working perfectly in the new motherboard.

Jesper Ronager
Copenhagen

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7. AX5T-2 & K6-2 450MHz

Contributed by : Rowland Hills
Email : [email protected]
Date : Jan 20, 2000

--- Rowland Hills wrote:

Just looked back at your site after a few months happily running my system, which goes as follows:

Before:
AX5T - 2
Bios v. 1.7
AMD K6 - 200
Core Voltage 2.8v
32Mb PC100 SDRAM
Running at 66x3

After:
AX5T - 2
Bios v. 1.92
AMD K6 - 2 - 400 (running at 450Mhz)
Core Voltage 2.5v
128Mb PC100 SDRAM
Running at 75x6

Note: I deliberately chose to use a 400 Mhx CPU rather than a 450 because I didn't fancy fiddling about with resistors etc (although I did later try it, and couldn't get the system to boot at all!) and I noticed that on the various overclocking newsgroups they suggested that the most stable way to run a 400Mhz K6II at 450 was to increase core voltage to 2.5v!

Hey presto, one significantly faster system, for very little outlay. It's especially noticeable in games like Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament, which literally blow away people who aren't used to modern computers.

It has been running stably in this configuration since October 99.

(Note: When I tried using an 8.5k resistor (as used on the AP5T2, I could not get the system to boot in Windows, so I simply didn't bother, as my system has been running stably.)

I would like to try using 83Mhz bus speed, but I think that I'm limited by the clock chip on the board. If you know of any workaround, I'd love to know it, and I'll be happy to let you know how I get on.

(Now if I could just get 100Mhz and an AGP slot somehow.....)

Regards,

Rowland.

PS - The rest of my PC also works fine at 75Mhz speed. It's as follows:
16Mb Voodoo Banshee (Maxi Gamer Phoenix)
Hollywood+ MPEG2 Decoder
Soundblaster PCI 128
Unbranded Network Card (based on Realtek 8029)
Panasonic SR 8582 DVD
8.5Gb Maxtor Hard Drive (UDMA-33)
650Mb Western Digital Hard drive
Sony 3.5" Floppy

--- Hacked Mobo wrote:

Hi Rowland,

Great news! Congratulations.
I'll put your success story on my homepage soon ... watch for it! 8)
Yah! Q3 and UT are HOT games! I've been losing sleep because of them. *O

One word of warning:
Another AX5T-2 owner has had a bad experience with his upgrade ... the mobo died. This was probably due to its non-switching VR overheating. You can read about it on my How YOU? page. So watch out and try to keep your VR cool.

As for 83.3MHz bus, according to the user manual, some models of AX5T-2 have this setting. See the attached screen capture. Take note of the comment at the bottom.

Adrian

--- Rowland Hills wrote:

It was your "How YOU?" page which I was reading and thought I'd add my story. As I say, I wasn't very happy with it until I found that people were recomending running overclocked 400s at 2.5v anyway, so I thought I'd try it. It's been rock solid for over 4months now.

I'll have another fiddle and let you know if I get 83.3Mhz.

Rowland.

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8. AX5T-3.1 & K6-III 400MHz

Contributed by : Dave Brand
Email : [email protected]
Date : Feb 14, 2000

--- Dave Brand wrote:

Just wanted to write to thank you for your "hacks" page. I just finished upgrading my P-166MMX to a K6-III 400.

Specifics:
Motherboard: AX5T 3.1
BIOS: 1.92
CPU: K6-III 400 2.4v (all I could find...)
Bus: 66
Multiplier: 2/6

I used a pair or 22k resistors I had around - put them in parallel to get an 11k. Tried this on the various jumpers till I found a pair that gave about 2.4 (2.43. I think) on the 9-10 jumper position.

First attempt to boot failed after the DMI check, turned off BIOS caching and it booted right up.

No glitches yet, but it's only been up about an hour. A definite speed improvement over the P-166MMX that was there before. CPUMARK99 gave 34.9 - is that about right? Haven't tried SetK6 yet.

One note, one of the voltage regulators are running a bit hotter than I'd like so I won't be trying any overclocking. I haven't had much luck at 75Mhz anyway, my system is pretty packed with junk ;-)

Thank you for the inspiration...

--- Hacked Mobo wrote:

HI Dave,

Thanks for the report! Great news and congrats! :)
Watch out for that hot VR, try SetK6 and let me know.
I'll put your report on my page later.

Good luck!
Adrian

--- Dave Brand wrote:

Tried SetK6 (V3) and it didn't do anything for me. WA was already enabled by the BIOS. After setting WC for primary, benchmarks were slightly slower. Setting WC for secondary caused an immediate crash.

System stability is great. Everything seems to be working. I've been running prime95 and the system is up for long stretches (12 hours or more). I expected at least something to fail (I even went so far as to do a backup before the upgrade ;-)

Thanks again...

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9. AP5T-3.5 & K6-2 400MHz - Youngest In The Family?

