I miss Slot 1!

[Dahak]

for the amd people... Slot A !!

I also remember the half covered slot 1 like the later versions of the p2 and p3 which would wiggle in the slot if not fully seated. hated that

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

I'm waiting for the day when FPGA become advanced enough to allow for the chip to equal a modern cpu and could be soldered to the board and programmed with software. Want a new cpu, just update the code. We have fpga now that can do 8 p3 cores on one chip so there is hope.

I'd like that too, but FPGAs would be less efficient than plain 'ol ASICs. Certainly good enough though.

for the amd people... Slot A !!

Golden Fingers! Am I showing my age? Nah, it's recent enough.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Perhaps modern CPUs would require so many contacts, that the "processor cartridge" would resemble a Neo-Geo game cartridge (about the size of a VHS tape, possibly slightly larger). Hmm, Xeon CPUs of that era were also bigger than the standard Slot 1 desktop CPUs.

But I still think that a return to a slot config could be possible, if only because the power-consumption (and therefore, power-dissipation) of CPUs, are seemingly going down.

 

[Gillbot]

Clipped on heatsink? Mine bolted on!!

Good old PIII with an Alpha and twin delta black label screamers!!!

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Oh Lord, black label Deltas. Can't believe that I actually put up with that high-pitched whine years ago

 

[Tsavo]

Clipped on heatsink? Mine bolted on!!

Good old PIII with an Alpha and twin delta black label screamers!!!

I had one of those. You could kill an elephant with the heatsink if you dropped one on its head from a height of four inches.

 

[GammaLaser]

But I still think that a return to a slot config could be possible, if only because the power-consumption (and therefore, power-dissipation) of CPUs, are seemingly going down.

I'm not too sure. Pin counts have steadily been increasing (1000 or even 2000+ pins) as more I/O features are integrated into the CPU (DDR channels, PCIe, etc.) so it'll be really tough to get an edge connector that won't be prohibitively large to support the same number of I/Os.

The slot daughtercard also adds complexity to the design. In modern high speed interfaces (QPI, PCIe, DDR3...), board trace length and impedances must be tightly controlled, so adding more channel length with the daughtercard not to mention the additional connectors would add tons of electrical issues for these interfaces. These weren't issues before since we didn't have those high-speed interfaces and the other parts of the chipset supported the majority of the I/O standards on the system.

 

[Ayah]

I'd love to see the length of the slot needed for G34 and the size of the motherboard needed for 4 processors.

 

[DeathReborn]

In a way a Slot would have 1 benefit available. The ability to put VRAM on the board for the IGP.

I think we're giving the engineers who design these kind of things not enough credit. I have no doubt that somewhere, one or many of them could make a Slot capable of taking even a 2000+ pin CPU & associated interconnects of a sensible size. There is just no call for it so they aren't going that way.

I'd like to see a Slot for chips like Atom & Brazos, make it a side angle slot so the PCB can be also supported at the other end with a bracket/screws & have 128/256MB of VRAM on board. It would be almost like a convergence of MXM & CPU with the best of both.

ps: I still run a Dual P3-866MHz Slot 1 Workstation as a Firewall. A massive 1GB of 800MHz Rambus RAM. I also have a Slot A Athlon 850Mhz (Thunderbird) with GFD that I used to run at 1000MHz.

 

[ChippyUK]

thats old school. even the 286s we had used simms.

closest i've ever seen in person was upgrading memory on a 1mb video card to a 2mb one with some random chips i bought at compusa that fit in the dip sockets.

i still remember as a kid reading pc mag, and seeing sipp modules and the jokse about using them to comb a moustache

Even more old school on a VIC-20 with 8 and 16K RAM expansion cartridge. Even had the extender board with dip switches so you could combine them. Good times!

