Pls help upgrade an old dinosaur ...

[DeeKnow]

I have a trusty old AST Advantage 9402 system that I wish to upgrade.

Current specs :

- AST motherboard (AST # 221619-F01)
- ZIF Socket 7, Intel 430HX PCI chipset, 66 MHz bus
- Pentium 166MHz P55C MMX processor
- Processor voltage 3.3V, jumper selectable multipliers from 1.5X to 3.0X
- 32 MB 72 pin SIMM (supports FPM and EDO). Max 128 MB.
- ATI All-in-Wonder Pro 8MB PCI video card

I know it is simplest to just throw the damn thing away ;-)
but I would much rather spend some dough on this beast and hopefully in the process begin to learn about all this hardware stuff

Questions :::

a) anyone know if I can simply slot in another, sort-of-compatible motherboard in this ?
what is the form factor od these old mobo's ? (AT ??)
did AST actually make them, or are these likely to be made by one of the usual OEM's ?? (and by the way, AST went out of business)
how would I go about finding any more info about who made them ?

b) I know an AMD K6-II can fit in the Socket 7 and actually run at 450 MHz (interprets 3X as 6X etc), but will the 3.3V fry it ??
My MoBo does not have a jumper setting for getting CPU voltage to 2.2V ...

c) Can I just buy generic 72 pin EDO SIMMs ? I saw some advertised for $ 19 for 64MB.

d) What else could I try ??? Has anyone managed to eke out anything decent from such a MoBo?


Appreciate all help/tips/suggestions/horror stories etc. It's my first major project. Wish me luck !!

Dee

 

[Peter]

That thing has zero upgrade path ... no SDRAM, no way it'll run a K6-2 without zapping either the mainboard's voltage regulators and/or the CPU. (You can't have an MMX processor in a 3.3V-only mainboard btw. Pentium-MMX is 2.8V.) Even when maxing the thing out with a Pentium-200, 128 MBytes of RAM and the 8-GByte HDD it'll probably max out at, you'll end up with something barely usable although paying through the nose for EDO SIMMs and unavailable processor.

So, BAT boards for new processors ... Celeron is a dead end, but there are a few BAT boards around for those. Also, there are two Duron boards for BAT - PC-Chips M812LR, an all-in-one that comes very handy for that kind of quick'n'easy rip-it-all-out upgrades (including graphics, sound, LAN and modem), and Jetway's 849BS (sound only). Mind the case power supply unit - if it isn't at least 230 Watts, don't even think about it, and even then stick with as little MHz as you can get.

regards, Peter

 

[jimdigriz]

I agree with Peter. I doubt you will even be able to use the case. The case and mobo are most lilkey proparitarty so you may not be able to slide a standard AT board in the case.

If you really want to do an upgrade anyway look at an old Pertium pro board. You can get an old Pentium pro mother board for about $19 bucks and the processor for a bit more. The pro will only be marginaly faster than what you already have. If you ask nice I am sure people on the fourm would mail you old sticks of memory to go with it as well .

 

[Varmot]

Saw this article over at Tom's Hardware. socket 5 upgrade

Good luck.

 

[o1die]

You could buy a pc kit from pricewatch for about $135. You'll get a case w\250-300 watt power supply, motherboard, cpu, and heatsink. You'll still have to buy new memory, and be stuck with your old, slow hardrive. I would just save your old pc as a spare, and order a generic system from pricewatch. Just select "pc windows" in pricewatch, then your cpu speed, and you can select from dozens of systems. The duron systems start at only $239 plus shipping, and come with windows.