Intel 810e/815 chipsets

[metalchic]

(first off i'm looking for a community open to discussion about such archaic computers or older ones that i fish up parts and rebuild machines out of as a hobby but experence and intuition can only get you so far before you need help from somone else. if this is an innapropriate place for such disscussion i will take it else where (or if theres a more aproiate forum i found this one by searching intel 815 in topics) so yeah.)

anyway i've got an Intel Desktop Board thats not retail (its been flashed with an oem bios from gateway) wich is somthing i've run into before and so my first question is there a way to flash it back to the retail bios if i can track down the retail model number (i used to have it written down but i've forgoten this stuff over the year its been in storage before i moved.)

another thing i'm curious about is that i used to have a 1Ghz P3 for it but i droped it once with the heatsink on and it chiped (and presumably cracked undernieth) the die of the cpu. after realizing it was the only 133mhz fbs cpu i had i gave up on it for a wile but then recently read about some Intel 810e and 815 chipsets being able to take a Tualatin core P3 i put it on there and it worked. (933/256/133 tualatin P3) the information is vuage so i'm owndeirng if anyone knows a bit more definitive ly if its only some 810e/815 chipsets that take tualatin or is it that some 810e take them and most/all 815s take them.

(another thing, i'd like to apologize in advance for my pooly organized post. i'm trying to give as much information about the problem and my thought process on solving the problem as possible. this seems to irritate most people so again sorry in advance.)

 

[nforce4max]

It is hit or miss on a lot of those oem socket 370 boards when it comes to cpu support. As for the bios well good luck but there might be a rom floating around somewhere on the net or you could try asking around on other forums to see if anyone has a copy of that board with the retail bios that is wiling to upload a copy of the rom.

 

[metalchic]

the problem isnt finding the bios i can get it off intels site. (like i did with the other gateway bios fiasco motherboard) but the problem with this one and with the other one is that intel's flashing program detects a version mismatch (the gateyway bios' use the same naming as the intel ones cept with an extra letter on the end or at the begining.) i remember reading patch notes for the bios for the other board and the other board was 3 versions behind (gateway didnt offer anythign newer than that) each of with fixed predominant problems that i was experencing with the board (like only running PC133 ram at 100MHz.)

here i'm trying to regain control of lost bios settings that should be avalible but are locked due to oem bios. (well i mean i wanted to regain that control on the other too but here its the primary reason for it)

another strange thing i've discovered is when using the onboard graphics and attempting to load spinrite or memtest it hangs and does nothing. with a Matrox Millenium PCI card it says theres no bootable OS on the floppys and with my GeForce FX 5950 Ultra it boots the programs fine. (its quite confusing but unraveling the mysteries and reasons behind problems like this is part of what makes the hoby interesting)

(another thing to note is that i'm not afraid to brick it, its not my main computer its not a customers computer its somthing i pulled out of the trash that i play with)

edit2: after loading up hwinfo and finding out the boards name is Intel Desktop Board D815EEA i googled some pics and found a nice high res one and noticed in the corner it said INTEL DESKTOP BOARD D815EEA. going back to mine i noticed a sticker with gateway a bardcode and some information on it, after peeling it off walla it says the same thing as the retail board. i'm failry confident that this will work now. i jsut need to find a way to do it.

on another note i've discovered that its mostly GeForce2 MX200 cards and PCI video cards that cause errors with the floppy, unless the ram is compounding a minor problem i'm working on chekcing that now. cards i've tried are GeForce FX 5500 PCI (Disk I/O Error), TNT Riva M64 AGP (no operating system), GeForce 2 MX200 AGP (several, also no operatiing system), Matrox Millenium 2 PCI (hangs), GeForce 2 MX (prints eoeoeoeoeo all over the screen nonstop), GeForce 2 MX400 AGP (works fine), GeForce FX 5950 Ultra (works fine)

edit3: the intel bios updater kept telling me the image file on the floppy disk i was using was corrupted (tried several reformats and different disks) so i'm going to try the windows based utility and am installign windows 2000 on it. i've discovered the videocard glitch to be exclusive to affecting floppy accsess via the internal controler when i tried to use a floppy disk for the texmode Via VT6421a raid controler's driver. with the GeForce FX 5500 i was planning on using for windows (i havent tested to see if its still stable for a long time) i got a list of Disk I/O errors from the windows textmode setup when trying to read the disk. on a couple of attempts it just registered either that it wasent the right disk or that there was no disk.

after putting the GeForce 2 MX400 back in it loaded up the drivers first time without any issue and is installing windows 2000 now.

 

[nforce4max]

Got any 3dfx or s3 cards on hand? Sometimes it pays to have vintage cards on hand.

 

[metalchic]

i do not have any add in S3 cards and no 3dfx cards on hand. on a positive note I'm posting this message from said computer right now. its not bad, most of the stuff (browsing this site, my email and such) is limited by its connection speed which seems to be a function of the wireless card (WG311v3).

