VERY OLD MOBO question

[Corsairpro]

My brother has an older compaq that runs at either 233 or 266MHz( i do think its 266 though). It had dimm slots that accepted pc100. Anyway.... the cpu hs/f was square so I'm assuming its not a p2. And only pentiums w/ MMX went over 200MHz. What package type cpu would I need to get to upgrade this computer... say to at least 300MHz? Socket 7, PPGA, SPGA? HELP!

 

[floccus]

Socket 7... but why bother? You could throw a K6-3 in there up to... 450 I think but you'll probably just end up getting ripped off. Old technology gets expensive as people start getting rid of stocks so you'll pay a premium to find a suitable cpu. Also, the board, more specifically the BIOS, might not take anything much higher than what it currently has and finding old BIOS can be a PITA.

I'd say get a low end Athlon system. An nForce2 based system running an Athlon 1700+ and a stick of generic PC2100 is really cheap and would be worth it over upgrading that... thing.

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: Corsairpro
My brother has an older compaq that runs at either 233 or 266MHz( i do think its 266 though). It had dimm slots that accepted pc100. Anyway.... the cpu hs/f was square so I'm assuming its not a p2. And only pentiums w/ MMX went over 200MHz. What package type cpu would I need to get to upgrade this computer... say to at least 300MHz? Socket 7, PPGA, SPGA? HELP!

Most old boards in a proprietary PC have limited upgrade potential. If it is Intel 266 then it is P2 (pentium 2 slot 1). If it is AMD then it is Socket7 (K6 266).

It is not worth the bother to upgrade this.

Here are some suggestions:

donate it to a school or charity
Sell it in the classifieds for cheap.
Save it for younger family members to start out with.
Put some network cards in it and use it as a router/firewall.

 

[Corsairpro]

i have to upgrade... he's fresh out of college, working for the state dept. of insurance, but can't get DSL unless he has at least a 300MHz. And its NOT a slot one..... i know that much.

 

[Corsairpro]

He has like $20 to spare, thats it, the rest of his $$$ goes to rent, food, etc.

 

[floccus]

Man, thats a bad situation. In this case I'd say use a financing option from Dell or a builder in your area.

DSL w/ a 300mhz cpu.... No real point to me... The time it will take the cpu to render some pages out there negates the line speed.

 

[MistaTastyCakes]

Tell him to save up his $20's and buy this if he's short on cash.

http://www.emachines.com/products/products.html?prod=eMachines_T2240

Yeah, e-machines sucks and all, but if he's poor and wants to surf the web.. this is all he needs.

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: Corsairpro
i have to upgrade... he's fresh out of college, working for the state dept. of insurance, but can't get DSL unless he has at least a 300MHz. And its NOT a slot one..... i know that much.

DSL works on any machine as long as you got either a network card (10 MBit/s) or an USB connector in there. No need to upgrade.

And despite what others might say, the 90 KByte/s data stream from DSL (best case) hardly makes a 200-ish MHz machine choke. Sure, complex flash animations will not be much fun, but what gives? For getting something done, it's fast enough.

 

[Corsairpro]

I'm going by what he told me.... he's trying to get SBC yahoo dsl... and wants me to get him up to 300MHz... anyone know EXACTLY what proc I could use based on the info from my first posts?

 

[yodayoda]

most likely it is a socket 7 CPU. you could get an AMD K6-III processor @ clocked around 400 MHz or higher for about $20-$30 on ebay. you might want to make sure it will work with the computer though. go to ebay and search for "k6-3" or "k6-iii" and you will see.

 

[Peter]

Corsairpro, whatever you'll be able to do to that old thing won't bring the speed up by much - boards that came out when the 2xx MHz range was current hardly will run the faster K6-2 models. And even if so, you'll still have the same old and slow RAM and HDD in there. Bottlenecks galore.

If you want to do it good, figure out whether you can add more RAM to it.

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: Peter
Corsairpro, whatever you'll be able to do to that old thing won't bring the speed up by much - boards that came out when the 2xx MHz range was current hardly will run the faster K6-2 models. And even if so, you'll still have the same old and slow RAM and HDD in there. Bottlenecks galore.

If you want to do it good, figure out whether you can add more RAM to it.

I agree with Peter.

