Hi everyone,

I've been lurking here for years, but never had a reason to post until now. I hope this is the appropriate forum category to post this.

I just picked up a Compaq slot 1 motherboard on ebay because I wanted to build a machine to use a Celeron 366 chip since 1999. This board is desirable because it has AGP and ISA slots so I can have accelerated video in Windows 95/98 and also play DOS games with an ISA sound card. I'm unable to get the machine to post and hope someone might have some knowledge about why.

This board has a 440BX chipset. The Celeron chip is Socket 370 and I have the Slot 1 adapter card that worked last I tried it (15 years ago). The chip has a locked multiplier, and 366 is a clock speed that is not listed in the list of speeds that can be configured by the DIP switches on the board. The motherboard manual says it can auto-configure some chips, but it doesn't say which chips will do that, or if it needs a BIOS upgrade to do that.

Another culprit is the selecton of SDRAM modules I have. I have 3 different DIMMs, 2 are PC133 and 1 is PC100, and all are 256MB in size. According to the wikipedia and various forums, the 440BX doesn't support 256Mbit chips on DIMMs. The PC100 module I have has 16 chips, so I believe these chips are compatible, but perhaps 256MB is too big or that this motherboard just doesn't support it?

I suspect that the processor works because when the machine powers with no memory in the slot, I get a speaker beep pattern like I remember they do when there is no RAM, but when there is a module in a slot, I get nothing. I've tried all the RAM slots and have tried all the different multiplier settings from the DIP switches with no success.

I'm considering buying a Pentium II chip that I know this board supports and/or some smaller capacity DIMMs just to get it running, but I'd really love to use this Celeron chip since it holds sentimental value for me -- I bought it new when I was in High School. Slot 1 motherboards with both ISA and AGP are insanely expensive on ebay, so I'd be interested and impressed if someone had the right advice on what to get?

I'm also curious what the jumpers on the Slot 1 adapter card are for. I've never been able to find out.