I'm trying to find out what gateway computer this motherboard came from but its hard because i have about 3 of these towers they are all identical but had different motherboards and no model numbers or anything like that on them. I'm getting an error installing .net framework 3.5 to get the model detection program to run on this computer tho.

 

[nforce4max]

Well anyway Gateway must have been rather terrible when they wrote that bios rom for that board considering how apps don't work properly. Is there any local shops that you can troll for any cheap cards?

 

[metalchic]

not that i've already trolled, i picked up most of this stuff about 4 years ago when the local shops were 'disposing' of stuff they couldent use. the bulk of it was low profile GeForce 2 MX200 cards with 16mb of ram. i did get a few interesting items like this gateway and my GeForce FX5950 Ultra. from what i can tell people hold on to thier 3dfx voodoo cards, and i've not come across an S3 based add in card since i was in high school. (in a backroom, a kind of computer boneyard for the school it was awsome yet creepy to see i wish i had accsess to that stuff now)

i was going to operate the computer with the 5950 in it so i suppose that could work. but ialso suppose that any video card could work since my primary mode of getting information on that computer would be by USB or though the internet.

 

[nforce4max]

Well do you have any program on hand that can open the bios rom that is already there so you can see what code they used to write the rom. You might be able to fix the rom and then try to reflash the board. Check on forums to see if anyone has made a custom rom.

 

[metalchic]

i could do that if i could find a program to do it, i know the excat differnece, (the model number on the bios, EE81510A.15A, intel bios files use EE81510A.86A or mabye 89 i cant remember off the top fo my head)

i installed 2000 becasue the intel flasher didnt list XP as a supported OS but i guess its worth a try now that the Gateway program to detect the model number of the computer required .net 3.5 wich wont install on win2k and i dont feel like running the work aorunds to make it work so i'm going to put XP on it to see where i can get from there.

 

[nforce4max]

Do you have another board with the same chipset? If so you can rig up a dummy install of windows and then switch boards.

 

[metalchic]

oh theres no problem installing windows i just need to erace this cdrw and put windows xp on it, depending on wich key i can find that isnt oem, or mabye is gateway oem.

 

[nforce4max]

Good luck, I usually quick when getting such a troublesome board unless it is rare and needed. Been working on a few retro builds lately, a packard bell 486 that is tricky to get working with drives over 1gb. And two socket 7 builds for other retro games. Got a p55c (pentium mmx) that is running xp rather smooth.

 

[metalchic]

hah, my other old computer project is a Pentium 233 MMX on what i've determined to be a Rev.2B? Twister AT board. i cant find my PS/2 to AT keyboard adapter so i havent been able to boot it up for full testing yet tho (due to haning waiting for user response on keyboard error)

 

[nforce4max]

I don't like AT boards except for 486, I am lucky as I landed a large batch of atx socket 7 boards a year ago. My main socket 7 build has a k6-3e+ running at 550mhz (1.8v) with a voodoo 5500 agp

 

[metalchic]

well i've got an Alladin V socket 7 board but thats using my 500mhz K62 right now, i've also come to understand that Alladin V chipsets are unstable with AGP. i also understand that might be one of the few ways to bottleneck my 5950 :E

my biggest problem with BabyAT boards is that all the periphrials need to have ribbon cables to connecters in the back panels. well that and there large number of ISA ports, i only have like 2 usefull ISA cards =\

 

[nforce4max]

I suggest that you start hunting for more boards or a few junkers if you can get lucky locally. I got a p5a rev 1.03 but the fan headers died :c The other is a flaky DFI dfi k6xv3+ 66. I only got two semi decent socket 370 builds. A mostly stock compaq 5400urs with a 1.4ghz p3s and the other is waiting in the wings. Got a rare ddr capable 370 board but no agp slot and hardly works :L The rest are mostly ecs p5tx-apro

What I do hate about socket 7 and 370 is limited drive comparability that forces me to use many small drives that are decaying while the memory as well ide controllers are slow as cold molasses. At least my 7800gs works in my compaq.

As for isa cards I feel your pain, I don't even got a gravis ultra sound or a roland :c got isa ide controller card that I can't find drivers for my 486 >.<

 

[sk1939]

I have a bunch of those boards (PII as well), or had rather, I think I got rid of most of them. I know I still have a few parts floating around though, including PCI video cards.

 

[metalchic]

oh i do have one of those P5A 1.03 boards but its idk it wont take a bios update, it was my original test system for my Windows 7 on Pentium 90 project. it didnt work becasue the newer bios has enough ACPI support to make win7 ahppy but like i said, wouldent flash.

and the drive control thing mostly i've had problems with slow drives not slow controlers. i've got a Rosewill RC-215 (or 212 wichever doenst have the esata ports i cant remember) with a Via VT6421A chipset that clocks in at only like 1/3 of the speed of the 3 Gbps SATAII hard drives i have in here when equiped with a DiamondMax 9 UltraATA 133 hard drive, i belive this one is 60gb. most of my other ATA100 and 66 drives clock in at about 1/16th the speed of these SATAII drives. i belive the sataii drives were somthing like 160-170 mil bytes per seconds and the diamondmax drive was like 59mil sustained, the 815 board i have is capable of booting off the card as well. even CD rom drives. altho at 33mbps i just keep the CD connected to the onboard connector as the Rosewill card only has 2 IDE.

edit: sk1939 well if you woudlent mind boxing some up i'd buy some old PCI cards, depnding on what they were. not till after the begining of the month tho.

