I finally managed to get me one of these from eBay, it's boxed with all accessoires. I figured since some of you also own this motherboard I might as well ask some questions here.

1) Where can I find the latest bios and the flash utility for it? answered
2) What's the best processor supported by the latest BIOS? answered
3) Does the motherboard/chipset support Dual Channel? answered

1) epox website
2) with 3dfx in mind,it would be the athlon xp 3000 the 333FSB version

Their FTP site does not work here.
(Neither do the global English, European and German sites)

Hey

I would try just Googling for driver files, however a website called 2themax is usually the place that has the drivers

http://www1.2themax.com/download/driver.htm

:)

Definitely single channel DDR.  Dual channel was for DDR400 boards and up.  My EPoX 8K5A3+ is single channel DDR.

That site only has drivers as far as I can see, no BIOS and flash utility.

As for google; I could do that, but I'll need to know what the latest BIOS is :)

My experience in the last four months is finding drivers/bios/manuals for the following EPoX boards:
8KTA2
8KTA3+PRO
8K5A3

The best thing to do for bios is to note the info on the EPoX website for dates for their bioses.  

But really, you just need to go to www.epox.ru

Here's the link directly to your mobo's download page: http://www.itclinic.ru/download/brands/epox/ep-8k3aplus/&usg=ALkJrhiZ6Oe97hTuLqE5-KE7_YrNqHYong

Thank you :)

Are you building a V6K machine?

No, it's going to be a benchmarking system for all Voodoo's and other cards from that era (rage, tnt, geforce, savage, kyro, etc.).

Have a look here :
http://www.k7jo.de/8k3a/index.htm
for modded Bios versions. Maybe you find something usefull.

Question time again;

Does the 8K3A+ have an AGP/PCI lock?

I'd be surprised if it hadn't. I think the KT333 doesn't offer the possibility to unbind the PCI clock from the AGP..
But I'm not 100% sure.

AGP/PCI lock means that you can increase the FSB without increasing the AGP/PCI speeds.

I'm thinking of getting an AthlonXP-M 2500+ and pitting at 2400MHz with a 200MHz FSB. But if the AGP and PCI busses wil overclock as well, I might just go for a 3000+.

If you raise the FSB-clock the AGP/PCI-clocks will go up, too...

The best CPU for a non-OCed 3dfx-system is a Athlon XP 3200+ FSB333 (AXDA3200DKV4D) with 2333 MHz (14x166 MHz)!

its 2166MHz,actually.

2333 MHz...

I own this CPU...

ps47 wrote on 20.12.08 at 04:50:57:

its 2166MHz,actually.

That's the 3000+

ah yes.my mistake..

Whee, if all goes well I should be getting an AthlonXP 3000+ next week :D
Already got everything else I need so I can start building a system when I get the proc. Yippee!

No building a system for me yet. The motherboard has bad capacitors. Don't know why I didn't see that before.

Been trying to get new caps, but that's difficult since Epox is gone.

http://tweakers.net/ext/f/8p2SlEun11ClcLlWVRKntsuc/thumb.jpg http://tweakers.net/ext/f/B14rBcYqO15BnYQOMGXWlkgq/thumb.jpg
thumbnails, click for larger.

yeah,happened on one of my epox boards as well.funny thing,the board still runs fine,even with bad caps..

WHOA! That's a LOT of bad caps...

BTW - The caps can be replaced with any Brand of Capacitor as long as they are the SAME micro farad value and the SAME or HIGHER voltage value.

I'd Recommend one of the following capacitor brands...

Rubycon
Nichicon
United Chemicon

...there are other good brands too, but they're the best.

I know, but the only caps I can find with the same uF, have like 50+ Volts instead of 10Volts which seems a bit too much.

Its ok to go up on the voltage but I think a 50 v cap will be huge compared to the one its replacing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCSNWi3UHf4&feature=fvw

Bit late on the reply aren't you? ;)

Might as well give a small update; I ordered caps from badcaps.net and had someone solder them on. Board seems to work fine, haven't done any stresstesting yet though. Needs a new BIOS and AWDFlash does not seem to recognise my keyboard :-[

By chance do you have a list of the caps required to fix up an 8K3A? (would prefer to replace all most all of the caps)

[quote author=795E4345586F685E59515E595E434E370 link=1227269579/24#24 date=1269535222]AWDFlash does not seem to recognise my keyboard :-[/quote]
Strange

rottentreats wrote on 25.03.10 at 18:08:11:

By chance do you have a list of the caps required to fix up an 8K3A? (would prefer to replace all most all of the caps)

Hi Brendan, here they are.

