Daily Blog #62 · 4:13am Sep 30th, 2017
When you try so hard but you don't succeed...
Random Fact: Not all motherboards are built the same, even if the CPU physically fits, that doesn't guarantee a working system! I learned this the hard way...
Welp. The CPU upgrade arrived today. I am now the proud owner of a fancy box with a CPU upgrade kit inside. Why? Because the mobo isn't compatible.
Honestly, now that I've got a better picture of what that PC can physically do, I think that leaving it as-is at 166mhz should be fine. The two things that are limiting it at the current moment is the dated ATi Rage XL video card, and the 160mb of RAM that I should probably max out to 512 before I kill the drive with the swapfile.
Ironically, the 400mhz processor, which isn't supported in any way by the motherboard or its BIOS, actually slows down the system compared to the original 166mhz chip.
How did I find out that the K6-2/400 was incompatible? It said so right on the diagnostics screen when I booted the system. It said "AMD K6 (unrecognized) 100", which, if I'm assuming correctly, means that while the BIOS recognizes the original AMD K6, (which it does quite well,) it doesn't recognize the newer K6-2 model, and so it sets itself to the default clock speed of 100mhz, slowing the system down to a crawl.
Have you ever seen a boot screen lag? I did today.
Puppy Linux seemed to be the only OS that was able to run at a proper speed, but it was specifically an older Wary build, and I haven't really seen very much software support lately outside of some open-source utilities.
Funnily enough, after I removed the K6-2/400 and replaced it with the older K6 @ 166mhz, the computer actually somehow managed to run faster than it did before. Maybe it was from me wiping the CMOS and going through each setting by hand?
The K6 that was in the system before is actually a K6/233, but instead of running at the stock 233mhz, the multiplier jumpers limits it to a maximum of 166mhz. But as a result, that makes it run much cooler, so I don't really have to worry about overheating the thing and damaging it.
Lesson I learned today: Make sure you don't go through just the upgrade manual, but go through the motherboard manual. While the third revision of the AP53 mobo I have supports up to 233mhz, my model is the AP53-1, and being the first revision, supports only up to 166mhz, and so it'll automatically downclock any faster CPU installed.
I'm honestly probably lucky that the K6/233 got bumped down to the fastest speed the mobo supported, rather than the lowly 100mhz that the K6-2/400 got nerfed to.
I still find it mildly amusing that the USPS skipped over the city where I live and then proceeded to loop back and deliver the next day.
Remember how I said that the computer ended up running a bit faster than it did possibly due to me resetting the CMOS settings? Yeah, that resulted in me being able to (nearly) flawlessly play "Lullaby For a Princess" at a reduced resolution. The system hit the swapfile though, so there were quite a few framedrops. Nothing that a RAM upgrade couldn't fix though.
When I'm upgrading the RAM in the future, I know that I'm not gonna choose something that's unsupported this time. Which means that the fastest possible RAM I can get would be 128mb EDO 72-pin SIMM modules with 60ns timing.
Technically, there's a rare variant of 72-pin SIMMs that can hold up to a theoretical maximum of 2gb each. Imagine that. A computer from the mid-90s, running with 8 gigs of RAM. That is, if you're going by the standard 4-slot layout for 5th-gen mobos using FPM/EDO ram instead of the newer SDRAM.
I think that's enough for today.
