Vintage & unusual Computers on Einstein@Home
13 Jul 2007 15:56:17 UTC
Topic 192960
(moderation:
Hi!
This thread is to continue a discussion from here
Let's share stories about hardware from the past :-)
Vintage & unusual Computers on Einstein@Home
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Just for the records...
There are Pentium III Coppermines with Slot 1! The Intel 440BX shipset should support Slot 1 Pentium IIIs with 100 MHz FSB, so upgrading to a much faster P III up to about 1 GHz is a theoretical possibility.
CU
BRM
RE: There are Pentium III
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I still have a spare Slot1 / Socket 370 adapter lying around.
Until the machine gave up I had a 230MHz PII (Slot1, IBM 300PL) running on E@H. And a 180MHz MIPS machine (not used now, no time left for minor architectures).
BM
BM
RE: Just for the
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Yes, but you must have a board revision number different from mine, and a BIOS version P14 or more (I have P7). Also, the Level 2 cache of PIII Coppermine is 256 KB while my PII has 512 KB.( I have downloaded the board manual from Intel). My FSB is 100 MHz too. I don't think the clock frequency increase would make much difference. Thanks anyway for your suggestions.
Tullio
RE: Yes, but you must have
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But the L2 cache on PII and early PIII (Katmai) was an external module outside of the CPU on the Slot1-package. It runs only at half the speed/frequency of the CPU. - The Coppermines have it integrated so the cache was connected at fullspeed.
Oh, and the PIIIs introduced the SEE extention. ;)
RE: There are Pentium III
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The biggest problem is the core voltage. Tullio's PII (Deschutes) has a 2.0V value for Vcore. He could certainly upgrade to a PIII Katmai which is also 2.0V. As he mentions, he would need a BIOS upgrade to properly recognise the new CPU but that is quite easy to do. The Katmais finished at 600MHz (I think) but the highest I've actually seen is 550MHz. I have done that upgrade (PII 400 to PIII 550 plus BIOS update) many times, particularly on dual CPU servers.
This is the last such one I did - just for fun. It's a Compaq Proliant 800 and it originally had dual 350MHz PIIs. It now has dual PIII 550MHz Katmais and it produces about 1000 credits per week. I only set this one up six weeks ago.
Once you go past 550MHz, you are into the coppermines which have both 100MHz and 133MHz FSB versions and a variety of Vcores such as 1.75V and 1.65V. You simply cannot put one of these into a PII board without some serious surgery (if at all!!). However you can do what Bernd mentioned - you can use a slot 1 to socket 370 converter card so that you can tap into the big range of cheap socket 370 coppermine CPUs. There are many variants of these cards, some much better than others and it is a real lottery unless you choose one of the "better" types. In particular you can get ones with voltage setting jumpers that allow you to compensate for the different Vcores involved.
I have a HP Vectra VLi8 with a 440BX/ZX chipset motherboard. Using a converter card, it is currently running a coppermine celeron 800 CPU (100MHz default FSB). The celeron 800 is an interesting CPU because many of them will run out of the box at 133MHz. There is a very easy mod that can be done to a socket 370 socket to make it think that the CPU being plugged in is 133MHz by default rather than 100MHz. So my Vectra VLi8 is actually running at 1066MHz because the converter card socket is overclocking the CPU to 133MHz FSB. The machine has been running continuously for the last 47 weeks and has accumulated 46,500 credits - ie 1000 credits per week also. Its operation has appeared to be flawless until about a week ago when it produced a series of client errors which were all "Unhandled Exceptions" with the exit code -1073741819 (0xc0000005). It happened last weekend when the aircon was off so I'm wondering if it was heat related. It has since crunched all last week without further incident.
Bikeman mentioned that you can get slot 1 CPUs up to 1Gig which is true although they are not that common. This is a Compaq Professional workstation that has dual 1Gig slot 1 CPUs. I switched it to Linux recently but prior to that it had been on Windows for nearly a year. It does around 2000 credits per week
It really is a lot of fun to take this old hardware and give it a new lease of life. It's quite educational to make these boxes perform beyond their original capability. However you may as well have that fun starting from a higher base. For example the Tualatin Celeron 1000 and 1100 do very well at their default speeds. Many of them will run at 133FSB just like the Celeron 800 and when this is done they become very productive. This is a Celeron 1100 running at 1466MHz. It is currently producing around 1500 credits per week and it costs me no more to buy or run than any of the lower grade machines previously mentioned.
So thank you Bikeman for starting this thread. I hope there are others out there with interesting stories to share on how to "resurrect the dinosaurs." :).
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: But the L2 cache on
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Very true. But if mine cache is double than yours and yours' speed is double than mine then we should have, other things being equal, the same number of cache hits per unit time. Or not?
Tullio
RE: ... if mine cache is
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Unfortunately I don't think so. I would think that the full cache speed would be more important. I have anecdotal information only but I did do a rough comparison of PIII 933s and Celeron 950s a while ago. The PIII is 256K cache and the Celeron is 128K cache. Both types are coppermines. Whilst I didn't go to any trouble to eliminate other factors like RAM variations, for example, I did look at a few examples of each type. My rough observations showed the two processors to be essentially identical in performance in crunching EAH, leading me to assume that cache size is not that important for this task.
Cheers,
Gary.
Tullio,could you please tell
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Tullio,could you please tell me what frequency your P II is?I have one sitting idly,but not sure about running EAH.
And then I have whole range of Pentiums I and 486,but I doubt they would make it worth... :-(
And inactive AMD K6.Could it be of any use?
RE: Tullio,could you please
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My PII (Deschutes) clocks at 400 MHz. 486, Pentium I and K6 are useless. I can meet deadlines of both Einstein and SETI, but a QMC WU is very long to crunch. I get 2.6 credits/hour on Einstein, 2.2 on SETI but only 1.9 on QMC.
Tullio
I'm a (once) proud owner of a
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I'm a (once) proud owner of a pair of those rare 600Mhz PIII Katmai's. The machine started life as (if memory serves) a 500Mhz single processor Proliant 740 that I later upped to dual 600's. The odd bit was that the 600's required a different voltage regulator than the 550 and belows.
It was happily crunching away until this January when it was replaced by a dual core Xeon 5120. I'd run it still, but in the server room, I'm already walking a tightrope on power/heat and I just can't justify adding something that sounds like a leaf blower to the collection at home! ;) I've not tossed it because I'm still convinced I'll find some use for it!
However, I'm positive that I still have the original PIII 500Mhz Slot 1 that it originally came with. If Tullio wants it, I'll be glad to drop it in a post box and let it take a slow boat to Italy! I'll be very jealous, of course, since I've not had a chance to return there myself since mid-2000. :(