slot A

[ratdude747]

today i vised a computer stor that started 2 monthes ago. i went in looking for the AT power supply (see "486 baby!"). they had none, but recommened i find a used case, then another employee said they had something... an incomplete gateway select 700:

they removed the hd

it had:

no ram (sdram x3, max 768mb)

slot a athlon classic 700mhz

nvidia riva tnt2 64 gpu

linksys 10/100 modem

ensinio audiopci

56k modem

floppy drive

48x cdrom drive

goofy mounted newton power atx psu 200w


this thing had a 120mm fan attached to a duct and a massive cpu heatsink for cooling.

case has room for:

4 hd's

2 ext 3.5 bays

3 5.25 bays

board was full atx. had 3 usb ports (no s***), ps2, parallel port, 2 serial ports, 1 agp 2x, 5 pci slots.


they wanted $25, i thought it was a deal, ill give the lady one of my old cases since this will fill its place...

the case needs some epoxy- non-mobo access sidepanel is plastic with a small crack... front bezel has cracks in the corner and a broken bottom clip... fully functional, some sheet metal scrap and epoxy will fix it...

the hd's sit on edge, parallel to font vents.

has spot for 80mm fan in back

i think i could dremel it if i needed a new psu for it... the box is smaller with a smaller bolt pattern. i think my last older gateway (g6 w/ 233 PII) had the same mounts.

i think it will be a good "buntu" box. i have 512mb of ram in it now, and the cpu clips were a PITA to use, so i used some extra ones i had.

while i was there, i also bought a promise utra66 ide card for $5.

was the card/computer a deal?

ps- i vised the shop next door.. been there forever, but the employees were snobs... they had a lin-lin adapter (coppermine to tulatin voltage adapter) and a s370 sloket in the recycle bin... if they were nice to me (and not told me to get a new computer), then i would have offered money for them... the lin-lin had a few bent pins, but they looked fixable. they would have made more off me purchasing them than the gold in the contacts. are't lin-lin adapters rare?

[ratdude747]

Re: slot A

ITS ALIVE!

posting from it right now. turns out my server's os was still functional and since i connected both of its 2 drives, its running great. a bit slow, but i will say its faster than a pIII 700mhz

also, the bh6 might not have been fujhyuu'd. the test ram was bad, since it caused the gateway to no post too. adding ram out of my old dell made this thing work... perhaps the bh6 has life after all.

[ratdude747]

Re: slot A

whoops, lied about the hd bays. only has room for 3.

[Wizard]

Re: slot A

Ratdude747,

Slot A is not very viable. It was is really *beta* but that got AMD a start in PIII competition and eventually gotten their pin sharp enough (socket A & Nforce2) to stick Intel's side and their ouch reply in return was P4. What dractically distracts from this Slot A was mishmash of 2 different brands of chipsets and there were not GOOD combo (AMD for northbridge and VIA for southbridge 686 make for horrors of putting in drivers) and another alterative chipset was VIA again poor way to do. So I stuck out with PII 350 longer till socket A with VIA (unfortunely!! In part thanks to too high Intel's "tax".) then I went on with Nforce2 (A7N8X). That was good chipset before Nvidia screwed up worse on later chipsets that was reason for 3-4 years on A7N8X till C2D & Intel chipset got more affordable. That the story.

Should have stuck to looking for PIII with intel chipset or late P4 with Intel chipset. Or AMD mainboard with AMD chipset (that means AM2, AM2+, they are now in 60-100 range and AM2/AM3 CPU can be had for about 70-100 as well). They are affordable out there. Stop spending 20 at a time. Build up 80 dollars, 20 at a time for example.

Cheers, Wizard

[ratdude747]

Re: slot A

it has AMD for northbridge and southbridge. no VIA.

the guy sold it as a case, with the parts attached as a bonus. this was a high end unit in its day.

i bought it as a swap for the slot 1 pIII box i got for free. also, the case has a LOT of space for stuff, ans after some epoxy, it should be good.

pIII w/intel chipset = 512mb ram max

i dont need a c2d for what i do. the p4 630 does fine... fixing the 939 is a plus, but i could live without it.

but, was that card a good deal? if i ever wanted to use all the hd slots in the case, id have to use it.

also, i still cant believe the other shop was going to throw out the lin-lin adapter. i wanted it so i could put a tualatin in my presario 7000.

ps- one other oddity of the unit- no lytic caps on the mainboard!

[linuxguru]

Re: slot A

Anything's worth what somebody will pay for it. You willingly paid $30 and made it work, so stop worrying about whether it's worth it - if it serves the purpose that was intended, be happy.

[ratdude747]

Re: slot A

im still bummed about the lin-lin adapter. im temped to go back and make an offer because they are so rare. and id love to have one.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: slot A

I ran an Epox Slot A w/750 MHz Athlon for ~ 3 years as my main machine.
That one was probably my most favorite machine of any I've had.
It was just plain flippin' FAST for it's time.
Was definitely faster than an i815 based 1GHz P3 when they came out.
[Capability for more than 512Mb RAM didn't hurt any.]
Didn't retire it until '02 and only I only retired it at all because the OS HDD bit the big one when I moved from Northern to Southern California and the new living situation made a Laptop more practical.
.

