Playing with Pentiums

It's been a while, but I haven't forgotten I have a blog! 

My last post was about a £20 PC I picked up from Facebook Marketplace and this post is a little more about it and what I've been up to with it. 

I found a BIOS update that allows the motherboard to support up to a 450MHz Pentium II. I have a spare Pentium II 400, so I downloaded the BIOS and flashed it - something I HATE doing. Happily it worked and I didn't brick the motherboard! I inserted the Slot 1 400MHz Pentium II and turned the machine on and....(after fiddling in the BIOS)


400MHz is a nice increase over the 266MHz CPU that it came with.

I also found a vintage version of CPU-Z called CPU-Z Vintage Edition which can be downloaded here. Unfortunately I couldn't be bothered to get a screenshot of it, so this photo will have to do:


I love how it only lists MMX under instructions! Usually it's alphabet soup. 

Aside from that I've swapped the graphics card with an AGP ATI Rage 3D something or other with 4MB of VRAM as the original PCI graphics card only had 2MB. It also didn't come with a sound card, so I installed a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! CT4870 card which I've had great success in using in both Windows and DOS. 

Finally, I installed a 3Com Etherlink III ISA network card I had going spare. This then connects to an AirPort Express base station I have in the office so I can connect via ethernet to our WiFi network and get the computer networked so I can more easily transfer files back and forwards. 


I've installed some games I have from CD and generally just had a good time with it. I'm super pleased for the price I paid. 


I now have an original Pentium system, a Pentium II system and a Pentium III machine. I think I'm covered ;) 


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