Why did we go to Slot 1 design processors?

[Avalon]

I've been going through some old PCs at work, and it has me curious. As far back as I can remember (386) through Pentium/MMX/Pro, we used sockets. Then for the P2 and early PIIIs, we went to a slot design. Now we're back to sockets, and have been that way ever since.

Why the short departure from sockets?

 

[SynthDude2001]

I could quite possibly be wrong on this, but from what I remember, I think it had something to do with them not being able to fit the L2 cache on the same (single) die as the processor at the time...or something like that

 

[Furen]

External cache, I believe. It was easier to run and external back-side bus on a piece of PCB specifically built for these high clocks (half CPU clock) and it gave Intel and AMD the ability to bundle the L2 with the CPU instead of having to bundle it with the mobo.

 

[PingSpike]

Man did slot processors blow. They actually would have been fine, if the mounting mechanism wasn't the most retarded design in the universe.

 

[Mucker]

6 paragraphs down here: http://www.pctechguide.com/11Motherboards_CPU_interfaces.htm

 

[Avalon]

Interesting stuff. Thanks guys

 

[scrubman]

HEy! My P3 700 running at 933 is still going strong with the big gold heatsink! What was that called again, Tornado or something? I had the silver one first then got the gold one and it is still kicking! ohh wait.. I think its actually using a slotket to hold the chip and mount it a slot motherboard! talk about awkward.. still going strong though..

 

[Avalon]

Not meaning to hijack my own thread, but I've got two systems that are 486's in which the system has a "turbo" button that "overclocks" them from 10mhz to 33mhz. That's just plain cool

I'm supposed to be stripping these, but I can't help but play with them

 

[BassBomb]

maybe it would have gotten really tough to slap on large heatsinks in a slot solution?

 

[Gronich]

Sorry to say this but the Turbo but under-clocked the processor, usually down to 8Mhz, this was to make older ISA expansion cards work - well before PCI was invented! All the early processor ran with a multiplier of 1x i.e. FSB 33Mhz/Processor 33Mhz - early ISA cards could only support a 8Mhz FSB so we had to slow everything down....

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Avalon
Not meaning to hijack my own thread, but I've got two systems that are 486's in which the system has a "turbo" button that "overclocks" them from 10mhz to 33mhz. That's just plain cool

I'm supposed to be stripping these, but I can't help but play with them

I thought the slowest 486 was a 486 SX-20 with an optional math coprocessor socket to make it a DX. Remember those?

 

[DrMrLordX]

One of the reasons why Intel went with slotted processors was to force third parties off their motherboard platforms. I don't know if it was the actualy bus protocol or the physical slot itself that they patented, but it allowed them to end-run their IP-sharing agreement they had with AMD by producing a platform on which AMD (and other competitors like Cyrix) could not run chips.

It was a stupid move, in my opinion, given that Intel just opened the door for companies like VIA and later Nvidia to get into the chipset business. Back before slot 1, nearly every time AMD sold a CPU, Intel sold a chipset.

 

[Koharski]

whats the point of those turbo buttons? Who WOULDN'T want a 3X OC at the oush of a button?

 

[BassBomb]

some didnt neccessarily oc, i remember when i upgraded to 233 pentium, pressing the turbo would lower it LOL

my uncle stated u could change those LCD to display any digit, i was facinated

 

[dexvx]

Originally posted by: Koharski
whats the point of those turbo buttons? Who WOULDN'T want a 3X OC at the oush of a button?

Because some programs early on were timed by clock speed. Too fast of a clock speed = hyper speed program.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: BassBomb
maybe it would have gotten really tough to slap on large heatsinks in a slot solution?

That is true as well. I remember highend heatsink reviews from the time, and a common occurance was you'd 'lose' a ram slot because the heatsink's fan would hang over them.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: dexvx

Originally posted by: Koharski
whats the point of those turbo buttons? Who WOULDN'T want a 3X OC at the oush of a button?

Because some programs early on were timed by clock speed. Too fast of a clock speed = hyper speed program.

Yep. Thats how I understood it. I don't understand the ISA bus reference. I used ISA cards fine up until the barton core era about, regardless of what the turbo was set at...or if it even had one. I only switched because they stopped putting ISA ports on the motherboards.

Old programs (games are pretty much what the button was for I believe) basically ran as fast as the cpu would let them. This resulted in some games that were impossible to play on a newer processor.

Doesn't dosbox have a fake turbo button option for just this reason? I could be wrong.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Originally posted by: scrubman
HEy! My P3 700 running at 933 is still going strong with the big gold heatsink! What was that called again, Tornado or something? I had the silver one first then got the gold one and it is still kicking! ohh wait.. I think its actually using a slotket to hold the chip and mount it a slot motherboard! talk about awkward.. still going strong though..

Gold orb from themaltake

 

[RichUK]

One of the large contracts I work on through my job, still use P2 and P3 slot processors on Fujitsu workstations, it?s amazing how many people still run on this old hardware, or how much of it is still lying around. Thankfully they are all migrating over to brand new Dell workstations.

 

[Avalon]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: Avalon
Not meaning to hijack my own thread, but I've got two systems that are 486's in which the system has a "turbo" button that "overclocks" them from 10mhz to 33mhz. That's just plain cool

I'm supposed to be stripping these, but I can't help but play with them

I thought the slowest 486 was a 486 SX-20 with an optional math coprocessor socket to make it a DX. Remember those?

Well, it's a 486 DX-33, which runs at 10mhz when the turbo button isn't depressed, but runs at the rated speed of 33mhz when it is depressed in. I guess that's why I put "overclock" in quotations, because it's not really overclocking in the sense that we know it, but it's still pretty cool

 

[zephyrprime]

It was the external L2 cache. Nowadays, if one were making an external L3 or L4 cache, it would be a lot easier to do because flip chip mounting has been invented. This allows for putting the 2nd piece of silicon on the same carrier PCB as the CPU. Look at the xbox 360 gpu for an example of this.

http://www.cdr.cz/picture_/20550/small

The extra chip on the xbox306 gpu isn't a cache but it's sorta the same thing so you get the idea.