8K3A+

2200uf 10V CSG 13 pcs
1500uf 6.3V CSG 2 pcs
1200uf 6.3V CSG 6 pcs
1000uf 6.3V CSG 6 pcs
100uf 16V CSG 18 pcs
10uf 25V CSG 6 pcs

Yep, except the 2200 are 6.3Volts when ordering from badcaps.net (no problem though) and I didn't replace the 100 and 10's.

Thank you for the information Tim! (and thank you NitroX for the additional info)  I think I will undertake that as a small project for myself. (one of my three 8k3a+ boards could use a recap)

Hi

Yes, the max CPU for 8K3A+ is Barton 3200 AXDA3200DKV4D

In my mobo it is running with V56K and no problem.

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/4964/postsyr.th.jpg

Posting picture  with 09/16/2003 Bios. Bios regonize the cpu multiplier right with auto setting.

Only thing is, that it shows 3200+ cpu running in 2332Mhz instead of 2333Mhz, but this is only cosmetic thing..



I also recap my mobo because bad caps:

This board 2200uf caps were the worst of my three ones:

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/6523/badcsg1.th.jpg


After recapping it looks much better  :)

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/8880/8k3awithnewcaps.th.jpg


http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/8955/8k3ahighres.th.jpg


Original caps:

2200uf 10V CSG 13 pcs
1500uf 6.3V CSG 2 pcs
1200uf 6.3V CSG 6 pcs
1000uf 6.3V CSG 6 pcs
100uf 16V CSG 18 pcs
10uf 25V CSG 6 pcs


New Caps

2200uf 10V RUBYCON MHZ LOW-ESR 105C
1500uf 6.3V RUBYCON MCZ LOW-ESR 105C
1200uf 6.3V RUBYCON MCZ LOW-ESR 105C
1000uf 10V RUBYCON MCZ LOW-ESR 105C
100uf 16V RUBYCON ZLH LOW-ESR 105C
10uf 25V NICHICON PY(M) 105C


Good quality caps:

Rubycon, Nichicon, Chemicon, Sanyo and Panasonic. I didn't mix so many
brands, so I used only Rubycon MHZ,MCZ, ZLH series and one set (25v 10uf) Nichicon.
You can rise the voltage range a little bit (as I had to do in 1000uf) but do not rise uf range.
Bigger caps must be LOW-ESR

Also the caps dimension must be check, that they fit in motherboard.

I bought my caps here:

http://stores.ebay.com/PC-MotherBoard-Capacitors-Store


Regards
Kokohemmo

Hmmm I recognise those caps, smae as on my pld soltek board R.I.P, maybe I can use it as a practice board. Passed on a 8k5a the other day coz of a bad cap :S

http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/4840/blowncap.jpg

Those caps are gonna say you goodbye, mate!

goriath wrote on 25.03.10 at 21:11:26:

Those caps are gonna say you goodbye, mate!

They did already, all the caps where like that including one in the psu. I rescued my 1700+ from it 512mb ram and akasa silver mountain (silver plated chunk of copper).I might buy some cheap caps and practice my soldering on it  :)

Most of the caps, if not all you can find here :

http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/PC-MotherBoard-Capacitors-Store__W0QQ_armrsZ1

Excellent store, quick shipping too, even though it's the opposite side of the world.

Would there be any advantage in upgrading to solid caps like modern motherboards?

oldskool wrote on 26.03.10 at 17:41:23:

Would there be any advantage in upgrading to solid caps like modern motherboards?

Yes. Solid state caps generally are more valuable, stable, and qualitatively better.

There is only a minor problem. You can not replace common caps with solid state ones. Solid State caps are SMD, this mean them can be soldered only on PCBs that are made for this kind of caps manifacturing.

I've got a couple of boards laying around that have bad caps that I would love to be able to use again, how hard is it to change caps? I'm not that great with a solder gun. Better to have someone with experience do this?

jandarsun8 wrote on 26.03.10 at 19:44:31:

I've got a couple of boards laying around that have bad caps that I would love to be able to use again, how hard is it to change caps? I'm not that great with a solder gun. Better to have someone with experience do this?

Not so hard indeed ;). Important is the quality of soldering. Look around the web for tutorials; very good video tutorials can be found on youtube.

If you want make practise, you can use electronic boards that you do not care of or something like that for self-training

Hi

As goriath said, it is not actually so hard as you might think. Just a little bit of courage and dare to do it...


Regards
Kokohemmo

lol thanks guys. With Socket A boards in ever tighter demands I haven't gotten rid of these yet for this very reason, that they could be repaired.

I'll practice on some other boards I have as recommended and see what I can do.    :)