How hard is it going to be for me to find a socket 5 to socket 7 adapter? should I just buy a new motherboard and try and fit it in?

I doubt you can fit any other mobo in it....
Weird property format mobos, that don't fit in anything else but its original case. Packard-bell was good at making those.
You should be able to get non mmx Pentiums up to 166mhz into it.
There are also Intel overdrive processors for socket 5 up to 200mhz.

There are some misinformation that needs to be cleared up here.

How hard is it going to be for me to find a socket 5 to socket 7 adapter? should I just buy a new motherboard and try and fit it in?

Finding a Powerleap, Evergreen or Kingston TurboChip (or a Japanese brand) adapter is not that hard. They show up on Ebay quite often. From my testing with Socket 5 boards you first have to find out which chipset you have. According to this post on Vintage-computing your computer is using the 430VX chipset which should have no problem with a wide array of Socket 7 CPUs. I've never seen a 430VX chipset board with Socket 5 as Socket 5 ended in aug 1995 and VX came out in Jan/Feb of 1996. Socket 5 and 7 is very similar to each other, and CPU's are for the most part interchangeable. It depends on what the board supports of multiplier, BIOS support and voltage. If the board has problems with multiplier and voltage an adapter can solve those issues. I've had a AMD K6-III CPU running at 480mhz in a Socket 5 board (with Powerleap adapter). I would not try and buy a new board without checking if that Packard Bell case is using a standard AT board or some special OEM like my Compaq does. If it's OEM stuff inside say sayonara to any replacement.

Even if your board can't do split voltage (2.8V) it shouldn't matter if you use a Pentium MMX at 3.3V. All the testing I've done at 3,3V in Socket5 boards have not caused any issues. Just have some good cooling. Your board might have the 430FX chipset (if it's an earlier revision), but even if it's 430FX or 430VX the MMX should work with no adapter needed. If you get an adapter you might as well go for the AMD K6-III at 400mhz which should work in 430FX and 430VX boards.

You should open up that case and see inside what multiplier options you have. If it already have 2.0x for the Pentium 133 chances are you can set it to 3.0x as well (200mhz) and then get 233mhz MMX by using the 1.5x (interpreted as 3.5x by the CPU) setting.

The mobo is Intel "Orlando" i430vx rev.01 the southbridge is an 82371SB(PII3X). Where do I look for the multiplier switches on the board? What do they look like I mean? Just regular dip switches?

According to the manual:
http://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/archive/POWER_U … el/28182101.pdf

Splitvoltage of 2.8v is supported. MMX CPU's are officially supported. Just go ahead and buy a 200MMX or 233MMX.

See pages 32 and 33 for jumper settings.

yeah but will a socket 7 fit on a socket 5? I'm such a noob 😜

King_Corduroy wrote:

yeah but will a socket 7 fit on a socket 5? I'm such a noob 😜

Yes, PIN wise they will.

But that does not even matter in this case. Your motherboard is Socket 7. Don't believe everything CPU-Z says.

oh well alright. 🤣 Thanks! 😁 You just saved me a lot of time and effort!

I just checked the physical socket also just to be extra sure. It is indeed a socket 7, wow dude! YOU ROCK!
I am SOOO happy I can actually go ahead and upgrade this packard!

So far I really don't see why packard got such a bad rap in the 90's. 😜

@Vetz

Any tricks to get a 200mmx running at the right speed on a socket 5 mobo with max multi of 2x?
Most 200mmx i have are locked.

I have other boards but i would like to try it on a socket 5....

King_Corduroy wrote:

I just checked the physical socket also just to be extra sure. It is indeed a socket 7, wow dude! YOU ROCK!
I am SOOO happy I can actually go ahead and upgrade this packard!

Good to know Packard Bell followed the industry practices at that time and didn't put a Socket 5 board in a 1996 machine 😀 You should see some performance benefits with a 200MMX or 233MMX CPU.

@Vetz […]
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@Vetz

Any tricks to get a 200mmx running at the right speed on a socket 5 mobo with max multi of 2x?
Most 200mmx i have are locked.

I have other boards but i would like to try it on a socket 5....

