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Pentium II Slot 1 processor 'plugin' compatible with Slot 1 Pentium III ?

SSu15
Beginner
2,234 Views

NOTE:

"(barring changing clock speed if necessary, AND barring using the non-Xeon type of the P3 cpu)"

I have a Dell Precision Workstation 410 MB that employs dual Pentium II Slot 1 processors.

The MB no longer powers up - so I need to replace it. Most I've seen available are Pentium III level.

It's well known that really the ONLY difference in the P3 compared to the P2 was the addition of SSE support.

Just wanted to BE ABSOLUTELY SURE I will not cross any electrical considerations - etc.

The MB also has dual SCSI channels which is the reason I need to maintain this legacy support -

for those who may be thinking... it this really serious about playing around with 15 year old technology?

The answer is very serious,,, here's why...

Some may find in work situations that programs that were written in the late 90's early 2000's - 200-300 MHz era - that support IEEE bus connected test equipment

must maintain the equivalent processor speed or the bus simply doesn't function.

Thanks,

Respectfully,

STeve

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1 Solution
Henry_A_Intel1
Employee
902 Views

Hello Steve;

The Slot conections and architectures are the same for Pentium II and III. But the question is more likely to the model

 

of the Pentium III and the BIOS architecture on the motherboard. This to ensure is able to manage the microcodes from the CPU.

I am afraid from the Intel's prospective will be to test it directly and Intel at this moment does not have this type of CPU or compatible system boards.

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2 Replies
SYu14
New Contributor I
902 Views

Are you talking about backwards compatibility? As far as I know if the slot supports Pentium III slot 1 it should support Pentium II.

I have 2 computers each 1 year apart the 1st one is broken due to bad capacitors it was a Celeron processor or a Slot I pentium II only processor. Basically it has a Celeron 500 Mhz processor in it. But I do have Pentium II 400 Mhz laying around. I also have a Pentium III 550E that is also Slot 1 but the motherboard will not recognize it.

The other motherboard I have is Slot 1 only which originally ran the Pentium II 400 Mhz CPU, I try running a Pentium III 550E in it and it worked without having to do anything. These computers were running 1 12 GB HD and 155w PSU....

By the way I still have envelopes of SD RAM 32 - 64 MB sticks laying around somewhere. I did max the computers memory out when upgrading to Windows XP... 256 MB max memory...

If the motherboard is dead have you thought about checking for bulge capacitors? I think you can have all the capacitors replaced on the motherboard which will basically make them like brand new. As far as I can tell motherboards die due to capicators not giving them enough power more than the board that just goes bad.

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Henry_A_Intel1
Employee
903 Views

Hello Steve;

The Slot conections and architectures are the same for Pentium II and III. But the question is more likely to the model

 

of the Pentium III and the BIOS architecture on the motherboard. This to ensure is able to manage the microcodes from the CPU.

I am afraid from the Intel's prospective will be to test it directly and Intel at this moment does not have this type of CPU or compatible system boards.

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