Are PIII and PII CPU's still in demand ?

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Concillian

Diamond Member
May 26, 2004
3,751
8
81
My 920 with HT can boot windows 95 dos on a floppy. There must be some other reason.

We have several machines where I work that have special ISA cards for interfacing with their equipment. I recall wee had some handling robots that required MFM hard drives too. At one point within the last 10 years we paid a pretty penny for some XX MB hard drives.

Nothing like fighting to get necessary features into multi-million dollar equipment because it's communicating back and forth to it's various 25MHz 68030 via a 1megabit token ring network and it's all full up with what it can do.

You'd be surprised how far behind technology the technology manufacturing industry is. Once a design is working, purchased, and depreciated, it'll get useed as long as possible. Can't be replacing multi-million dollar machines every 5 years and survive.

If I had to guess on his $10k PC, it's probably 1-2k for the PC, then $8k for some special controller card that some special application company builds 5 of a year.
 
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snouter

Member
Jan 5, 2008
92
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My PII 333GHz Slot 1 CPU sits on my bookshelf.

It's one of the first upgrades I ever did (swapped out out a PII 266GHz).
 

FalseChristian

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2002
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I remember the 1GHz Tualitin Celerons overclocking to 1.5GHz back in the day. They were incredible for their time.
 

blastingcap

Diamond Member
Sep 16, 2010
6,654
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I recently sold my PIII-M laptop. I threw in some accessories like wireless USB key and spare power adapter, too. It also came with a display, hard drive, DVD-ROM, etc. Got $50 for it, probably could have gotten a bit more on ebay but didn't want to deal with fees and shipping.
 

airdata

Diamond Member
Jul 11, 2010
4,987
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Yeah, why on earth would you consider a p3 for a new machine?

For the price, you can get even the lowest of the low end modern stuff that would be cheaper and faster.
 

Assimilator1

Elite Member
Nov 4, 1999
24,155
520
126
He was kidding, see his last post (posted before you did ;))

Na, I am not buying one, just having fun.

The motherboard link works for me, but here is a direct "non-detinator" link.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...D=3332167&SID=

DFI CM33-TL/G 370 VIA 8601T Micro ATX Intel
Ah ok, you might want to use smilies then when you come out with things like that, otherwise people will misunderstand you ;)

Btw that link didn't work either, bizarely that too is a 'detonator' link even though the text in your post shows otherwise :confused:

FalseChristian
Yea they were great :), I had one on a Slot T adapter on an old Soyo BX mbrd :cool:, a 1.1AGHz @1.39GHz

Blastingcap
Yea I just bought a PIII-M laptop (1GHz Tualatin) recently lol, cost £40 +P&P. Actually I got a bargain as most of that spec were going for £50-£60!+P&P (ebay UK).
 

Ketchup

Elite Member
Sep 1, 2002
14,559
248
106
Many grocery store chains still use PII and PIII processors for their store controllers. They work well for what they were originally intended to do, and the registers still run on Pentium-class CPU's. So yes, these CPU's are still in demand for replacement purposes.
 

yuhong

Junior Member
Jun 15, 2008
1
0
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We have several machines where I work that have special ISA cards for interfacing with their equipment. I recall wee had some handling robots that required MFM hard drives too. At one point within the last 10 years we paid a pretty penny for some XX MB hard drives.
Just get any board with ISA slots and disable the integrated IDE controller if you need to attach the hard drive to the computer. Or is it more than just that?
 

Valis

Member
Jan 8, 2001
197
0
76
Let's see some of the old machines that I still use:

2 identical Compaq PIII 500mhz BX machines that I use for Firewall, 1 is for backup if the first one ever fails (which it never does). Then I have 2 more Compaq PII 400 - 450s with BX chipset. Fail proof. :p

1 dual PIII 733 HP 768 MB RAM Netserver E800 with 2x U-SCSI-160 + Adaptec RAID card as a Linux server with Debian.

1 PIII 500 @ 560 in ASUS P2B + a lot of cards like scsi or such, runing Win 98SE, should I need that.

Tons of old slot PII 300-450 Mhz as spare parts + Socket 7-9 mobos and some P133 - 233MMX CPUs.

I actually have a CPQ P200 classic as a LRP Printer server hooked up to a HP LaserJet 4MP.

Also a Dell P3M 1Ghz Inspiron Laptop that I use to watch TV-episodes, chat, skype and surf with in bed. (Best laptop I've ever had, dropped it, spilt loads of water on it, still runs perfectly). Only thing it lacks from being perfect is ~ 2.5 Ghz dual core cpu, USB and Wi-fi built in (I have 2 PCMCIA cards for those things).

4-6 Socket A/P4 which is newer, but no one of them will even start, or go past BIOS post, because of the crappy ICs and components of the mobo. Anno 2001 - 2003, MSI, ASUS, ASROCK, they have all become defective over time. :( So now I have 2-3 spare Athlon XP 1700 - 2500 and tons of DDR dimms that wont be used.
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
24,131
1,781
126
Yeah, my fave self-built computer of all time was based around the Slot 1 Asus P2B with i440BX chipset.

Started with an OC'd Celeron 366 which with a Voodoo 3 could play DVD smoothly but with a lot of CPU utilization - not ideal for a DVD playing machine. Fast forward a multitude of upgrades and before I retired it it was running a 1.4 GHz Tualatin using an Upgradeware Slot-T adapter.

Finally I donated it to charity when I got my iMac G5.

Nowadays for a secondary computer I'm running a dual-Atom machine, which kinda reminds me of the old Celeron 366. Good for basic work and it can play Blu-ray smoothly, but it's not ideal for a BR machine since even with DVXA, it still takes up a lot of CPU cycles.

However, I don't understand why people would be interested in a PII/PIII machine these days except for nostalgic reasons or if they have a custom industrial use for it. You can buy $300 computers new now that are MUCH faster, and come complete with stuff like Gigabit LAN, eSATA, 802.11n, etc. It's not really worth it to upgrade a PIII-based system. I spent a lot of cash upgrading my Mac Cube, but only because I like the case design, not because I thought it made any sense whatsoever from a work vs cost point of view. I can't think of any PIII based cases where it would make sense to upgrade purely because I liked the case design. ;)
 
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Shuckeroo

Junior Member
Oct 24, 2010
3
0
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About ten years ago, my husband received a P2B-D dual Slot 1 with Intel Pentium lll/500MHz from his contract employer while doing design work for him. We still have it. It has W XP Corp. on it and it runs fine, especially after I maxed the RAM. We tend to be frugal, especially since employment in my husband's line of work (engineer) has been difficult for the past twenty years, We stick with what we have and try to maintain it. It's better than it ending up at the landfill, and better than working out the bugs of new systems.
 

alkemyst

No Lifer
Feb 13, 2001
83,769
19
81
In theory when he left the company he is supposed to delete the OS or buy an retail copy. It's all honor system though which is why the newer stuff requires more hoops.
 

Shuckeroo

Junior Member
Oct 24, 2010
3
0
0
The hard drive was wiped and has another copy of xp on it done with nLite.
The only problem I have had with it is getting it to accept a VIA chip Rosewill USB 4+1 port PCI adapter, as no matter what slot I put it in, I get no signal from the monitor. But that is for another post. :)
Jumped back in to edit, as thanks to fast shipping, the IOGear #GIC251U 5 port USB PCI card does work with this mainboard.
 
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Ketchup

Elite Member
Sep 1, 2002
14,559
248
106
We tend to be frugal, especially since employment in my husband's line of work (engineer) has been difficult for the past twenty years
I don't think my wife would take that excuse for twenty years! My hats off to your husband!