I had to add something to my previous post about hardware modding Vcore on MoBo: here is also a picture of a so called "DroopMod": http://malvescorner.net/images/p4cdroop.jpg . The guy did it analogically with a precision trimmer Pot across the signal line electronics partially bypassing it to MosFets directly from that big PWM driver chip (as I mentioned it in my previous post) sitting down left on the slide. But this IMHO does not resolve the Vcc,boot problem! It looks like just helps keeping Vcore stable under load, but IMHO that is NOT needed for Dothans, since even if max.OC-ed they do not consume more than 2/3 of current like P4 can & does!

So if droppin´ Vcore under heavy load exists, probably there is some not good Caps or MosFets overheating problem (maybe also PWM controler overheating too; you know what to do then )

@ caater : dothan microcodes injected into bios code alone does not help much (only post show propper Cpu) but after recognition of Cpu, other Bios routines coded inside bios do other job (involved with CPU recognition) & that has to be hacked too!

[Q]does mobo need a "confirmation" about vccp and/or gtlref, too?[/Q]

IMHO not necessary, but depends on MoBo design/Bios code; looks like on Asus boards it does. Thats why I proposed modding the adapter as an alternative ...

But guys, are you sure that you have a locked PCI/Agp clock inside bios enabled? If not, this could be also a problem with all kind of peripherrals like integrated audio, Lan, firewire, video card, IDE & especially Sata controller not tolerating too much out of specs clocks! Try to disable temporary ALL except FD controller & insert an old PCI graphic card just for test & start a PC with a Dos/W98 boot diskette! Does it boot with higher Fsb than before? If so, have enabled PCI/Agp lock in Bios but also enable one by one alone those Sata controllers. Can happen that that Bios lock affects only one Sata controller (could be same problem like with some NF4 AMD board as I recall) ! This is to check too!

If PC boots by only FD & IDE controller enabled on higher Fsb than before, take some old Ide spare drive formated Fat16/32 & insert it as an only HD enabled inside temporary, but before go here: http://users.volja.net/image/Files/ResQsys.htm & have some fun ... ...

Hasta La Vista, I´ll be back soon ...