Void's Forums

well the exact wording is "Support Socket 370 Processor: 500MHz-1GHz and higher", so i am assuming this will mean i can just get any socket 370 chip and put it in there so long as it is FCPGA (whatever that is, but i saw one CPU which suggested it wouldn't work since it is the newer FCPGA2).
Now i have the manual, fiddling with the jumpers should be no problem. Of course manuals from Taiwan written in "English" often have a certain degree of ambiguity (i am concerned about a motherboard manual which lists "Key Feathers" as a section heading). Still, i am sure i'll be fine.

I am scared of BIOS upgrades however. Also i am suspicious of the AwardBIOS i have. it claims to be PhoenixNET enabled. further investigation shows that this has something to do with hard coded spyware. not my favourite type of computer eqpt but there you go.

Hi Calum,

Glad to hear that you're going to be upgrading your hardware. I have a socket 370 933 MHz CPU on an D815EE Motherboard w/512 MB of RAM and it's a respectable computer.... except for the OS. It has Win98 on it

I've found that going to crucial.com you can find hardware that will match your motherboard or computer. The prices aren't great, but they're not too bad either. I've used them a few times when I wasn't too sure of hardware compatibility.

The one thing that you may want to consider is the (relatively) slow bus speed of the motherboard you're running. You can put higher speed RAM in, no problem, but it will only run as fast as the motherboard will. Also, I've always heard that it's best to put your fastest RAM chip(s) in the first RAM slot. I don't know how important that is... I just do it, and have never had any problems mixing RAM chips of different speeds... as long as they're rated at least as fast as the bus speed of the motherboard.

Adding RAM and swapping CPU's are both pretty painless tasks. The socket 370 CPU can only go in one way. There are some pins missing in one corner. Just line that corner of the chip up with the corner of the socket missing some holes. Some are also notched or otherwise marked from the top so you can line it up more easily. Just don't force it or bend any of the pins. The RAM chips also only fit one way. There is an off-center notch in the bottom and the chip will only go in one way. Just line it up, push it in, and there are two "clip" things that will snap up and lock the chip in place.

Another thing to consider might be checking ebay, local swap sheets or local computer shows for a used "loaded" motherboard; that is a MB with RAM and CPU installed. A used 1+ GHz P3 on a MB w/ a bus speed of 133 MHz should be available pretty inexpensively. The benefit is that you know that they are compatible. If your current MB is an ATX (that's about the time they went from AT to ATX) you should be able to just pop it into your case and plug in your other cards (they are probably PCI, by then ISA and VESA cards were pretty well on their way out) and and hard drive(s) and go. I had a Celeron 333 AT board and a Celeron 400 ATX. If yours is an AT board, then your current plan is probably the best one.

Just a few random thoughts. Good luck!

Jim

Calum have you consider completely changing your motherboard/CPU/RAM - it could well be cheaper.

A Socket A motherboard can be had for £50-60
512Mb Ram about £40
Durn CPu 1Ghz-ish about £35
So that's about £130 give or take, and you would come out with a better system will alot less 'does x work with y and z' hassle.

Look at the cheaper products at these sites:
www.dabs.com
www.scan.co.uk
www.ebuyer.co.uk

Good luck with whatever you choose.

well Jim, the bus speed of the board can be set to 100 or 133 but for some reason it is currently 67. I attribute this to the CPU, since the RAM says 133 on it. Also, i just want a nicer CPU.

Tux, thanks for those links, i will go and check them out to see if i can get a half decent CPU for this setup. The motherboard looks like it will pretty much support most mid-newish intel chips (it's good to have a manual) so i am not really in any need of getting a whole new set of innards. Will most likely just buy an entire new machine and keep this as a secondary one when i really want to get a more turbocharged one.

thanks again for the replies folks, i am keeping a lookout on ebay for CPUs, there are a lot which fit my requirements, but they all seem to get a little pricey as they get close to closing.

well i know it is not an increase in clock speed, but i am going to get this motherboard with a pentium3 700MHz plus Creative AWE 64 card & 256 MB RAM for a total of £60 (which is maybe about US$105 i reckon) and then i will have my current motherboard, CPU, sound card and probably some of my RAM (which will total 896MB by this time) to sell off, or should i keep ALL that RAM? i do have enough slots.

now just cursorily, anybody know of any problems with this motherboard and linux?