Contributed by : Geoff Gehring
Email : [email protected]
Date : Feb 22, 2000

--- Geoff Gehring wrote:

Hi Adrian
Just a very quick "Thank You Very Much!"
The support of your pages helped me to move another step from the Cyrix MII 300 to a K6-2 400 on my AP5T rev 3.5
Rgds
Geoff.

AP5T Rev 3.5
Bios 1.80
K6-2 400 2.2v (some are 2.4)
66 x 6(2)
11-12 for 2.2v

Bye.

--- Hacked Mobo wrote:

Hi Geoff,
That's great news! Congrats! :)
I have 2 questions :-
1. You stated "11-12 for 2.2V". Is this available on the rev 3.5 without modification(adding resistors)?
2. Which jumper is it? JP11?

--- Geoff Gehring wrote:

Ahem! Afraid you might ask that.
JP 11 .... YES
NO resistors.
As you're aware the handbook (which indicated as being slightly behind the release of the motherboard) shows JP 11 as (reserved) 2.5/2.2/2.0 Reading all the articles that I could ... & looking up the ISA bus etc. suggested that I have English `O' mboard.

Other snippets that I gleaned including a measurement of the onboard surface mount resistors back then indicated different values that suggested LOWER than 2.5volts.

Clamped for time & with all "snippets" seeming to confirm LOW rather than high. I decided to "bite the bullet" & try it. (after removal of some of the hangers-on) It has been functioning perfectly & at this moment I am using it. CPU runs "cool as a cucumber"

I finally got the HWMON software & was about to write to AOPen regarding another program that I believe was better when your e-mail arrived. Fully aware of course that the software may be of no use as values are different etc.

Mine is the 2.2v CPU AMD K6-2-400 but be aware that there is also a 2.4v version.

As I said.. AHEM! But thats it Folks.
(Wouldn't do it if I had a new board with a long future of course.)

Hope the info is of some help.
Regards Geoff.

--- Hacked Mobo wrote:

So, did you actually measure the voltage with JP11(11-12) jumpered?
Thanks
Adrian

--- Geoff Gehring wrote:

Sorry Adrian
That's what the AHEM was all about.
For reasons stated before I took a chance (OUCH!) Educated guess Call it what you like. So even now I'm not absolutely sure of the voltage. (most unscientific I know)
It continues to run very cool & according to AMD specs that I read if the voltage was even 0.2 volts higher there is something like 10-12 Watts more dissipation from memory.

Perhaps I should put a direct e-mail to AOpen as a double check?

Sorry I can't be more specific.
Rgds Geoff Gehring.

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10. AP5T-3.1 & K6-2 450MHz

Contributed by : Darren Twa
Email : [email protected]
Date : Feb 25, 2000

--- Darren Twa wrote:

Just enhanced my AP5T rev 3.1 board.
bios 1.80

Was running a K6 200, 66 MHz bus

Now running a K6-2 450, 75 MHz bus, multiplier 6x

I went down to the local radio shack and found
10K ohm
3.3K ohm
330 ohm

Hooked them up to get 13.63K ohm.

Played Tribes for a while to test it out. Flawless results.

Thanks for the great info!

Darren

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11. AP5T-3.4 & K6-III 412.5MHz

Contributed by : Axel
Email : [email protected]
Date : Apr 1, 2000

--- Axel wrote:

Hey-

Thanks to your site and readers' success stories I was able to upgrade my AP5T Rev. 3.4 mobo from a Cyrix PR200 to a K6-3/400 with NO problems whotsoever. From information on AOpen's website I discovered that there were engineering versions of the board in which JP11 11-12 produced 2.2V. There's a code along side the ISA slot nearest the edge of the board; if the last letter(s) in the code read "M" or higher than JP 11 11-12 is 2.2V. Unfortunately for me I have version "J" so I had to measure it (I used a mirror to read the code so I didn't have to take the board out of the case).

I got a reading of 2.1V and was hoping to get a K6-3/400 that called for 2.2V but could only get a 2.4V one. It wasn't too much of a problem, as I had read another reader's success at using an RJ on JP11 7-8. I tried different resitance values and finally got a steady 2.36V with an 8.06k Ohm resistor, and that's what I went with. I had previously applied the AMDK6 updatee from MS' website, and the system booted up with no trouble. I'm running Win95 release "B", by the way. The first couple of tests I went with 66mhz bus and 6x clock, but I was encouraged by the ease of the change, so I upped it to 5.5x and 75mhz bus, and that's where it is now. There have been no stability problems of any kind, running continuosly for one week, and real-world performance has TRIPLED! For $85!!!

I did throw in an extra case fan, and because of surplus space in the case, I'm able to point the fan directly over the CPU , which already has an oversized heatsink/fan. The CPU probably runs cooler than the Cyrix ever did, I think.

Thanks again for an excellent site and wish you and everyone else continued success. This upgrade has given at least another year or so of life to my PC.

Axel

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Last revised: April 03, 2000.