Old Celeron 300A/BH6

[LiamC]

A few of you know that I have one of these kicking around. It had a Quantum 4.3 ST, 128MB and ESS 1869 ISA sound card in it. I use it to play the occasional old DOS game (runs W98SE) such as Master of Magic or Panzer General, where the game needed direct access to the sound card (ie no sound under Windows 2000/XP).

It was/is a slow old slug when you open a couple of browser windows, and the sound would stutter or hang every now and then. So I got the shits and ripped out the ESS and replaced it with a Xitel Storm VX (Aureal 1, PCI) and bumped the memory to 384MB. Still slow on cacheing of web pages and booting/loading though. Out goes the Fireball ST and in goes a WD400JB (overkill or what). And you know what, its tolerable for a lot of things. The system is snappy. I wouldn't want to do any code dev on this box, and looking at System Monitor, 256MB would be just fine, for AUS$110 (US$70), It's now a useful little box.

Dunno why I thought I'd share that with y'all. :eekers:

 

[i]

Well, I found it interesting. I thought I was the only one with older hardware around here. The difference is, in my case, the older hardware is my primary system.

ASUS P2-BD motherboard
Dual Intel Pentium II 400 MHz CPUs
512 MB PC100 RAM
Adaptec 29160 U160 SCSI card (64 bit PCI card in a 32 bit PCI slot)
Seagate Cheetah 36XL Ultra160, 18.2 Gb, 10K RPM
Seagate Cheetah 18LP U2W, 18.2 Gb, 10K RPM (SCA drive in a Kingwin bay)
Plextor PX-W124TX-S Plexwriter 12/4/32 (only works when it feels like it)
Intel Pro100+

Video card is an AGP, 32Mb ATI Rage Fury Max, I believe. The system itself runs headless, as normally it's just there to run an x-terminal, so it's not like its video card comes into play much these days.

I put a lot of thought and money into this system back in ... hmm ... it would have been spanning a year or so, probably late 1999 to early 2001. I knew it'd be the last time I'd have the stability and cash (finishing up university and leaving a stable job) to put together something like that. I also wanted something that would last me years, unlike previous "Fisher Price" upgrades that just had me limping from one cheap upgrade to the next. I certainly succeeded. This system is still rock-solid and incredibly responsive. I owe some thanks to Mercutio and the rest of the StorageReview folks back then who indirectly offered a lot of good advice (I wasn't posting at the time, but I was reading regularly). Anyway, with the exception of some more disk space (probably a RAID 1+0 setup with pATA drives), and possibly an upgrade to gigabit ethernet for the hopeful benefit of the x-terminal, I can't see myself needing to upgrade this system for several more years.

(Anyone ever tried a RAID 1+5 or 5+1 setup? Not necessarily even for work or anything serious - even just for a laugh?)

 

[Mercutio]

I have a working 300A-based system as well. I used to use it for hardware testing but at this point there isn't much new stuff I can test with it. It isn't hooked up - I don't have a place to put it, but it's a DRDOS machine with a GUS in it and an 6GB Maxtor drive in it. It sits in my garage now, on my work bench.
The great triumph of that machine was getting it to function as a full-featured internet client. It speaks LAN Manger and WWW (arachne!) and it talks to a time server in its autoexec (which is much easier than bothering to replace its BIOS battery).

 

[Buck]

Nice systems LiamC and i. With the right mix of parts, any system can last quite a while. My Primary Domain Controller is a dual PIII667EB Slot 1 system with 256MB of RAM running Windows NT 4.0. It handles all of my tasks flawlessly, so no need in making any changes to it. It has been running for over three or four years now. I did upgrade the drives, and included two WD400BBs in a RAID 1 Array through a Promise card a couple of years ago. The boot drive is still a WDAC29100. Another server I have, which is presently not being used, is a dual PIII933EB Socket 370. Another nice machine, however this one has 512MB of RAM.

Both machines have spent some serious time battling hot summers, cold winters, fog, ash, and just regular dust, so I think it is time to replace some of the chassis fans. They're beginning to show their age, as they try to survive another Winter in my garage.

 

[mubs]

Back when the 300A came out, I bought a BH6 and overclocked the 300A 50%. When I built my current m/c circa December 2000, the BH6/300A became my daughter's m/c. I've ripped all her CDs (stuff like Reader Rabbit, Math Blaster, etc.) and they run on a virtual CD drive; I got tired of swapping 25+ CDs for her everytime she changed her mind and wanted to play something else. IIRC it's got 256MB, the first Maxtor 7200 IDE drive (10GB), and another drive I can't remember (Quantum 6.4GB?). It's served well and is still chugging along. More than adequate for her needs.

 

[LiamC]

Heh Mubs, is there any 300A/BH6 combo that's not overclocked?

When I started swapping things out, I thought the biggest oomph would come from the memory upgrade 128MB -> 384MB. I was wrong. The apparent hold up was getting stuff off of, and on to disk. I ripped out the 256MB stick and subjectively, I think that the 128MB/400JB combo feels faster than the 384MB/Fireball ST combo. But having both makes for a reasonably smooth system -> from a users POV.

Moral: A disk upgrade and a bit more memory might be a useful life-extender for those relatives or friends strapped for cash.

 

[mubs]

Heh Mubs, is there any 300A/BH6 combo that's not overclocked?[

You're right! You know, the m/c is 100% stable, but when it was my main m/c, I could not get Caldera Linux (2.x, I believe), to install. No matter what. It would crap out during install with a fatal error and reboot immediately, so I didn't even know what the error was. I tried everything I knew. At long last it dawned on me that maybe it was the o/c (because the system was stable, I had forgotten that I had even OCed it). Voila! That was it. But Caldera Linux was a POS :evil:

Do you know if the C-333's are overclockable? I remember that they were. I'll have about 8 PCs (4 Dell, 4 HP) coming off active duty due to a desktop refresh. Be nice to find good homes for them. Tentative idea is for the business to donate them and take a deduction. Don't know if anybody'll be willing to take them, though. They're all WinNT 4.0 Wkstn.

 

[Mercutio]

The 333s weren't, usually topping out at ~375 (75MHz bus). About 60% of the 366s could hit 550.