Wanting to get into SMP. Have Q's.

[dwschoon]

I have never dealt with duals before, but I have 4 PII 400 cpu's lying around and I thought they might be a good way to learn. Im winning a soyo SY-D6IBA on ebay. Is this a good board? What OS should i run on that system. The machine might be a basic file server and i will fold tinkers on it. It is mainly something to play with. I read somewhere that there is a way to change the multi on these old slot 1 cpu's. Is that true? Thanks.

[tkotitan]

Not sure if that's a good mobo or not. In the world of SMP, if it works, it's good. It's hard enough to come by good deals on decent dual boards. Overclocking features are scarce on most dualie boards but if you can find one with some, go for it.

On a dually you can run basically anything but windows 95/98/me. Those OSes won't recognize the second CPU. I'd reccomend either XP Pro or Linux. If you're really crazy like me, throw BeOS on there, it's an old discontinued OS that was cool but supported duals, you can download it for free and P2s are old enough that it may run on Be.

Not sure if you can change multiplier on slot 1s, they may be unlocked downward. You can always try to crank the fsb speed higher.

Have Fun!

[Mr.Guvernment]

if you run Xp Pro you want @ least 256mb of ram.

[fordman]

With xp pro I would run a min of 512 mb of ram. I find with 256 it slows right down.

Fordman

[dwschoon]

I dont want to buy xp pro for it. Ive never used linux, so what would be the best thing to do? Ive downloaded the overclockix cd, but havent really looked at it.

[ryanmartini]

maybe use win2k pro on it. win2k can strip down to nothing and still functionable using xplite. also get another 256 piece of ram.

[Jon]

I wouldn't even count NT 4.0 on it. Yes, it's old and has no USB support, but it can be found for practically nothing on eBay and some other shops. It's stable, very little overhead, and is still compatible with Win2k/XP for file services.

I would primarily recommend some type of Linux though...even if you're not familiar with it. It would be an excellent OS for an old dually like that and a good platform to learn on. I've got two old duallies at home - one for NT and the other for Linux. Samba can be easily used for sharing with Windows boxes as well.

These are just the best cost-effective solutions. 2K or XP, depending on memory installed as mentioned, will run just fine.

[DS]

IWILL made some dual proc. boards that could be overclocked a bit.
I ran P3-450's on an IWILL board with NT4.0. For USB 2.0 get a board from IOGEAR ,it works great with NT. Have fun. ;)

[dwschoon]

I won the soyo board. has several fsb settings from 66-133. Im very excited. While i was looking for a dual board I found this on ebay. Any idea why anyone would bid $1600 on a pII/pIII era board?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=6795199124&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT

[mateo]

Any idea why anyone would bid $1600 on a pII/pIII era board?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=6795199124&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT

Perhaps because its still in shrinkwrap? I really don't know, its not like the quad Xeon CPUs and boards that still carry a premium.

Have fun with your new duallie. If Linux scares you off a bit, a Red Hat-like distro installs just as easily as Windows, and can help break you into something more advanced.

[Rpkole]

i had a 400Mhz box and it was a good file server and folded good

[Mr.Guvernment]

i dont know WHY that board is so much - even with the dual channel SCSI on it. unless someone bumped their own auction.

[AdvanS13]

try the lg440 its cheap and can support those.