My gran has been given a computer which is (by todays standards) almost as ancient as she is!

She does want to get into using it though and has managed to teach herself the basic of things like wordpad etc...

The thing is, it's processor is a K6 180!!! I used it the other day and it's so sloooooooooooooooow I don't know how she has the patience to wait.

Anyways, I have (from my beginnings in computing) a k62-500 chip gathering dust in a box in the attic. Could I just drop that in as a replacement for the 180 chip? (Obviously, even though it's not all that fast it would be a major improvement over the 180!)

So, K62-500 inplace of the K6-180? Possible?

There is nothing to indicate the make of the motherboard though - there's nothing physically visible and software just gives me a jumble of meaningless numbers or 'Unknown'.

Hi andyr,

The only way you're really gonna know is by checking the mobo specs I'm afraid. Added to this, most boards of that age will have jumpers to set the cpu speed so you would need a manual to check that as well, which in turn would answer your Q of course.

you say "software just gives me a jumble of numbers....."

what software have you used, tried Sisoft? you may find an FCC ID on the board we could search by.

HTH, T.

Thanks for the reply...

I have used both Sisoft Sandra and Aida32 - I'm not going back until Saturday though so can't really check any other info out. I did write the info out but have left it there! (Duh me!) Knowing my Gran and her habitual tidying then it's in the bin.

It is a socket 7 and uses SD-Ram (of which it has 32 Meg). Does Socket 7 support 100MHz FSB or is that only Super Socket 7?

I also have an old Cyrix chip (266) but wouldn't think that was any improvement over what's in there already!

Easiest way to find out what mobo is installed is by checking the info displayed when boot screen comes up.
Press the PAUSE key and write down ALL information displayed.
A google search for the BIOS id string is normally successful in finding the mobo used.

Hello andyr if you have a look HERE (http://users.erols.com/chare/cpuspeed.htm) it might help you with the jumper settings.

Regards

Hi. I'm back.

The motherboard only gives the following identifying features...

AL-B581 V1:1

Performing a search on google gives me links to mainly russian sites!

I've worked out the frequency, multiplier and the voltage jumpers. It's capable of a max of 83MHz, 3.0x multiplier and voltage of 3.52

I believe the voltage for a k62-500 is 2.9V and there is a setting for that.

As far as I can tell, the K6-2 interprets 2.0x multiplier as a 6x multiplier.

So, if I run at 83MHz x 6.0 I get 498MHz. Then, the only problem is that there's some pretty old stuff in there so I'd have to drop the frequency down, probably to 75MHz which when multiplied would give 450MHz.

If all else fails, the default 66MHz x 6 would give a cpu frequency of 398MHz.

If it's multiplier locked (worse case scenario) then 5x66 would give 330MHz.

Still, a vast improvement over the PR180 rating the current chip has + the benefit of an improved FPU. And it's free. And it's opened my eyes as to how easy it is to set a computer up these days!

It can't be done.

It uses the Intel Triton VX chipset which only allows a max cpu of 233MHz. Also, the core voltage for a k62-500 is 2.2V (not 2.9V as I previously posted) and this motherboard only bottoms out at 2.5V.

Ah well, she'll have to put up with a slow computer or buy a new one!