On 13 Jan 99, at 10:31, Robert Turnbull wrote: > I too have been toying with the idea of upgrading my Pentium 100 bench > built system to a Pentium 200 chipset, so I am very interested in this > discussion. If this would involve more than plugging in a new chip, I will > put off the upgrade until I am prepared to do a total upgrade. Here is the > source of my confusion: > > I used Ctbios to determine that I have an Award BIOS, an Asus > motherboard, an 82430HX chipset, and a BIOS ID string of 05/21/96- > 82430HX-PI55T2P4C-00. > > I also used Ctpci to determine that I have an Intel 82439HX TXC Chipset > (P54). > > I notice the difference between 82430HX and 82439HX and wonder > what this means. "430HX" is the overall name of the chipset. "82439HX" is one of the several chips which, collectively, make up the "set". [The T2P4 board, with its 430HX chipset, is a classic. Intel stopped production of the HX line, rather than enhancing it, to force server operators towards the Pentium II instead.] > Anyway, I used this data to find an Asus manual for a P55T2P4 > motherboard and I assume (?) that this is for my motherboard. [I could > not find an Asus motherboard with this designation ending with C-00 as > in the string mentioned above.] I believe there were a couple of revisions to the T2P4 over time. > The manual states that the motherboard DOES NOT support Dual Power > Plane CPUs. The manual also states that the motherboard supports one > Pentium 75MHz thru 200MHz. > > This leaves me confused. Can I safely assume that this manual > describes my motherboard? Does it really mean that I can simply plug > in a Pentium 200 chip? How does this all fit with the previous > discussion? 75-200 indicates that the bus speed can be set to 50/60/66 MHz, and the CPU multiplier to 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 or 3.0. [Most 233 MHz CPUs treat 1.5 as 3.5.] However, the lack of Dual Power Plane eliminates all MMX CPUs, and the Cyrix/IBM 6x86L versions. P100 is 66 x 1.5. If you *just* drop in a (non-MMX) P200, it will still be running at 100 MHz. You'll need to change the multiplier jumpers to 3.0x in order to get 200 MHz out of it. David G The PCBUILD web site always needs good submissions. If you would like to contribute to the website, send any hardware tech tips or hardware reviews to: [log in to unmask]