 

[sk1939]

Washington D.C, and they're yours if you want em. I have a bunch of things like a couple of AMD Athlons/Durons and motherboards, 10BaseT nics, etc.

 

[metalchic]

dont discredit the sturyness of old computer cards, i shiped a Riva Vanta in a flatrate box filled with newspaper. but het if your not interested in shipping USPS well i guess i can live without.

i belive the flashing problem with the old socket 7 board was that it was also a gateway oem board taken from retail and flashed with a custom bios. i just need to figure out if i can run an override on the flasher program. i did notice intels flashing tool IFLASH doesnt have an option to backup your excsisting bios either =\ the latest for this motherboard is P11, the version avalible form gateway is P09. and the version thats on it is P06. my only concern with the gateway one is that it might drop Tualatin support in an attempt to force the user to upgrade.

 

[nforce4max]

Mostly ancient trident cards that I salved along with all those old ecs boards. I'll have to think about it. I do have raid cards but not enough decent ide drives to really use with them except for two. A 250gb and a 320gb wd drives. I am saving them for when I rebuild my k6-3e+ build but got a classic k6-3 that works well in older boards but only one :/

My current project
p55c @ 292mhz (3.5x83 @ 2.94v)
256mb ram (max)
ecs p5tx-apro
3dfx v3 2k pci with a lot of extra cooling including power vram cooling but yet to test max oc
7x hard drives of different sizes
basic cd burner but might replace due to read issues
500w generic unit (dual 12v rail =crap)
Soundblaster 16 ct2890 as I am out of pci slots.

I got the page file moved onto a different drive on a small partition (short stroke) so it is a little quicker than a similar machine of the same specs. Runs opera really decently despite the slow boot drive but doesn't play youtube lol (expected that).

The other 3dfx socket 7 build will eventually get a new case and a modern psu. Will move the os onto a CF card (I know and done it before). My modded v5 5500agp runs very good at 200mhz rock solid and up to 216mhz but not 100% stable.

 

[sk1939]

dont discredit the sturyness of old computer cards, i shiped a Riva Vanta in a flatrate box filled with newspaper. but het if your not interested in shipping USPS well i guess i can live without.

i belive the flashing problem with the old socket 7 board was that it was also a gateway oem board taken from retail and flashed with a custom bios. i just need to figure out if i can run an override on the flasher program. i did notice intels flashing tool IFLASH doesnt have an option to backup your excsisting bios either =\ the latest for this motherboard is P11, the version avalible form gateway is P09. and the version thats on it is P06. my only concern with the gateway one is that it might drop Tualatin support in an attempt to force the user to upgrade.

Oh I can ship it no problem, it will have to be the biggest box they've got though, assuming you want everything of course.

 

[metalchic]

Oh I can ship it no problem, it will have to be the biggest box they've got though, assuming you want everything of course.

well i dont know if i can afford *everything*


i've found an interesting solution for freeing up a PCI used by network. i've got this card that is very nondescriptly modeled ISAPC-00. its a PC Card adapter. 5v 16bit. i was able to use it to attach a Orinoco Silver Wifi card to it for computers with limited or no PCI slots, interesting solution i have to say. and i shudder about that sound blaster, i've got one of those cards idk mabye its shorted to ground or somthing it has horrible static, horrible gameport accuracy and gave me a horrible grounded loop shock through my headphones. it also ended up trying to spit fire when i hooked its Line in to the Line out of a ATi TV Wonder.

 

[nforce4max]

well i dont know if i can afford *everything*


i've found an interesting solution for freeing up a PCI used by network. i've got this card that is very nondescriptly modeled ISAPC-00. its a PC Card adapter. 5v 16bit. i was able to use it to attach a Orinoco Silver Wifi card to it for computers with limited or no PCI slots, interesting solution i have to say. and i shudder about that sound blaster, i've got one of those cards idk mabye its shorted to ground or somthing it has horrible static, horrible gameport accuracy and gave me a horrible grounded loop shock through my headphones. it also ended up trying to spit fire when i hooked its Line in to the Line out of a ATi TV Wonder.

Bad card, the newer creative cards do have a lot of design and quality issue not forgetting some of the most bloated drivers that one might see now days. The older soundblasters are not all that bad plus for dos era games they are almost mandatory for support.

 

[metalchic]

unless i can find a better ISA sound blaster i'm really stuck with the various AudioPCI based cards i have. they come in all kinds of differnet colors shapes sizes and markings. lol