CPU came, initially ordered a 233 but got more than I bargained for

Posted by SpecialistCompote993@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 47 comments

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ap1msch@reddit

Was it this guy, or the Celeron that let you triple your clock speed? There was a very specific chipset in this era where it was found to be extremely stable and the pin/clock math let you get ultra performance out of a discount CPU.

I dunno...your picture sparked a memory of a system I once built...

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LopsidedLegs@reddit

It was the Celeron 300A I think. It was 66MHz FSB but was found to run on the 100MHz FSB easily and the small amount of cache on board ran at full CPU speed.

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matt3x166@reddit

It was definitely the 300a. I had it and loved that processor. I remember playing quake2 on that system and it was fantastic. Can’t remember what the video card was. It may have been the original 3dfx voodoo daughter card paired with an S3???

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LuigiThirty-@reddit

There was an AMD in the early 2000s you could unlock by bridging two visible pads on top of the chip with a pencil.

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612io@reddit

I think most Thunderbird based Durons and Athlons with ceramic packaging. Once AMD switched to organic packaging it was more difficult but nothing that a scalpel couldn’t solve.

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someonesmobileacct@reddit

IIRC for the organic packaging a lot of folks used windshield defroster repair kits. Like you mentioned had to do some minor cutting but the repair kits conductive epoxy was enough to do the job.

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dpdxguy@reddit

windshield defroster repair kits

Any decent electronics store back then sold silver paint designed to draw or repair circuits.

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guitpick@reddit

I tried to fix a Palm IIIc with one of those. Tried.

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dpdxguy@reddit

I used it to repair my wife's keyboard after she spilled Coke on it.

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ck_42@reddit

Dude you're bringing back memories! Lol Defroster repair kits!

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someonesmobileacct@reddit

It was such a fun era.

Alas, the most daring I ever got was running two Morgan Durons in a Tyan Tiger MPX (got a crazy deal on the board cause it was used for a month by a customer).

Shit was cash tho; not as fast for games as an AXP but way smoother for multitasking.

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alwaus@reddit

The 750mhz thunderbird.

1 trace to double the multiplier.

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icon4fat@reddit

This is the pencil trick. It didn’t change the FSB but instead it unlocked the multiplier.

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WasabiJones@reddit

Best when paired with an Abit BP6 motherboard

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Flynn_Kevin@reddit

I skipped the celerons and dove head first into PIII Coppermines on a VP6. Arguably the pinnacle of Intel dominance.

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n1ghtbringer@reddit

Wish I still had mine. Dually 300As at 450!

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ck_42@reddit

Remember that setup well! BP6 with dual OC'd 300A's!
Oh those were the days. That and the beginnings of home water cooling. Fun times!

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nihilistcanada@reddit

Had that one. Once switched to a 100mhz FSB you had the fastest Intel chip you could buy at the time.

Legendary

Also lucked out with a Pentium 3 733mhz Coppermine that could use the same fsb trick. Over 1ghz with that one.

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ap1msch@reddit

That was it. I bought the parts and built one...strapping the CPU onto the board with two rubber bands because of the weight of the fan.

I DO NOT KNOW HOW I LEARNED ABOUT THIS. Like the legend of Richard Gere and his penchant for hamsters, the world spread the secret of this recipe, and I was able to benefit from it. Those were the days...

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thepriceisright__@reddit

HardOCP?

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ap1msch@reddit

Oh, shit. Yeah...I was on that. I know we had websites and junk in those years, but I remember it being really fragmented. When you found a quality forum...you hung onto that shit like it was gold.

Man...I forgot that site/forum existed.

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DonTaddeo@reddit

The Abit BP6 would let you run a pair of them in a dual processor configuration. I had such a setup with the processors reliably clocked to over 500 MHz.

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HLingonberry@reddit

I ran a dual celeron BP6 homelab system with Bigfoots(!!!!) for years. That sweet hpt66 controller.

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DrSFalken@reddit

Holy crow. I forgot about that!

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hardwarexpert@reddit

Yup pop a bit of kapton tape on pin B21 and you're golden.

I have two running in a Rioworks PDB-R motherboard.

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namur17056@reddit

It was. Managed to get one tantalisingly close to 600

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SpecialistCompote993@reddit (OP)

Yep.

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DominantDan24@reddit

Celeron 300A with a specific Asus mobo. I had one. I had that puppy overclocked stably at 450Mhz, and I even got it up to 600Mhz one time for a few minutes. It got so hot I had to keep the case outside my window at university. It was perhaps one of the first mainstream overclocking combos that triggered a lot of the future of OC'ing.

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fadedspark@reddit

Slot 1 was so dumb and so good.

Had a tualatin compatible slocket adapter, a 1.4ghz Celeron, an ASUS P3B-F and that shit flew.

This was like 2004. and I was 14. I paid $25 for the parts used, untested. Big hold back at that point was the video card.

Was good enough for starfleet command.

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2raysdiver@reddit

Cost over $800 at release (over $1600 adjusted for inflation) and even that might have been quantity pricing. And kids complain about the cost of a 9800X3D today. Where's my walker?

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heeman2019@reddit

I had no idea on the parts prices back then. But that is very plausible and no wonder the desktops used to cost like $3000. I remember Gateway 2000 selling their Pentium II GX-266XL config at $4,999. In the PC magazines back then, it was one one the best looking PC. Sadly I don't see many of them out fleebay or marketplace for some reason.

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SpecialistCompote993@reddit (OP)

Jeez, what a price. Glad I didn't pay that much! Only paid around £17.30 for what I thought was a 233. Guess I got lucky

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SpecialistCompote993@reddit (OP)

It's now at 128 upvotes at the time I'm seeing this, ironically the amount of RAM I ordered for this build in MB.

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osopeludo@reddit

I remember thinking that was a very irresponsibly exposed bit of electronics on Pentium IIs... Yes, the hologram. In my defence, I was 13.

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boomer7793@reddit

Lord I worked for CompUSA when this came out and remember that people were mad about the form factor and the proprietary memory.

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someonesmobileacct@reddit

Eh?

P2s did switch to SDRAM pretty quick but it wasn't particularly proprietary.

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boomer7793@reddit

Am I confusing with the P3s? Which one had the RAMBUSS that intel force upon us.

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someonesmobileacct@reddit

133FSB Pentium 3s initially had forced Rambus via i820. (Although Via released a 133 chipset, much to the future dismay of anyone running an SBLive).

P4 also had forced Rambus initially, but thats another rant.

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rome_vang@reddit

If I recall correctly it’s the early adopters that got reamed?

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thepriceisright__@reddit

Yeah I think you’re thinking of RAMBUS and the early P4s. Man that was fun hardware drama compared to today.

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omega552003@reddit

Early Pentium 4s on Socket 423 and early 478 used RAMBUS

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UzY3L@reddit

If it helps: I had no idea what I was doing(back in the 2000s) but by changing some jumpers(Asus P2B, I think?) my 233MHz Pentium II ran at 450MHz, stable.

These chips are the opposite of fragile and will handle overvolting(if that's what I was doing) for years, especially since I rarely powered my system down.

Hope you get to enjoy yours as much as I did mine. Cheers!

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