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Unlocking the PII-Tutorial (Warning: Large Photos)

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Lonely Raven

If you traded with me please leave me Heatware Sen
Joined
Feb 2, 2002
Location
Wheaton, IL
As promised I'm whipping up a quick article on how multiplier
unlock the Pentium II processor.

I'm sorry the photos are so large, but I've only recently re-built
these machines, and I can't find my copy of Photoshop. I
attempted to reduce them, but too much clarity was lost.

This is honestly really really really simple to do, and I know it's
safe, as I've run an unlocked 400Mhz PII @500 for 3+ years
now without a single burp. As you will see later, it works with
other PII processors.

Please read along, read twice, *then* attempt this. While
easy it is, I don't care to be bombed by questions that can
easily be answerd by looking at the photos, and reading my
simple text.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Virst, the victim:

Victim1.JPG


Typical PII 400, slightly modified by a young overclocker known
as The Lonely Raven. While I don't have a kick *** Nikon 950
that takes killer macros, this 3 year old Olympus in my steady
hands does pretty well. You can even read the serial, model,
and batch code!

Victim2.JPG


Note the oversized heat sink and lack of stock fan, typical of
the Compaq computer I pinched it from. If my memory serves
me correctly, I got this from a machine that was struck by
lightening and replaced by insurance. The customer was so
happy with my customer service/technical skills they gave me
what they thought was a useless hunk for "spare parts".

Victim3.JPG


Here we have the mod itself. Just a friggen piece of tape.
This is the same piece of tape that's been key to unlock this
processor for the past 3+ years. The key to the unlock is taking
the processor so the hologram is facing you, and count 11
THICK PINS from the right. If you look at the photo, you will
see thick pins and thins pins. The thin pins actually turn into
thick pins further up the PCB. Just like an AGP video card, two
rows of pins in an over under format.

What I do is cut a sliver of scotch tape thats just about the
size of the thick pin on the processor. It doesn't matter if it
goes over the little pins at all, but don't let it cover any of the
thick pins accept the #11 from the right that is our target!
Simply line up the piece of tape with the pin, press it on as best
as you can, and trim off anything that might roll off the bottom
and onto the other side of the PCB. Remember, only Pin #11!!

Victim4.JPG


Just to retest this "magic tape" unlocking method, I grabbed
a PII 300 processor, unlocked it using above method, and
plugged it into my Dual Slot 1 Server Motherboard. Notice the
clock speed!

Victim5.JPG


Then I thought, Duh! I can run my 400 @ 400 and the 333 @
400 and stop my bitching about how I don't have a matched
pair for this server!! Please excuse the slightly blurry photos,
even my steady hand isn't steady enough for a 1 second
shutter speed needed to shoot a photo in such lighting
conditions...

I'd show you photos of SETI crunching a WU on each processor,
but I didn't realize that I have to completely install windows
again for it to recognize and utalize the second processor.
I figured I'd better get this article up quick before I get lazy and
blow it off for a nice quiet (barring the fans) weekend.

I hope this helps out my new friends and team at
Overclockers.com!

Please ask questions here in this thread, I'll do my best to
answer them when I find time!

Thanx for reading!!
 
Thank you my palindrome named friend! You Rock!

Hep.jpg
 
Last edited:
I've tried it with a PIII and it DIDN"T work. But I'm not sure
about the rest. I've only got a PILE of PII slot 1 procssors,
and I have one PII 400 Pentium "flipchip" that I'm going to
test this on as soon as I can afford a heat sink for it.
Honestly, I'd LOVE to find a match for it, cause this would
make a GREAT Dual Processor pair for my server. I bet the
PII flipchip could to 550mhz!!

If you peeps get adventurous with other processors and have
good luck with it, please tell me about it, I think a lot of people
would love to revive those old horses!
 
Gratuotious bump because someone E-mailed me saying they
couldn't find the article.
 
