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Determining CPU orientation on Socket 3 motherboards

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First post, by Kiwi

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While moving a couple of relatively old MBs to make some room on a bench, I ran across my old DX4/100 mainboard, and recalled what I did to it last.

Almost certainly, I had references 14 years ago or so, when I was using that oldie, that told me how to choose the right set of socket holes to line up that old CPU with, in that socket. But after the convenience of more modern sockets that simply won't allow you to orient the CPU incorrectly, I got clumsy-minded with it a lot more recently, when I thought I might transfer the MB into a slightly more modern case.

The processor dropped in the way I thought it should go, and I attached a small heat sink to it -- almost certainly the one it had used "in life"; I had it breadboarded only at the time, and when smoke rose from under the CPU immediately on attempting to power up, I shut back down instantly, and never have tested any other CPU orientation in that MB, which I assume is now useless.

HOWEVER, I want to find out, in case I do choose to attempt any further procedures with hardware quite that old (not sure I need any such, given the convenience of using DOSbox), what is / was the CORRECT orientation (I'm not at all sure that the CPU also died that day, for instance).

Thanks!

Last edited by Kiwi on 2009-07-04, 18:30. Edited 1 time in total.

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Kiwi

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Reply 1 of 2, by h-a-l-9000

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Depends on your type of socket - on the more modern ones it's the edge with only one hole, on the others you'll have to look out for markings on the board. If there are 123456... printed next to the socket it's the edge with '1'.

1+1=10

Reply 2 of 2, by Kiwi

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Retrospectively, I was curious if that sort of thing was easily found with some simple Google search crieria, and I found an extract from a book discussed in other threads here: Upgrading and Repairing PCs.

According to that, there should not have been any smoke, because supposedly that socket is equally intended to keep a clumsy user from inserting a CPU wrong.

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx … 481859&seqNum=6

Since I hadn't touched any jumpers anywhere, I shouldn't have been able to send 5 Volts across a 3 Volt chip's circuits (AMD chip), but that reference seems to be telling me that it has to be what happened. All those years ago, I was still smoking, so the dust bunny collection inside the oldie had been an ugly brown color, instead of the more usual gray color.

All I really did was remove everything, clean it off, and reassemble it as a loose collection of parts, breadboarded on my work table. I was extremely surprised at the time by the smoke, although I still had my fingers right near the power supply switch.

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Kiwi

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