[ratdude747]

Re: slot A

WAIT A SEC... i remember what you can do with slot a...

the goldfingers device! maybe i could use that...

[kc8adu]

Re: slot A

WAIT A SEC... i remember what you can do with slot a...

the goldfingers device! maybe i could use that...

good luck finding one now.
i remember the lin lin too.
had several hundred bought for scrap value back in their day.
now i have 2 left.
they died off,were dumped,then became popular again.made out well on that deal.
btw northwind made the one i have on my slot a chip.

[ratdude747]

Re: slot A

there are nmerous goldfihgers models. i would first need a new cooler.

oh, and look what i found... damn, gateway has a lot more info on thier old crap tan you woult think... this is my mobo: http://support.gateway.com/s//MOTHER...000646nv.shtml

not bad...

too bad that even with that ultra66 card, my 2 drives are limited to 133.9 gb... the 320gb network drive shows no data and the 160gb main is simply limited. i cant wait until i order the caps for the msi k7t turbo...

[gg1978]

Re: slot A

Yeah, another nice feature of that particular motherboard is that you won't find one electrolytic cap on it, not in the VRM, and as i recall, not anywhere else either.. Newton does/did make good power supplies, as a general rule.. It's not going to be a speed demon compared to something a bit newer, but that's typically OK.. Just don't put Flash on it, as the CPU would probably implode like a dying star.. ;-)

The 128G BIOS limitation wasn't a big deal at the time, given that a 20G HDD was probably the typical size back then..

The case is pretty nice, except for that goofy sized psu they used in it.. And for a goofy PSU, it's not bad, but hard to find a replacement for if you want more power..

[ratdude747]

Re: slot A

it does well otherwise. i think 25 was reasonable.

about the psu- thats why god made sharpies and dremels.

[Wizard]

Re: slot A

Then you got a best of all. Keep it. As I was not pleased with VIA efforts on design.

I haven't seen all AMD chipsets slot A boards, what is THAT model # on that mainboard? The ones I saw were hybrid.

Cheers, Wizard

[PCBONEZ]

Re: slot A

As I recall...

The real reason AMD made chipsets at all was they were having trouble getting anyone else to make chipsets to support their new CPU's. [At least in a volume that supported AMD's CPU marketing goals.]
My take was that the early AMD chips/chipsets were rather basic like an OEM BIOS. Just enough to get the job done and not many advanced features.

As far as North-South on Slot A.
I had no problems at all with VIA-VIA sets. [I did 5 or 6 builds for other people with that model board.]
That might be because I was using VIA-VIA on all the K6-2 stuff I was running before I tried an Athlon so I was simply used to them.
I remember reading about poor performance from AMD-VIA and AMD-AMD sets. [Like I said - on Slot A.]
May have been different by Socket A. By then I'd jumped ship to Intel again and Socket A was old by the time I had one to dink with.
.

[ratdude747]

Re: slot A

Then you got a best of all. Keep it. As I was not pleased with VIA efforts on design.

I haven't seen all AMD chipsets slot A boards, what is THAT model # on that mainboard? The ones I saw were hybrid.

Cheers, Wizard

i already posted a link on the mobo. gateway still has TONS of info on that board. See:

http://support.gateway.com/s//MOTHER...000646nv.shtml

according to them the chipset is:

"AMD 750, consisting of the AMD 751 Irongate North bridge and the AMD 756 Viper South bridge"

sound right?

[loudnproud59]

Re: slot A

Hey ratdude747 that adapter you were talking about is it for socket 370 if so i have one here in front of me if you want it it is yours and it will cost you nothing it has a celeron sl5vr in it i got this years ago for some work i had done for someone,just pm me with your address and i will send it to you,it is of no use to me and if you can use it great.

[Wizard]

Re: slot A

Very nice. Perfect for Pentium. Nothing crappy onboard. Just basic plain mainboard.
1GHz slot A exists. Have to find them.

That what I wanted to see but I have no luck with plain current boards like 775 and AM2/AM3, every have onboard stuff I don't want, too poor for my needs. Too much realtek chips and all this.

Cheers, Wizard

[Krankshaft]

Re: slot A

I remember when slot based CPUs came out I thought they were the most ridiculous thing I'd ever seen. I have about 3 comps lying around here with them.

As I recall they had contact problems which was one of the reasons for their demise. That's Intel for you reinventing the wheel when there's nothing wrong with it.

I guess also as processors became faster and ran hotter heatsinking was an issue since the space for one on a Slot A was limited space wise.

[washu]

Re: slot A

There was a good reason for the slot CPUs at the time: Cache. At the time Intel and AMD couldn't make CPUs with integrated L2 cache, at least not for a price mere mortals could afford. The old P-Pro had separate but in-package L2 cache chips which made it very expensive as failures were high. The P2 slot cartridge solved this problem by separating the CPU and cache chips. Each chip could be tested separately which increased yields. It also let the CPU scale faster than the L2. It was still a better solution performance wise than the motherboard cache of P1 chips as the slot cartridge has a dedicated L2 data bus.

It only took Intel a bit over a year to solve the problem and put L2 cache in the CPU for an affordable price (Celeron 300A). But it was another year after that before the high end P3s went to integrated cache and Intel moved back to sockets for everything. Less than a year after Intel, AMD moved their CPUs to on-die L2 and the slots were effectively dead.