On 5 Sep 00, at 9:54, Bellingtone Changwe wrote:

> I am trying to upgrade my two 486 processors to pentiums. Both have
> 32 Mb of RAM and run at a frequency of 66MHz. What kind of mother
> board do I need to buy? I would appreciate any step by step
> instrucrionson this upgrade.
>
> Bellintone Changwe

  You're trying to go from four generations back to only three
generations back.  It may take some shopping around to find
components as old as what you want to upgrade to, especially if you
want to minimize the number of other components that will also need
to be replaced.

  486 systems typically supported 30-pin and/or 72-pin SIMMs.  Most
Pentium motherboards supported 72-pin SIMMs; most newer boards have
gone to 168-pin DIMMs.  So you may have to replace your RAM.

  Many 486 systems provided VESA slots for high-performance
expansion.  In the Pentium world, PCI won out, with two exceptions:

1.  Serial, parallel, floppy and IDE controllers/ports are built in
on practically all Pentium boards -- on 486es these were usually on
an expansion board, which you won't have to replace.

2.  Video has moved on from PCI to AGP.  Odds are that you'll need to
replace your video card.


  My favourite Pentium-era motherboard was the ESA Viking II, for its
mix of support for legacy components and newer generations.  I don't
know where you could find one now.

David G

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