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What would you do with this old system?

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EAW

New Member
Joined
May 5, 2005
I got this old system for free and want it for my kids to play yahoo games ect. Problem is it runs even some of those games slowly. This is an etower with an AMD 333k6-2, old bios from 1995 that don't let you change anything, and a RAGE IIC APG on board vidio. I ran Everest on the system and told me APG was disabled,and to update my bios. It also suggested overclocking up to 450. I have updated all the drivers I could find.New bios seems like tricky business from what I can tell. I'll try it though if it will help. Since it is a free box I'll try anything as long as it is a free fix and the work involved is more like a "fun challenge" and not a mind bending, brain cell popping chore from the devil. It seems a small bump up would help on quite a few games. What would you do and in what order would you do it? Anything else you need to know I will be happy to supply. Any opinion is of value. Thanks
 
Welcome to the forums.

After formating, I would not install anything other than Windows + basic security because I found those systems to be usable if nothing else is installed.

I have an AMD-K6 380MHz notebook on which I have a dual Windows 98/2000 boot.

98 is loaded and painfully slow but I did not install much of anything other than the operating system on the other boot which seems surprisingly fast for basic usage as installing lots of software tends to slow things down on these old machines.

Adding some RAM may have helped speed things up for me I beleive as I could not overclock the notebook...
 
Having looked around on da net I have the impression that overclocking this particular CPU is either tricky or not to productive.That's what i'm trying to get confirmed. Also the APG disabled thing is kind of bugging me because Im not sure if having enabled will help anything or not. I've never updated bios before and the warning about doing so seems almost dire. I have Win98 on this thing also with 192 Ram. I agree that it does all the basics really well and is good for a lot stuff. I live in a rural area and my wife is terminally ill so I have to stay with her 24/7. My boys are kinda stuck home with us and for the past couple of years have had to do without a lot, with high medical bills and such. Two years ago I would have just got a little bit better second hand computer but I can't do that right now. If bumping this up a tad is possible though I would try to so they have a little bit more to do than watch T.V. If I can't get this thing any better than it is it won't be a disapointment to them as they don't know I'm working on it for them.
 
Overclocking a K6-2 is no picnic either. If you goto 450 (which the proc should do without more voltage), you will need to have good cooling maintain stability.

A lot of those older boards also didnt use the BIOS for changes, they used dip switches on the motherboard instead. If you could post the mobo manufacture and model number, perhaps we could help you in getting the most out of what you have.
 
Field Value
Motherboard Properties
Motherboard ID 52-311C-122598-00101111-071595-VT598$DELHI3_VERSION 1.11
Motherboard Name Unknown

Front Side Bus Properties
Bus Type Intel GTL
Bus Width 64-bit
Real Clock 67 MHz
Effective Clock 67 MHz
Bandwidth 533 MB/s

Memory Bus Properties
Bus Type SDR SDRAM
Bus Width 64-bit
Real Clock 67 MHz
Effective Clock 67 MHz
Bandwidth 533 MB/s

Is this of any help?
 
I once had a K6-II that was overclocked from 450 to 700. The mobo was a FIC (forgot the exact model) and all FSB/mult. settings were done via jumpers and dip switches....there was no way to do it in the BIOS. If I were you, I would open the case and try to identify what mobo it has and see what you can dig up as far as manuals or other docs on that board. Chances are it will have a jumper setup for clocking as well. Best of luck...those K6-II's were great in their time!

-Fb
 
Well, it looks like your FSB is 66.67 and the CPU multiplier is 5 to get you to 333MHz overall. Some of these Super7 motherboards allowed you to run the FSB at 75, 83 and 100MHz if you have PC100 RAM. That could be done via jumpers or in the BIOS, it depends on the board.

If you are stuck at 67 for the FSB, then the multiplier could be raised. Normally 5 was the maximum but usually if you set the board to 2 the K6-2 interprets that as 6 so you'd have an overall speed of 66x6 or 400MHz.

I am sorry to hear what you and your family are going through, EAW. Best wishes!

c627627, congratuations on that new star in your galaxy! Ten blue-whites burning hot and bright! Certainly well deserved.
 
Darn, I knew I started this too late at night and should have known better. I'm useing the thing as we speak and digging into the box at the moment is impractical. I really want to thank you guys for your imput thus far.
I only have about 30mins. before I have to give up yhe ghost for tonight. Kinda know when to say when sort of thing. I'll dig in in the morning to see what I can see, and post then. Will you look me up? Thanks again.
 
Looks like maybe this is your system: emachines 333cs. Have you opened the side panel yet and looked at the inside?

