Subject: Re: Q about new motherboard
To: Bill Studenmund <skippy@macro.stanford.edu>
From: Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com <michaelv@MindBender.serv.net>
List: port-i386
Date: 04/30/1997 23:18:46
>The board has 4 PCI and 4 ISA slots. It also has 4 72-pin SIMM slots,
>(supposedly) 2 IDE controlers, 2 serial, one parallel, and one floppy.
>There are no names of companies on the board, other than "SI54P-AIO Rev.
>1.0" and a SIS 85C501, 502, and 503. It has a Phoenix MB bios.
No idea...
>What experiences do folks have w/ Samsung and Fujitsu EIDE drives? I can
>get either a 2 GB Samsung or a 1.7 GB Fujitsu. Are they both equally good?
>Both lousy?
In general, my experience with Samsung is _lowest_ quality, for lowest
price.
However, I've never even seen one of their hard drives.
>I need to get a CPU. I was tending towards a Cyrix 6x86 but I'd appreciate
>input. The motherboard is kinda old (which is why I'm getting it). It can
>be jumpered for 50, 60, and 66 MHz. Woo Hoo!
If it's an older unknown board, with a potentially non-upgradeable
BIOS, you should forget about the Cyrix chip. Your BIOS needs to know
what it is, before you can make effective use of it.
>So I gather the max this puppy will do is 66 MHz then? Are there CPU's
>which will internally chirp the clock?
All Pentium-class CPUs run with a maximum bus clock of ~66MHz. The
200MHz Pentium runs internally at 66.7MHz * 3, for example. A 166 is
66.7MHz * 2.5.
>As I can't seem to set the CPU voltage, I gather it's whatever an old P5
>would be. Is that 3.3V or 3.6V (or something else)?
... however... the original Pentium (the 60MHz through 90MHz, if I
remember correctly) chips were 5v. A current generation Pentium uses
a totally different socket, and voltage, than the first generation.
You must know which socket the board has on it. Pretty much any new
chip should work on a board designed for the 3v chips (100MHz and up).
Only an old, 5-volt, 60 or 66MHz (or possibly 90) will run in a board
with the old 5-volt socket on it.
Note that there could be some overlap in these MHz numbers, I'm just
speaking from general memory, and not from specific specs.
>Is a PCI640B IDE controller good?
A what? :-)
>What is a 37C655? It has one on board. The floppy?
You want fries with that?
>Is an ECP mode parallel port the one which can be bi-directional?
I think so.
>Even though a 66 MHz CPU sounds slow, it would be faster than my 20 MHz
>68030 at home. :-)
Especially if it was 66MHz * 3. :-)
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Michael L. VanLoon michaelv@MindBender.serv.net
--< Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x >--
NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, Atari 68k, HP300, Sun3,
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