 

[hans007]

Even more old school on a VIC-20 with 8 and 16K RAM expansion cartridge. Even had the extender board with dip switches so you could combine them. Good times!

i still remember being about 7 or 8 and my dad was a computer enthusiast type as well and he was younger than i am now...

so i'd sit there watching him put 386s together, he had a 387 overclocked, 2400 baud modems.

the best part was he worked at a taiwanese oem, so we always had engineering samples, and spare parts at our house. i still remember him getting some sort of weird expansion board so his machine could have 16 30pin 256KB simms for a whopping 4MB of ram! and dual 40mb esdi drives. i think at the time 1MB simms were so expensive, so the 16 simm array was awesome! hahahah

those were the good old days. i think they made me into the geek i am today.

 

[SketchMaster]

Uh, I remember when ram was little torroids threaded in a grid pattern on horizontal and vertical wires

Art

HA! back in MY days:

(Joking aside, my Dad actually has a few examples of memory like this from an old computer his buddy worked on; can't remember the name of it though...)

Back on topic:

I remember taking apart my 500MHz Slot A and re-working the HS in a rabid quest for more MHz and cooler operation!

That poor, poor CPU went though quite a bit; but it got me hooked on modding hardware.

 

[Gillbot]

I had one of those. You could kill an elephant with the heatsink if you dropped one on its head from a height of four inches.

But man did they cool!!!

 

[skipsneeky2]

Slot 1 gangbang!

 

[jjsbasmt]

Brings back memories. Just this past week I was in a warehouse that had scores of desktop systems lying around with the covers off. All were Slot 1s. Also some years ago I built a system that had a motherboard that could utilized either a Slot 1 or a Socket chip. Kinda neat, I started it with the Slot 1 and eventually went to a socket that was 933 Mhz as I remember.

 

[Cogman]

there are 2 reasons they dont use it anymore:

1) data lanes, new cpus have like 1300 pins... makeing a slot-1 like cpu, would be one LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG mofo.

That isn't really the big issue. The bigger issue is that lots of long parallel lanes = lots of cross talk = much lower clock speed. That and the lines would have to be pretty thin = high power draw and heat issues.

 

[StrangerGuy]

I had one of those. You could kill an elephant with the heatsink if you dropped one on its head from a height of four inches.

How to design a HSF back then:

1. Grab a block of metal and cut out fins, add a fan on top. Done!
2. Lower temps? Add a 7000+ rpm fan. Noise? What I can't hear ya...
3. Use an mounting clip which easily either kills your chip or your motherboard socket. Or both.

 

[Z15CAM]

Here's a Bench of my Old Asus P3V4X Slot I on Air with a Vidded Celron 1.3 FPGA stable @ 1.74 G's running Win98SE:

The P3V4X had a 200Mhz ClockGEN. I could hit 1.8 G's @ around 138 Mhz's but wasn't stable enough considering the Air Cooler I was using. The Cooler Blocked out a Dimm Slot. I believe I used PC150 SDRam.

I think the North Bridge was a VIA133 with the 194 South Bridge - Great Slot I MB in My Opinion - LOL

 

[iluvdeal]

My first build was a Slot 1 mobo, the good old Abit BH6. My favorite feature of it was being able to upgrade to the next gen of CPUs on the same mobo by using a Slotket adapter. I got an insane amount of life out that board because of that.

 

[MustangSVT]

remember overclocking with jumpers? and those mini switch things.

I think I even tried to oc cyrix, and failed XD

 

[VirtualLarry]

remember overclocking with jumpers? and those mini switch things.

I think I even tried to oc cyrix, and failed XD

Cyrix came factory overclocked, and boy did they run hot! Remember the 75Mhz FSB jumper for use with Cyrix chips, on Socket7 boards?

My limited experience with them is that they were unstable even at stock speeds.

 

[imaheadcase]

It made people upgrading from consoles easier to get involved. "Hey this is just like putting in Golden Eye!"

 

[sdifox]

I still have a working Slot-A Athlon 700

 

[nyker96]

I remember the BH6, was one of the best chipset back then. I disliked the slot 1's sideway HSF installations but no choice back in the days. still a nice concept of pop the clip and get a different chip.

 

[SonicIce]

has a pentium 3 ever overclocked to 2ghz? that'd be pretty fast.

i have two 1.4ghz 512k PIII-S cpu's, the fastest p3, but no mobo for them.