What kind of board/chipset is it? If it is the 430FX, there is only the voltage and the multiplier that should be the issue. If you're talking SiS, Opti, ALi chipsets then it may not work at all, or it will boot, but L2 cache will need to be disabled (which gives a performance drop). From my findings the MMX is not guaranteed to work in all chipsets, and getting to run at the intended speed at 200mhz will definitively require a CPU multiplier mod or use of an adapter like Powerleap. Without adapter it will most likely boot at 133mhz, which is quicker than than a Pentium 100, but not near its intended speed.

Generally with Socket 5, if you have a board with the 430FX chipset you can even use the AMD K6-II/III cpu's along with AMD K5 and Cyrix 6x86, but for other chipsets you are generally limited to 200mhz regular Pentium. This is all with adapter usage.

See this thread where I test a Socket 5 board with all kind of CPUs:
ASUS PCI/I-P54TP4 Socket 5 motherboard thread/review

Wouldve been surprised if it WAS skt5 - wiki lists the 133 as a skt7 chip (and the fastest skt5 as the 120). CPU-Z and GPU-Z are not always the brightest bulbs - in general best to check machines over by hand when possible.

obobskivich wrote:

Wouldve been surprised if it WAS skt5 - wiki lists the 133 as a skt7 chip (and the fastest skt5 as the 120). CPU-Z and GPU-Z are not always the brightest bulbs - in general best to check machines over by hand when possible.

Socket 7 wasn't launched until the release of the Pentium 133 chip in the summer of 1995. There was a small timewindow were you had the 430FX (which was released in feb 95) being used in Socket 5 motherboards. Examples of this is the ASUS PCI/I-P54TP4 and early revisions of the ASUS P55TP4 series amongst others. The 430FX chipset was intended for the new range of Pentiums starting with the 120 & 133 and all Socket 5 branded boards with 430FX chipset I've seen has been featured with a 2x multiplier. This means that you could buy a Socket 5 board in March of 1995 and still use the Socket 7 based Pentium 133 when it came out in June.

What many of the Socket 5 based 430FX boards are missing are higher multiplier options than 2x. This is the main thing that sets them apart from their Socket 7 counterparts with the 430FX chipset. I could mention that AFAIK the early revisions of ASUS P55TP4 is the only Socket 5 branded board I've seen with native support for the Pentium 200.

Yea I kinda found it weird that CPU-Z was listing it as socket 5.
My C110 is socket7 even tho all it came with was a P120.
I know I can't stick a P55c in my model without a voltage adapter from all the documents I read on my model.
Not that I want to I'm content where its sitting, tho I've been tempted to get a P200 non mmx for it.
Good luck on your machine, King.

Thanks! You too, I'm always glad to meet someone who likes these Packard Bells as much as I do. Although admittedly I suffer from heavy nostalgia goggles since this was basically the first computer my family ever had. I think my father bought an earlier model though same case though. I sure got lucky when I saved this thing from getting scrapped. 🤣

Yea this particular C110 was the first machine I got brand new. I still have its manuals and the PB branded win95a disk it came with.
Before that I had a Used 286\12 compaq, and some no name 386\DX33 also acquired used, both of which that I really wish I had back 🤣 .

Wow! Nice. I was an idiot and when we threw out our original PB we tossed the manuals too. At least I had brains enough to hold onto the master disks. 🤣
I wish I had the proper manuals and stuff for this thing, eventually I'll find them on ebay or something. 😜

You have the disk thats the important part.
Especially for those combo sound\modem Aztech sound cards they come with. Which do have the real YMF-262 on them.
Drivers for win 3.x and Dos that actually work are on those disks.

Surprisingly I can't get the original card to install correctly at all. The TV tuner card wont install either. So that left me with no choice but to replace it with a sound blaster Live! 5.1 PCI card. Maybe one of these days I'll try again to get that original card installed but for now its in storage.

By the way where on the case is the restore number? I went to go restore it to factory default when I first got it and had no idea where to look.

Not sure, never tried to manually restore it, a fresh install is cleaner 🤣.
Guessing its either the sticker on the Win95 manual it came with it.
Or the serial number next to the powersupply on the outside of the case.