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Whats in this OLD machine?

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creepy

Member
Joined
Feb 15, 2003
Location
tn
I have gotten ahold of an OLD machine and I was wondering if anyone knew what the rated speed of this thing could be just by how old it is as well as tell me about some of the stuff in it. Its very interesting ive never seen anything like this before not even in a machine that I bought back in jan. of 00 and still have.. Below is some info about it.

When looking at system info in windows etc it would only say intel pentium it doesnt say "Intel pentium (x) (___mhz) only "intel pentium" and the cpu is cooled by two rectangular heatsinks. Looks like one on each side of the die.

It has a ATI mach 64 video card. The slot the card goes in is not agp or pci it is some kind of funny shaped/looking slot.

It has a total of 128mb of memeory with 4 sticks so 32mb each. The sticks are VERY small compared to memory now days. They are just about 3-4" long and about 1/2" if not less than that tall.

Thats all I can think of right now. I can get you guys more specs once I get home with it. Im out of town which is where I got it from a family member.
 
>>When looking at system info in windows etc it would only say intel pentium it doesnt say "Intel pentium (x) (___mhz) only "intel pentium" and the cpu is cooled by two rectangular heatsinks. Looks like one on each side of the die.


It's probably an old slot 1 pentium cpu (around 100ish mhz)

>>It has a ATI mach 64 video card. The slot the card goes in is not agp or pci it is some kind of funny shaped/looking slot

I believe that is an ISA slot (not 100% sure, coz i am not to familiar with old computers)

>>It has a total of 128mb of memeory with 4 sticks so 32mb each. The sticks are VERY small compared to memory now days. They are just about 3-4" long and about 1/2" if not less than that tall.


That is EDO memory



Again i am not 100% on that, but from what i remember about old computers (i am 23, so anything older then 5 years is dark territory for me lol) that is my guess.
 
I have found with old pentiums if you go into the direct x control panel it will tell you the speed in one of the tabs
 
Hedging a bet here:

Old Socket 7 Intel Pentium P54C Processor (between 75 MHz and 200 MHz).
Intel Triton III 430TX Motherboard (4 PCI, 3 ISA, 4 SIMM, Socket 7, Baby-AT)
128 MB EDO 72-Pin Single Inline Memory Module (SIMM) memory - (installed in pairs)
1 MB ATI Mach 64 - ISA (long black slots), although that's wierd as my Mach 64 was PCI, but meh :)

Run WCPUID on it and it will give you all the info you need CPU wise. :)
SANDRA should be able to help with the video card & memory. :)

Or, if Windows isn't installed, hit the PAUSE button during POST (just after memory check and it changes to the "DMI Information Screen"). If the mobo uses an Award or AMI BIOS, you'll be able to read a system summary of the CPU, MHz rating & memory installed (conventional, base & expanded).
 
If the CPU is in a 'slot', it would be a minimum of a PII 233. Since Windoze says Pentium and not PII, it would be a socket. If it is a socket 5, then it would be a 60 or 66 MHz. If it is a socket 7, it would be 75 - 233 MHz. If the socket is huge, it could be a socket 8, P Pro. Since Windoze only says Pentium, I'm not going with that one.

You mention that it has 4 RAM chips. As stated earlier that would be 72 pin EDO or Fast page. Fast page is what the last 486 machines were using and it carried into the first Pentium machines. In fact, my old P100 could use both. Both EDO and FP must be installed in matching pairs.

The video card slot thing has me stumped. Since we all know that the PCI slot is white, we'll start with that. ISA slots were bigger and black. Is that what you see the card plugged into? The first Pentium boards (socket 5) had those extended ISA slots. I don't recall what they were called but it was similar to the AGP idea. There you had *really* long cards. You would have the standard ISA slot with an extended slot beyond that. These were mostly in 486 boards but some were still around for the P 60/66. I keep coming back to the fact that it's an ATI card. I really think that it would have to be a PCI card. Don't know.
 
So far ive concluded it is the ISA slots that its using along with 3 or 4 pci's and it is the EDO memory. As for cpu speed I will find out tomorrow once I get home BUT it is in a socket not a slot.
 
The ATI card is most likely one of the last VLB cards made, the connector looks similiar to an ISA slot with a PCI like connector at the end of th card. I have one sitting downstairs in a box of junk I will try and take a pic so you can compare it to yours.

If it is a VLB card the system is way before the TX chipset, hrmmm prolly p75 or maybe even 60 as the last VLB type mainboards were mostly 486 based.
 
I got home and finally had some time to sit down and mess with it. I got into bios and its reading 133mhz with a 66mhz fsb speed as for cpu type it says Intel Pentium(r). I will have pics by the end of the night as well as mor einfo.
 
Any ideas on how to boot from cd with this thing? The bios doesnt have a boot from cd option and I have no hdd so any ideas on how I can boot using knoppix?
 
I thought FPM was slower than EDO btw? 72ns for FPM vs 60ns for EDO?

creepy said:
Any ideas on how to boot from cd with this thing? The bios doesnt have a boot from cd option and I have no hdd so any ideas on how I can boot using knoppix?


Sometimes can you not get a boot floppy as well? That tells the PC to boot off of the CD?

From knoppix website: http://www.knoppix.org/
How is KNOPPIX started?

To start the CD, set up the BIOS of your computer to boot off the CD, put the CD in the drive, and power up the computer. If your computer doesn't support this option, you have to use a boot disk. You can create this disk from the image in KNOPPIX/boot.img on the CD. With the KNOPPIX-terminalserver (available from version 3.2 and later), KNOPPIX can also be booted over the network from a computer already running the CD.
 
Older machines did not have ATAPI CD ROMS, and in order to install windows, you had to boot from a system floppy with an autoexec.bat file which loaded the CDROM dirvers (also on the floppy) into memory. THEN you could access the CD ROM and run setup.exe.
 
hafa said:
Older machines did not have ATAPI CD ROMS, and in order to install windows, you had to boot from a system floppy with an autoexec.bat file which loaded the CDROM dirvers (also on the floppy) into memory. THEN you could access the CD ROM and run setup.exe.

He's using knoppix here, so basically the computer needs to see the boot image on the CD. I remember what you are talking about though. I remember when my parents had an old 486, making my own boot disks to try and squeeze an extra 3k of base memory ... hehe.
 
hafa said:
Whoops! Missed that bit...Wouldn't essentially the same hold true for knoppix as well? Without ATAPI, he'll need drivers, especially if the CDROM is connected to the sound card like it was on some 486s...

It depends if the boot disk image that comes with knoppix supplies said drivers, of which i'm not sure. I think it will just have to be "try it and see" :)
 
K guys I got it to work. Heres how. I booted up into windows on my main machine and popped in the knoppix cd. I then opened up the cd and went to knoppix then mkfloppy ran that and put in a floppy. Then put in the cd and floppy when I booted on the old machine all is good. Now im trying to find a way or know if its possible to fold w/o a hdd.
 
creepy said:
K guys I got it to work. Heres how. I booted up into windows on my main machine and popped in the knoppix cd. I then opened up the cd and went to knoppix then mkfloppy ran that and put in a floppy. Then put in the cd and floppy when I booted on the old machine all is good. Now im trying to find a way or know if its possible to fold w/o a hdd.

Should be. Beacase Arkaine23s Overclockix does just that:
http://overclockix.octeams.com
 
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