OldSkool 3Dfx based Dual Pentium Pro SMP Project :)

nice. i'm looking forward to your system.

edit: your link doesn't work;)

Nice setup there are you like to build. I hope for many pictures after your project. Go for it

The link is a little bit misformatted, there is part of a VA URL in it. [This should be the correct link to Gateway]. I hope you don't mind me correcting.

Oh by the way, chipset is i440FX, the i450GX is usually only used for quad systems, with linked dual i450GX being used for hex and octal setups. i450GX has really huge bridge chips, like almost the size of a Pentium processor, and the memory interface controllers are in separate chips, one for each interleave. Additionally it features two PCI bus controllers as well as 32-Bit EISA. The i440FX is far more compact, 1 PCI bus, Standard ISA, can support USB (used on some Tyan boards for instance) and can support Burst EDO, but doesn't do 4-Way Bank Interleaving like i450GX.

i440FX supports two CPUs, I had three mainboards based on that chipset too, a DELL Dimension Pro200n Board (Single CPU) as well as two Tyan boards, a Tyan Titan Pro and a Tyan Titan Pro ATX. There are even 440FX boards for Slot-1 supporting Pentium II class processors.

For all who are interested:
[i440FX Specification PDF]
[i440GX/KX Specification PDF] (KX is a "smaller" GX for two CPUs with only 2-Way Interleaving (2 x MIC) and one PCI Bus)

I'm really looking forward to seeing this in all its glory, especially with the black beast 1MB CPUs. Just mind your PSU, in such a setup the CPUs alone will consume almost a 100 watts max, rofl.

Edit: Don't forget to deliver the PIC goodness!

@obi

i corrected the link, now it works

Definitely a nice Setup
I'm really looking forward to see the complete System For OS, you can try XP - imho it uses SMP a little better than 2k does. If you deactivate unneeded services and the useless "eyecandy", you got it consuming about 60megs of RAM. I think it should run fine enough on your Dual PPro

The SCSI chip on the board is an Adaptec AIC-7880, i have two of the very same type in my own server, so i kinda know these. They provide Ultra Wide SCSI support, so the theoretical maximum transfer rate is 40MB/s. You'll have to use 68-Pin SCSI cables for that, and you should be able to attach up to 15 drives to that AIC-7880. There is no native HW RAID support though. You will also need to use a terminated cable (or a cable with an extra 68-Pin terminator).

A terminated 68-Pin SCSI cable looks like this:
[Blockierte Grafik: http://afterthemac.com/images/68pintermgal.gif]

There is virtually no size limit to the HDDs you can attach. And more modern SCSI HDDs with faster transfer rates can usually just fall back to UW SCSI if you connect them to this controller. The only thing you will have to look out for is the 68-Pin connector.

As for the IDE controller: I do not know everything about the 440FX anymore, but there will be a 137GB limit for sure, but i do not know if there are any lower hard limits right at the moment. The fastest supported transfer rates should be PIO Mode 4 or MW-DMA 2 (Multiword-DMA 2, a predecessor of UDMA, UDMA drives will also support MW-DMA). In PIO 4 and MW-DMA 2 the controller tops out at a theoretical maximum transfer rate of 16.6MB/s (which is a lot slower than the AIC-7880 you have on the board). Using MW-DMA 2 might reduce CPU load during I/O slightly.

Edit: As for the OS, i personally would prefer Win2000, but i guess, XP might just work as well. You have enough memory, and since this will be a kind of workstation / gaming PC, XP might not be that bad a choice. It may give the thing the looks of being able to easily drive a modern OS, could be nice.