Sure Ill bounce in tomorrow after work and check what youve found. good night and good luck :)

BOM for : eTower 333cs
Part Category Description Part Number
FDD Model: FDD Samsung SFD-321B 559
Keyboard Model: KB Chicony 2971 Standard 566
Mouse: Mouse Logitech M-SAS MSEM571LOG51
Speaker: Speaker 2.5Wx2 Samsung 570
MB: M/B Delhi-3a MBEM502DEH3A
CPU: CPU Cyrix MII 333MHz CPEMCY081929
Power Supply: PS ILSAN ISP-120S, 120Watts 944
Modem: Modem w/ PC Tel Chipset 232
Memory: RAM SD-32MB PC100 MEEM521032MB
Audio: CS4235 3D Built-In
Video: ATI Rage Iic 3D AGP w/4MB Built-In
HDD: HDD 2.1GB EIDE 3.5" Hard Drive HDEM534IDE4G
Prim CD Model: CDD 40X CD-ROM Samsung SC-140 CDEM550SS40X
CPU Fan Type: pga 370 - cpu fan 947

or this one:


Emachines computer 333k.
FDD Model: FDD Samsung SFD-321B 559
Keyboard Model: KB Chicony 2971 Standard 566
Mouse: Mouse Logitech M-SAS51 MSEM571LOG51
Speaker: Speaker 2.5Wx2 Samsung SP-12 570
Modem: Modem w/ PC Tel Chipset 232
MB: M/B Delhi-3a MBEM502DEH3A
CPU: CPU AMD K6-2 333MHz CPEMAM081956
Power Supply: PS ILSAN ISP-120S, 120Watts 944
Memory: RAM SD-32MB PC100 MEEM521032MB
HDD: HDD 3.2GB EIDE 3.5" Hard Drive 533
Audio: CS4235 3D Built-In
Video: ATI Rage Iic 3D AGP w/4MB Built-In
Prim CD Model: CDD 24X Max. CD-ROM Drive CDEM551SS24X
CPU Fan Type: pga 370 - cpu fan 947
 
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Put windows 98 lite on the thing http://www.litepc.com/ very fast for old computers, it reduces system overheads a lot (you can run 98 with a cut down 95 shell for extra speed and stability). Also try and make sure that it has 64-128 MB Ram
 
Emachine 333k is the one and Ive thought about win98lite and kind of forgotten about it. Look ito that tommorrow too. I have 192MB RAM, are you saying that is too much?
 
Oh, no, 192MB is great for a Super7 board! Also, I see the 333K specs list PC100 RAM which means you should be able to raise that FSB from 67 to 100 and maybe drop the multi from 5 to 4 or 4.5, whatever works stably.

As I remember, Windows 98 liked memory up to 256MB but adding more was pretty much overkill. Seemed like anything over about 384MB actually slowed down 98 while Windows 2000 loved all the RAM it could get. Anyway, 192MB would be fine.
 
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Quentin said:
Oh, no, 192MB is great for a Super7 board! Also, I see the 333K specs list PC100 RAM which means you should be able to raise that FSB from 67 to 100 and maybe drop the multi from 5 to 4 or 4.5, whatever works stably.

As I remember, Windows 98 liked memory up to 256MB but adding more was pretty much overkill. Seemed like anything over about 384MB actually slowed down 98 while Windows 2000 loved all the RAM it could get. Anyway, 192MB would be fine.

That is on the head, Q. I ran a nearly identical system (well it was 333 then 425 then 475) AND 384 MB of ram was the max amount to maintain effiecient operation. More would in fact slow the system down. Once the Athlon came out, then you could pimp the whole 512.

Also it appears that they run the mem at 2/3 FSB and there is a jumper to change that. So you can run the mem @ 100 FSB and THEN oc the board. This is of course if the memory will handle it.
 
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I dont' know about the amd boards, but I had a pentiumII with integrated ATI rage3d AGP graphics. I ended up replacing it with a pci tnt2 card, as it was very finicky and didn't like to work if the drivers were touched at all.

If anything, try to find the original drivers for the rage graphics that were shipped with the system. Any update to my rage 3d pro made it disfunctional and very very quirky.
 
You guys are the best. I went to Walaka7's link and and got a good overview of what I was doing with the jumpers. Looking around the net it seemed 95x4 was sort the accepted lowball numbers for this thing,so I went with that and without any real benchmarking tools I can tell you that it is noticably faster. My AVG program for months took 22mins + but it just ran in 15mins 01 secs. I'll have to wait to see if the games play any faster but I'll report back on that. The APG is still disabled even after switching the jumper on the mobo. Any thoughts on that deal? Anyway I didn't know what I was doing before I came here and with your guildance it turned into no big deal. THANKS!!! Would have never gotten this far without your help.
 
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