I upgraded my old Socket 7 (Intel TX QDI Titanium IB+) to a K6-2 300 cpu from the K6 233 that was in there. The difference is minimal. I had to flash the BIOS to do it too. The cpu I had laying around here and I had previously put 128mg of ram in it as well. I use this as my Linux box. It is reasonably fast and surfs the net (it is connected to my router) just fine, except for heavy graphics which are slow. It also doubles as my web server and ftp server.

Corsairpro:

You need to get the exact model # of the PC and look it up and see what its upgrade potential is before you buy anything. Don't overlook this part as it is very important. You can post it here too.

 

[Corsairpro]

compaq presario 5304

Going to do some research now....

 

[Corsairpro]

ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/supportinformation/consumerdocs/Consumer_QRG/presario5300.pdf

 

[Audiofight]

Go here <--

and find out the information for the motherboard that is inside that case.

My research has turned up this possibility: GIGABYTE GA-5SMM

I also found out that by flashing the bios from Gigabyte's site, the Compaq logo will disappear and give you support for AMD K6-2 processors up to 550 MHz.

If his Compaq is using that motherboard, good chance you can boost him up to any faster K6-2 processor you find in the For Sale/Trade or on Ebay.

Also, check what hard drive is in that Compaq. If it is a working 4.3 GB Seagate, then you can go to Seagate's site and upgrade the drive to operate at ATA66 instead of the slower ATA33 and replace the hard drive cable. We all know how much faster disk access can mean to a system.

Good luck!

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: audiofight
Go here <--

and find out the information for the motherboard that is inside that case.

My research has turned up this possibility: GIGABYTE GA-5SMM

I also found out that by flashing the bios from Gigabyte's site, the Compaq logo will disappear and give you support for AMD K6-2 processors up to 550 MHz.

If his Compaq is using that motherboard, good chance you can boost him up to any faster K6-2 processor you find in the For Sale/Trade or on Ebay.

Also, check what hard drive is in that Compaq. If it is a working 4.3 GB Seagate, then you can go to Seagate's site and upgrade the drive to operate at ATA66 instead of the slower ATA33 and replace the hard drive cable. We all know how much faster disk access can mean to a system.

Good luck!

My friend has that Gigabyte MB. It is horrible. SIS chipset with onboard video. Even with a K6-2 400 and 256 mg of ram it was slower than my K6-2 300 setup on my old Epox G-M board with the same amount of ram.

A faster HDD doesn't make much difference either. My friend uses a 15 gig 7200 ata 66 Maxtor and it made little difference in performance.

 

[Corsairpro]

He surfs, word documents, and plays sierra front page football that already runs fine on his current computer. what is an M2 processor.... thats what my link showed.... um.

 

[Iron Woode]

Yup, it seems to be confirmed that it is a Ga-5SSM.

linky

I wonder if inspecting the board will show GA-5SSM in a corner?

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: Corsairpro
He surfs, word documents, and plays sierra front page football that already runs fine on his current computer. what is an M2 processor.... thats what my link showed.... um.

MII is a Cyrix generation 2 cpu.

I think you should verify if it is the gigabyte board.

If so, upgrading could be easier.

 

[Audiofight]

MII is a Cyrix processor. Those things run hot and slow. Thus, Cyrix went out of business before VIA bought them up.

MII is just like a K6-2 in pin layout. Both run on a Socket 7 motherboard. MII was meant to be used as a business level processor, thus no MMX or 3DNow! optimizations. But, companies like Packard Bell, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard used them as their entry-level computer's processor and made the cheap systems suck really bad.

The motherboard should be upgradable via the bios to a standard motherboard with fully-functioning bios, instead of the brain-dead bios Compaq had installed on there. I will also agree that anything based on an older Sis chipset will suck. That is why I am still leary to try their newer chipsets, still have a bad taste in my mouth over the old Slot 1 SIS-based board my parent's computer has. If switching a hard drive cable out and flashing a utility to make the drive run at ATA66 is all that is required, I say do it. It won't hurt. Especially if you do upgrade the processor to a 450 or higher. You might take some advantage in it.

The Compaq restore cds are going to become totally useless (oh darn) because of the bios flash, so a cd with a full-version of an OS will be required for any future formatting/re-installing as well.

Good luck.

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: audiofight
MII is a Cyrix processor. Those things run hot and slow. Thus, Cyrix went out of business before VIA bought them up.

