Sep
29th
2017
Well that was rather anticlimatic. · 10:36pm Sep 29th, 2017
Followed the manual, popped in the Evergreen Spectra 400 in place of the old CPU, saw the BIOS detect it at ~400mhz... and lag.
TONS of lag.
Windows XP does not seem to like the thing.
Like as in, going from 166mhz to 400mhz ended up being a speed downgrade.
On the other hand, I've so far tested Puppy Linux to work quite well. Considering how Evergreen Technologies kinda disappeared quite a few years back, I suspect that there's probably better support through open-source drivers in Linux than Windows XP with its dated drivers.
Oh well. I'll probably switch back to the old CPU anyways. I have a buncha things on WinXP already set up...
On the other hand, I now have a fancy box with stuff in it to show off!
throw winblows out the door and go Linux .
I love how I just read these blogs and go 'yep. Numbers must mean something to you. That one is bigger, so it should be better. You say what now?'
4682011
I've done that. The problem is, most distros outside of extremely lightweight ones such as DSL have dropped support for i586 a looong time ago. Puppy Linux's Retro and Wary editions are the two most up to date ones that I have been able to run on the system, and even then almost no software that runs on Puppy Linux is compatible with i586 anymore, anyways.
(Not to mention that I grew up with the Windows XP startup sound playing whenever my mom turned on her computer to work, anyways. It's that nostalgia factor, y'know?)
But yeah. BIOS and driver incompatibilities aside, I've since reinstalled the old K6-233 into the system, replacing the K6-2/400 that was on the adapter.
I should've figured that it wouldn't work, anyways. AOpen's documentation for the board specifically states that it's incompatible with anything above 233mhz, and I tried to stick a frickin' 400mhz processor into their board.
Meh. I can probably grab a compatible one off of Ebay or something, but for now Windows XP seems happy with 166mhz and 160mb ram. Though, my next upgrade target is the GPU and RAM, with the latter I'm hoping to bump to the full 512mb supported by the chipset, and the GPU probably being upgraded to an ATi x1300, which seems to be one of the most recent affordable PCI-based GPUs.
Either that, or I test my luck again like I did today and grab a PCI-to-PCIe adapter and try to stick a really modern GPU in it. Maybe the Geforce 8600gt or something.
4682026
you can try flashing the bios but you stand a good chance of turning it in to a door stop.
4682037
I've already tried every BIOS revision provided by AOpen. It's something with the board itself that's causing incompatibilities. Personally, at this point I think it's the chipset. The mobo uses the Intel i430hx chipset, and there's no guarantee that it would or ever will work perfectly with non-intel CPUs. I'm already lucky that the plain old AMD K6/233 works flawlessly with the chipset.
4682040
you can always look around on Craigslist for parts they are super cheep there.
4682059
I know.