"New" toy
Finally something that's actually relevant.
I've just bought a Gigabyte GA-586SG for $7.95 on eBay, and as far as I can tell it was made in March or April of 1998.
Specifications
Things that stuck out to me:
It has USB, takes both SIMM and DIMM up to 768MB of RAM, has both AT Keyboard and PS/2 ports (this might be a little bit more common), AGP 2x, and all of this was on a board that wasn't Super Socket 7 as far as I can tell.
The only thing that I'm a little worried about is a sloppy AGP implementation that is connected by a PCI bridge. I can't find anything conclusive to support this though.
I've just bought a Gigabyte GA-586SG for $7.95 on eBay, and as far as I can tell it was made in March or April of 1998.
Specifications
Things that stuck out to me:
It has USB, takes both SIMM and DIMM up to 768MB of RAM, has both AT Keyboard and PS/2 ports (this might be a little bit more common), AGP 2x, and all of this was on a board that wasn't Super Socket 7 as far as I can tell.
The only thing that I'm a little worried about is a sloppy AGP implementation that is connected by a PCI bridge. I can't find anything conclusive to support this though.
Comments
Actually, a recent (well, recent for that board) BIOS update allowed it to support the K6-2 400 which ran at 66 FSB * 6x multiplier. Something I'm going to try is running a K6-2 500 at 83 FSB * 6x multiplier. The nice thing about the manual is that Gigabyte still has it available online.
Actually, I'll be starting a little project soon (spoilers) that I'll make a new thread about.
Picture of my old system before it died running Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and MS-DOS 7.10: http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q134 ... 140087.jpg
* still have (PC-100/133 Memory total: 608MB worth [2x 256MB PC-133, 1x 32MB PC-100, and 1x 64MB PC-100)
** either lost or destroyed
That was another nice Socket 7 (Super 7) Board..If I'm not mistaken that board also would run a number of different Pentium MMX, AMD, IBM, IDT and Cyrix CPU's. Did that have a DIP switch setup or did you do everything through BIOS? Didn't use DFI boards much.
It had the old style AT and ATX connectors on it.
Sweet. My grandpa's IBM Aptiva 2168-N71 uses 72-pin SIMM memory, but you have to fill all 4 slots for the computer to use the memory and can support up to 128MB SIMM (4x 32MB).
My grandpa's computer specs are:
28.8K Modem
Sony Trinitron 15f MultiScan 15" Computer Monitor (somewhat similar to the Gateway 2000 screen)
16MB (4x 4MB) SIMM
1.6GB IBM PATA/IDE Hard Drive
Windows 95
3.5" 1.44MB Floppy Drive
2x speed CD-ROM
Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 Sound (built-in)
Trident Video Card (built-in) 2MB vRAM
IBM PSU (either it's an AT or ATX)
IBM Keyboard (weird hookup)
Logitech Scrolling Mouse
Some kind of computer speakers that use the RCA Audio Connection
All I need to do is install a bigger hard drive (at least 13.5GB), more memory, a better CD-ROM or just a DVD-ROM, better graphics card (either my old SiS 305 PCI video card or nVidia GeForce MX 4000 PCI Video Card), a USB 2.0 PCI Card, Windows 2000 Pro, and a better PSU (250 Watts or better)
I know how old people can be sometimes but it may be a good idea to just throw in a $50 P3 or something instead of going through all of that trouble.
Then again, you may be wanting to keep it around for nostalgic reasons. Thing is though, at least from what I learned, is that computer hardware is changing so fast that it's really hard to set an 'era' now-adays to make keeping old hardware around worth it.
At least to me...