install a quick copy of xp on it and see if the two cpu's show up in the OS. perhaps the bios on this board simply doesn't specify two cpu's (even though i know many do specify that)

Thanks for the suggestion, will put a temporary XP install on and look in the XP Task Manager when I have the chance and report back 😀 I was thinking to be honest, maybe some revisions or BIOS versions of the Tyan S1696D state 2 CPUs at POST while others don’t...

I recently had a Slot 1 CPU that I thought was dead. As a last ditch effort I decided to try cleaning the contacts one more time.

It came to life.

In addition to cleaning the CPU contacts, you may need to clean the motherboard slot contacts. A folded up piece of printer paper sized to fit works great for getting off oxidation in slots.

The different slotkets should be OK as long as the motherboard likes them.

Ah thanks for that! Will try that when I have a chance if following emosun’s suggestion reveals that it really is a case of only one of the CPUs working. Thanks for the info on the slockets too. Will let you guys know how I get on after I get round to it 😀 By the way cyclone3d, am I right with the “non-A” Celeron 533s? About two dozen of them in stock with Electromyne so getting a couple shouldn’t be a problem.

anamyd wrote:

Ah thanks for that! Will try that when I have a chance if following emosun’s suggestion reveals that it really is a case of only one of the CPUs working. Thanks for the info on the slockets too. Will let you guys know how I get on after I get round to it 😀 By the way cyclone3d, am I right with the “non-A” Celeron 533s? About two dozen of them in stock with Electromyne so getting a couple shouldn’t be a problem.

The Celeron 533 will be much faster in pretty much everything when compared to the PII 333.

Just what I’m looking for then 😀 As long as I’m right in that they’re the last ones to work on 440LX and also in SMP... My problem is finding another “decent” slocket, ideally another ABIT SlotKet !!!. I’ve already set the 3 sets of jumpers on my ABIT SlotKet !!! to tell it that I’ll be using a 66MHz FSB, 2.0V, Celeron. On my “no-name” 370SPD however, that only has two sets of jumpers and I can only tell it to “auto-detect host frequency 66/100MHz” on one jumper (the “over-clock selector”, the other setting on that being “Force the host frequency running in 100MHz for over-clock) but then on the other jumper which is for the “CPU host clock” that can only be set to 100MHz or 133MHz...?! CPU type and voltage are apparently automatically selected... Any ideas...? Thanks

why in the back of my mind am i screaming

"dual 370 celerons in an old slot 1 board aren't going to work at all"

in fact , I havent seen many dual native 370 celeron machines i have to admit.

you can also try re seating it a few times as well. i'd also see if it boots with just one and swap them to verify one ins't just bad.

emosun - I’ve done my research and it seems that the “non-A” 533s are the last to support both 440LX and SMP 😀 Anyone know where I can get a second ABIT SlotKet !!!?

cdoublejj - great suggestion, thanks 😀 It looks like I’ve got a few things to try when I get round to it.

Just a little update... Still haven’t got round to the CPU stuff yet, as things are a bit all over the place at the moment 😜 But out of curiosity I did swap out one of the 4 128MB RAM sticks with 1 of 3 256MB ones I had lying around, and sure enough... 640MB of RAM detected! So then I swapped out 2 more... 896MB of RAM detected!!! I know this sounds like overkill but I can see it being useful for loading (some) modern web pages. I’m having another issue by the way which is with the CMOS - the battery was dead so I replaced it, and after doing so, although it has been keeping the settings which it obviously didn’t do with the previous (dead) battery, the date had drifted a few days back after not powering on the system for roughly a week, and of course the time was wrong. Anyone know what could be causing this...?

Pics! we want pics!
I would do the WinXP install first to check how may CPU's your getting.
If you do only get 1, try swapping the CPU's, I've had a CPU die on me and I was blaming windows, motherboard, whatever.

For your duel boot, always install oldest to newest but keep NT versions last, as It'll override any dos/Win9x boot files.
But why 95 AND 98?

Win2k is much more game friendly then NT4 and will run fine on P2, but yeh you'll still want 9x for the occasional game.

My Duel BX based system also looses time, I assumed its just the battery...maybe not?

I recently got my hands on a dual p2 Tyan 1682D Tahoe with 512MB of EDO ram and a pair of P2-300mhz (passive).

If you can, try to google up a manual (Tyan's FTP server was down for a few weeks when I tried to find mine). In the case of the S1682D, it can not only run with just a single CPU (better windows stability) but it can also run pentium pro CPUs on a sloket if you can find them.

Back in the old days you had to have the HAL driver for NT for more than 1 CPU. You may even need "Enterprise" edition, but I forget. It's been a long time since I installed NT.

Nah event NT4 workstation supports 2 CPU's natively, but you do have to specify Multi CPU at the below screen which loads the correct HAL

Win2k and above are better at working this out for themselves, which is why XP is a good test OS

Thanks for the help guys 😀 Sorry I’ve been so quiet, in the middle of moving house 😜 Will get some pics when I get round to it. Looks like I’ve got a few things to try! 95 and 98 because I grew up with both and prefer the “feel” of 95 for running stuff that doesn’t require 98. 2000 rather than NT4 for multi CPU stuff, would I actually benefit from it...? I don’t want to run too “new” in want of a better word of an OS on each of my retro systems; I did run XP on my “old” (got rid of in 2006) Pentium II 333 with 512MB of RAM and a Riva TNT2 Ultra in the early to mid 2000s but that’s because it was my daily use until 2004! My Pentium II 233 (333 once the dual CPU system is upgraded to the Celeron 533s) / 64MB / Trio64V2/DX / Voodoo1 build will run DOS 6.22 / Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, my Athlon XP 1600+ / 1GB / GeForce 3 Ti/200 build will run Windows 98SE and Me (awaiting why? again haha), and my Pentium 4 Northwood 2.6GHz / 1.5GB / GeForce 6800 Ultra build will run 98SE, 2000 and XP.

The first thing I would do is try to put it completely back to stock (including the old power supply) and see if it shows the dual cpus. If it does, then that's the start for you to modify it.

And I'd caution using in excess of 512mb ram on 95 or 98se. I have an amd 1.4/5/something system which I used for years that had serious problems when it had more than 512mb ram. Unlike NT/2k/xp, the dos based windows versions just didn't like getting north of 128/256mb in my experience.

disturbing lack of pictures...

I'd stay away from NT4. It is not for the uninitiated. 2000 is what I did on my dualie.