When I used the Abit BP6 in a Linux box build, I did it as a one-Celeron budget PC with expandability, and put some notes on the Web at the time: https://www.neilvandyke.org/cheap-pc-2000/ That page includes pricing info for each component, and how I bought it. For example: > Abit BP6 Dual PPGA Socket-370 motherboard, UDMA-66, 2 ISA, 5 PCI, AGP 2X, 3 168-pin PC100 ECC, max. 1GB RAM. Retail version.
(Essential Computing $120 + $14.25 UPS Ground + $3.60 insurance = $137.95) > Intel Celeron 500 Retail version, with warranty and CPU fan and heat sink.
(Egghead $135.99 + free UPS Ground = $135.99) The box was my workstation, and for a time also a public Web server on ADSL. I never actually added a second Celeron (cost money, and I still wasn't feeling CPU pressure) nor the UDMA-66 (reported to be less reliable).
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The Abit BP6 taught me so much about multithreaded programming. Programs that previously worked fine crashed instantly due to incorrect locking. It really forced me to think differently about concurrent programs. After that I never found multithreaded programming particularly difficult. Challenging at times yes, but thanks to my newfound mental model not difficult. I had those brass-looking cylindrical coolers[1] from Zalman, and the two of them next to each other was quite distinctive. Had the motherboard for many years as a homelab server. I bought a few more Abit boards after that, but the capacitor plague made me switch to Asus IIRC, and then they folded. But the BP6 will forever be with me as a incredibly cool motherboard that did something unique in the consumer space. [1]: https://www.cablesonline.com/soc370airrou.html (except brass finish)
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Dual 300As overclocked to just over 500Mhz each on a BP6 with Geforce 256 here too! Fastest, smoothest machine I ever used until the M1 MacBook. Quake 3 multiplayer demo ran so fast it gave me motion sickness ^^ Years later I "upgraded" to a 1Ghz Athlon and it felt like a downgrade a lot of the time.
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Slot 1 300A Celeron pencil trick was the best. I lived with that for a while, and then I got a dual socket 370 533 Celerons on the BP6. That was an absolutely insanely overpowered machine for years.
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The first wireless network here on the farm was based around a full tower containing an Abit BP-6 [1] with 2x366MHz Celerons (running at 400 MHz) into which I had placed a PCMCIA to ISA adapter containing an Engenius Senao 200mw PCMCIA Card w/MMCX Connectors [1] and two external antennas. That BP-6 - which used to be my development machine until I got something a bit more up to date - was fairly overloaded since it also hosted out mail, web services, surveillance cameras, file/print/etc services, media services and more. Still, it worked and covered quite a big area both due to the high-power wifi adapter as well as the fact that the antennas were placed on a high central place. I built it in 2003 and replaced it with a WRT54GL after a few years. The WRT54GL was killed by Thor and replaced with an Asus RT-N16 which also got killed by lightning, replaced with another RT-N16 which - you guessed it - got killed by lightning after which I replaced it with a host of cheapo 802.11g routers which also got blown up. Then I installed some large surge protectors (i.e. large and overly expensive MOVs [2]) after which these problems were solved. I now use a bunch of Xiaomi "routers" (flashed with OpenWRT) as access points, leaving the routing to a LXC container on the server-under-the-stairs. The BP-6 stands in the "museum" - that is stuffed away in the barn next to a number of other relics from the past. [1] https://www.keenansystems.com/store/engenius_senao_200mw_pcm... [2] https://…