MII is just like a K6-2 in pin layout. Both run on a Socket 7 motherboard. MII was meant to be used as a business level processor, thus no MMX or 3DNow! optimizations. But, companies like Packard Bell, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard used them as their entry-level computer's processor and made the cheap systems suck really bad.

The motherboard should be upgradable via the bios to a standard motherboard with fully-functioning bios, instead of the brain-dead bios Compaq had installed on there. I will also agree that anything based on an older Sis chipset will suck. That is why I am still leary to try their newer chipsets, still have a bad taste in my mouth over the old Slot 1 SIS-based board my parent's computer has. If switching a hard drive cable out and flashing a utility to make the drive run at ATA66 is all that is required, I say do it. It won't hurt. Especially if you do upgrade the processor to a 450 or higher. You might take some advantage in it.

The Compaq restore cds are going to become totally useless (oh darn) because of the bios flash, so a cd with a full-version of an OS will be required for any future formatting/re-installing as well.

Good luck.

Yup, cyrix basically sucked.

Newer SIS chipsets really rock. The K7S5A is really a good chipset for budget AMD systems and the 810LMR was a great budget choice for an all-in-one system. Their newer P4 chipsets are very good.

Actually I will be replacing my friend's GA-5SSM board/cpu setup with an 810LMR with XP1800+ and 512 mg of ram.

 

[Peter]

Inaccurrate that. Just the usual old Cyrix- and SiS-bashing reiterated.

To put that straight: MII is excellent in integer operations (office work, web browsing et al), it's just the floating point math that is kind of slow. But that'd be true of any socket-7 processor anyway. And they're not running any hotter than K6 either - or would anyone call an 8 to 10 ampere power consumption hot? Top speed MII-433 was down to 4.5 amperes, ten watts, thanks to VIA's top notch manufacturing process. (And besides, Cyrix was still in business when scooped up by VIA, MII sales continued for quite a while after that. Besidesbesides, amongst other things, Cyrix patents was what let VIA recently push Intel into settling the eternal patent and license dispute.)

SiS old chipsets weren't exactly bad either. IDE has been very fast all the time, and they're the ones who brought chipset integrated graphics up to usable performance levels. There have been really good SiS chipsets before the popular 735, just outside public view because almost every web reviewer chose to ignore that market segment.

So, once you've figured out what the board really is, come back here to let us tell your best options on what to do for it.

 

[TheCorm]

Those things run hot and slow

My M2 300 has a very small HSF and didn't run hot....can't argue on the slow bit though!

thus no MMX or 3DNow! optimizations

M2 had MMX optimisations same as Pentium MMX.

Looking at benchmarks and overall impressions, I would say that the old M2 300 of mine ran at 233mhz (PR Rating at work...), Business performence was equal to that of a PII 266 - 300mhz, Gaming performence was around that of an Intel Pentium MMX 166mhz.

Jamie

 

[Paveslave]

Originally posted by: Corsairpro
He has like $20 to spare, thats it, the rest of his $$$ goes to rent, food, etc.

I am amazed that everyone on here missed the obvious answer.... This dude says he has no more than $20 to spend on a CPU because everything else is spent on food and rent?? He is trying to get a processor that will support DSL service, this would mean that he has the money to spend every month on DSL service? In my area DSL is $49.95 a month, and that's cheap for around here, I'm sure it's about the same everywhere else. I'm not trying to be an asshat here, but something doesn't add up. Here's my fix for his problem (if there is one), wait two months, use that $100 and get a CPU/mobo combo from a local computer builder. I did this for my neighbor and got an Albatron I think it was with an AMD 1.47 CPU for $97.00. It supported old memory too which was an advantage since he already had 2 sticks of 256 RAM.

BTW, it was a compaq also so I know it can be done.

 

[jam3]

Surpluscomputers

you can get some cheap MB/RAM/FAN/CPU/ MEM deals here on older stuff like duron 600-1gig you can actually call up and kinda barter with em. probably $50-100 range

To think what you can get for $50 bucks more (since you'll probably need a stick of ram and a cpu fan), ALOT more tech. I would look at the xp 1700 combos goto. Hopefully you can use the existing case PSU, HDD, and cd-rom. Hopefully.

Pricewatch

Those e-machines listed before are not a bad deal either.

Forget putting a new cpu in that machine. Maybe if you had some spare old cpu's lying around I might say go for it, though you might end up trashing his current system.

Trust this forum most of us have been workin in the IT industry for a long long time.