So when it's unlocked... how is the multiplier changed ? does it get set to 4 automaticly ? or what ?
 
I have a PII 450 (not overclocked) that I would like to try this on. I believe it's in an ASUS motherboard. If I do this mod, what will the new speed be? It's using a stock fan/heatsink. Will I need better cooling?
 
1) Where did you all dig this old thread from? And how did it end up in seti? :)

2) I'm not so sure about a MULTIPLIER unlock ...... I've done this mod on the old slot celerons. The FSB was set / controlled by the CHIP on the old slot boards For ME, this tape mod changed the FSB from 66 to 100. So a Celeron 333 = 5*66 became a 500 = 5 *100. woot woot :)

3) For more info, look up my name in these forums I had a thread on this back in early September I think. I also found pictures and detailed description of the technique on some very old articles over at tom's hardware, search through the CPU section for PII overclocking or similar.

Good luck,

Frank
 
none1 said:
1) Where did you all dig this old thread from? And how did it end up in seti? :)

2) I'm not so sure about a MULTIPLIER unlock ...... I've done this mod on the old slot celerons. The FSB was set / controlled by the CHIP on the old slot boards For ME, this tape mod changed the FSB from 66 to 100. So a Celeron 333 = 5*66 became a 500 = 5 *100. woot woot :)

3) For more info, look up my name in these forums I had a thread on this back in early September I think. I also found pictures and detailed description of the technique on some very old articles over at tom's hardware, search through the CPU section for PII overclocking or similar.

Good luck,

Frank
I would have never seen this except it got bumped by DDR-PIII. Now, I have this PII system I was about to retire and thought I'd give this a shot to see if I could get a little more life out of it!

I don't know what the problem is, but I'm using the search terms "PII* overclock tape", your name "none1" and only looking back for the most recent 6 months. I keep getting this time-out error: Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 60 seconds exceeded in /home/virtual/site1/fst/var/www/html/vb/search.php on line 399

Any suggestions?
 
mbigna said:

I would have never seen this except it got bumped by DDR-PIII. Now, I have this PII system I was about to retire and thought I'd give this a shot to see if I could get a little more life out of it!

I don't know what the problem is, but I'm using the search terms "PII* overclock tape", your name "none1" and only looking back for the most recent 6 months. I keep getting this time-out error: Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 60 seconds exceeded in /home/virtual/site1/fst/var/www/html/vb/search.php on line 399

Any suggestions?

Hmm. Nope. Maybe I post too much. :) I searched just the intel CPU forum for none1 (I don't post there as much) and found the thread.

Here is the thread link
http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=122927

I've got a link in there to the Tom's article and directions.

have fun!
 
I did a tape mod like this on a pair of slot 1 P3 800's in order to wire the back of the sockets on the mobo so the default FSB could be changed from 100 to 133. It didn't unlock the multiplier though. Since they've been locked by Intel there's no unlocking method I know of period.
 
OK--

My reading up on this has explained that masking the B21 trace changes the FSB from 66 to 100. However, my PII 450 is ALREADY 100 FSB, so I don't know if this would do anything or not. I may just go to the Intel forum to ask about this. It may turn out that the PII's are already unlocked and I can just change the multiplier by jumpers on the motherboard.
 
Anyone know if this won't work on a PII? I tried this earlier on my PII, but the multi was still read at 3.5. Maybe I covered the wrong pin but just to make sure, anyone know if this won't work on a PII?


Thanks

Tipycol
 
The P2's were unlocked up to I think the 400, after that locked - that's from my dusty memory. You could select a lower multiplier than default, but not any higher.
 
TC said:
The P2's were unlocked up to I think the 400, after that locked - that's from my dusty memory. You could select a lower multiplier than default, but not any higher.

So does that mean my PII is already "soft" unlocked? Still, I am looking to unlock it to increase its multiplier anyway. Guess I'll just retry it tomorrow.


Tipycol
 
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