P6VAP-A+
VIA® VIA VT82C694X & VT82C596B Chipset
Socket 370 Pentium®III FC-PGA (Coppermine)and Celeron™ PPGA/FC-PGA processors
Max memory: 1.5GB
CMI8738 PCI 3D Audio Chip on board
P6VAP-A+ is the VIA®694X mainboard with ATX form factor designed. It is the board with advanced performance through the support for AGP 4X, 133MHz FSB, PC133 SDRAM and ATA-66. This board is designed for socket 370 processors including the newest FC-PGA Pentium® III processors as well as the Celeron™ PPGA processors. It is equipped with three DIMM sockets, 4 PCI slots, 1 ISA slot and an AGP slot. P6VAP-A+ mainboard has incorporated the most advanced technologies such as Suspend to RAM (STR), Magic Setting IV, LAN/Modem Power On, Keyboard Power On and Hardware Monitoring capabilities.

by the time you read this i will have emailed the guy to say i'll buy it anyway, but you know if somebody says there's some huge problem maybe i can save myself some time and just sell it on again without trying to install it (which i hope will be easy as it will be my first time!).
Thanks for your attention!

edit: here, what does this mean?

The weak points
# No Vcore function in the BIOS
# No ability to manually assign IRQs
# Little hardware included
# Skimpy software pack
# Low-quality condensors

none of this bothers me (i don't think) except the thing about the condensors, what are they? will the be something that will burn out and leave me stumping up for a new board?

The strong points
# Irreproachable performance
# Great stability
# Very responsive to Overclocking
# Independant memory bus
# Integrated hardware-monitoring
# Integrated AC"97 sound-card

and can i ust slap in an ISA or PCI sound card and i can just ignore the onboard sound? or will it play havoc with my settings and so on?

Well can't answer all but. Keep the RAM if you can, there is no such thing as too much memory, especially if you have slower processors.

Don't worry about the manual IRQs unless you intend runing strange hardware this should not be a problem.

Condensors is an American term for Capacitors. This probably means that they used low quality electrolitic caps. Not a problem. If one blows (and you will see it without a problem), check the value and buy a new one (pennies each). An easy soldering job (or just twist wires together, or indeed ignore it, often this will not stop your system working - not recommended but possible). What this might also mean is that they used low quality caps, in which case you have possible noise issues, from the power supply and from external EMI. Just try to keep your work area electrically quiet (place your CPU away from your mointor - not near to the radio of TV, and no where near big mains transformers (like in refrigerators, etc.).

And the AC '97 should auto detect (at least with RH based) as that is the sound driver my system uses to run the creative sound card (although that isn't on board). Actually I might have that wrong. It detects my card as AC '97 and uses the relevant driver.

hmm, sounds good, what i mean though is, do you reckon its an easy job to NOT use the AC97 and use an ISA or PCI sound card instead. In fact do you think it would be possible to use both onboard and offboard sound cards? you know i am the sort of person who would plug in all three sound cards at once to see what happens, if i wasn't so scared i'd damage something!

also, i will of course be using mainly slack (unless i can get a cheapo copy of RH9 mail order in the UK) so i will have to do a little reading and modprobe all the drivers myself (no big deal, but the whole driver process is still something of a mystery to me in linux, one of the reasons i prefer to do the reading than just entrust the whole thing to kudzu)

Onboard sound is usually disabled via a motherboard jumper or in the BIOS.

good stuff, i can probably find that info in the manual then