I actually own two of these (purchased a last year at $700-something each + shipping from uBID). No regrets so far...
The machine I have at home is very stable, and it has the following specs
Gigabyte ga6bxd
Award Bios v4.51pg
fc 01 00
02/22/20
A few notes on the Motherboard:
1) Considered one of the most stable dual-processor boards out there
2) Is NOT overclockable to 133MHZ (the processor is a 700E Slot 1) as noted on many MP sites
3) Motherboard is flashed to most recent revision - can support 80GB HD (I think that's what GB website said)
4) No ISA slots (the motherboard has the pinouts, but no connectors)
since I cared about 1 and not 2, I bought it. It looks like a second processor with a 100MHz bus could be purchased OEM or Retail and it should work. The only problem is the CB0 Slot 1 700E's are no longer made, and only the Cc0's are apparently pretty good. I would recommend buying two machines, combining the two CB0's into one machine and buying two new processors (up to 950 supported *unofficial, but dipswitch hackable*) for the other box. And you are right, no VRM's. As of last month 700Mhz slot 1's were readily available retail boxed, but now they have increased in price. The OEM's are still relatively cheap. Point 4, ISA... we don't need no stinkin ISA...
Power Supply
hipro 300w max 180w actual
Video Card nvidia Riva
ga 620
vanta 2.05.47.03.00
12/02/99
<- not too bad, but I upgraded. As a note, since this is an older MB, the AGP slot may have power issue with some of the video cards out there. That is why I upgraded to a Voodoo 5 5500 (separate power). I have heard the gforce may have issues with this.
The CPU in my machine is
700/256/100/1.65v s1
serial removed
imc '00 sl3xm
10/100 card is a D-Link card (note non-standard!!!)
It's not even listed on D-link's website as a card they make. The Toshiba drivers are for WinNT and 2K, but nothing for 95/98. If you get it to work let me know, but I replaced the one at home with two Linksys 10/100's (cheap and well supported, but best of all they are rock solid)
10GB HD is a WD at 5400 rpm (I think)
30 GB Maxtor just added as secondary master with the CD moved to secondary slave.
No sound on the system, but the Sound Blaster Live XGamer nipped that one in the bud. Digital and analogue inputs went straight into the CD (liteon).
Memory upgraded to 256 MB ECC SDRAM (100MHz)
The machine I have at work was not so stable for ESSBASE, but after that was removed and other applications loaded it has been rock solid. The instability could have been caused by a bad Maxtor (old 40 GB model) inside of it. That machine is stock running NT4.0 with 1GB of ECC SDRAM. Initially I bought this to become my home linux monster (I wanted paired machines), but I kept it at work and developers were using it as a quick test box, and eventually there was so much hard work being done on it that the company decided to keep it. (I finally gave up on taking it home and expensed it last week)
Is this a good machine for $599? Yeah, if you are looking for dual processor that is stable. (note: Only a Yeah, not a heck yeah since it has been selling for sub-$500.00 in past months). Is this a good price for someone who wants to play with overclocking and Dual Processor? Nope. Build your own rig with a 133MHz system. Am I going to buy a third one to match with my home machine? Nope, the MB can't support many of the newer video cards due to power requirements (some have said that they have been able to run, others say unstable), and computer prices should still keep tumbling this year.
If you are on uBid and you want to build a server... then go look at the HP servers there selling for sub-$700.00 with hot-swap bays and built-in dual-channel SCSI, and some with hardware RAID. Those have a warranty of 1 year if they are the new ones. The HP dual processor boxes require VRM's, but they are rock solid. At one point I was looking into building some servers based on a mix of uBid parts and Crucial memory, and I could have built a machine that was quad-Xeon capable (not in there yet) with 1 GB of memory and 12x9GB disks running RAID 5 for $3000.00. *drool*
If you bid on the Toshiba, don't bid more than $400.00-$425.00 (my personal opinion) since you are just raising the price for others, they have been selling hundreds of these over the past few months, and I bet they have more.