VOGONS


First post, by themetaman

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Hello everyone,
I’m new to the forum, I’ve been lurking for a while and decided to ask a question, hoping someone can help.

I recently purchase a SoundBlaster Awe 32 CT3900 ISA, as I used to have one in my very first PC. Now once I did this, well let’s say I started to think I now need a retro PC to run it on and here we are..

So I bought a Soltek SL-65KV2-T MB and plan is to upgrade to a Tualatin. Now the problem is that the board is fine and works, it came with a Pentium III 100 MHz (Coppermine core) SL4MF Socket 370 and 512 MB PC133 MHz Ram. However one of the CPU Socket clips are broken, the fan does clip on however so that’s sort of okay..

Now the ask, can I use one of these 370-pin PGA w/ Heatsink Tabs to get around the problem and have then heatsink seated better etc. see link to part below.

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/223091187236

Some pictures of the MB

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/a64AAOSw5fJlKanm/s-l1600.png
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/bM8AAOSwDjhlKa10/s-l1600.jpg

Anyway many thanks in advance..

Reply 1 of 7, by Ryccardo

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That (Wow! I suspect a spare "proper" socket and outsourced soldering can be competitive or cheaper!) would likely be an effective workaround, but for the broken clip only - by itself it won't make a tualatin chip work, you'd still need the pin mod and/or microcode swap or whatever if the boards needs those...

Good luck! 😀

Reply 2 of 7, by ChrisK

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Hi and welcome,

broken socket clips is an awkward and unfortunately not so uncommon problem.
Additionally there mostly is no easy fix, since the only way to get rid of it would be a complete socket change.
That said I must admit I haven't seen these socket interposers with heatsink clips until now (maybe others have).

So, generally spoken, at the first glance, this seems like a good solution for this problem to me if you are willing to spend that much money on it.
The points I would think about before buying is:
Will that CPU ever be able to be separated again from this without breaking any pins as those pin sockets have a quite high retention force?
And: is there enough space on the original socket for installation since the new clips are where there's that hump of the original socket. I think that's an even bigger issue.

Besides that:
I have the very same board and even if I don't recall all the details I can say that it had some "unregularities" with Tualatins when changing the CPU voltage from within the BIOS.
After that it sometimes didn't even POST and measuring Vcore with a multimeter showed values way off the set ones. The measured values were much too high even when the set value would be below the regular CPU Vcore. I haven't examined that any further back then and I also cannot tell if that's a Tualatin-only issue.
I just wanted to point you to that and to have an eye on this when actually using this board.

As a sidenote: the Via 694T is Tualatin-compatible. So this shouldn't be the source of the problem.

Regards

Reply 3 of 7, by paradigital

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Seems like it would be “ok” at best, assuming a horizontally flat motherboard (CPU face up).

I’d not want to rely on the zif socket holding the interposer/cpu/cooler combo to the motherboard.

Reply 5 of 7, by themetaman

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paradigital wrote on 2023-11-03, 07:31:

Seems like it would be “ok” at best, assuming a horizontally flat motherboard (CPU face up).

I’d not want to rely on the zif socket holding the interposer/cpu/cooler combo to the motherboard.

Thanks paradigital, Yes I was thinking that overall weight may be a problem, thanks....

Reply 6 of 7, by themetaman

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ChrisK wrote on 2023-11-03, 07:08:
Hi and welcome, […]
Show full quote

Hi and welcome,

broken socket clips is an awkward and unfortunately not so uncommon problem.
Additionally there mostly is no easy fix, since the only way to get rid of it would be a complete socket change.
That said I must admit I haven't seen these socket interposers with heatsink clips until now (maybe others have).

So, generally spoken, at the first glance, this seems like a good solution for this problem to me if you are willing to spend that much money on it.
The points I would think about before buying is:
Will that CPU ever be able to be separated again from this without breaking any pins as those pin sockets have a quite high retention force?
And: is there enough space on the original socket for installation since the new clips are where there's that hump of the original socket. I think that's an even bigger issue.

Besides that:
I have the very same board and even if I don't recall all the details I can say that it had some "unregularities" with Tualatins when changing the CPU voltage from within the BIOS.
After that it sometimes didn't even POST and measuring Vcore with a multimeter showed values way off the set ones. The measured values were much too high even when the set value would be below the regular CPU Vcore. I haven't examined that any further back then and I also cannot tell if that's a Tualatin-only issue.
I just wanted to point you to that and to have an eye on this when actually using this board.

As a sidenote: the Via 694T is Tualatin-compatible. So this shouldn't be the source of the problem.

Regards

ChrisK, cheers might test the board first with the Tualatin then think on it.. Might try and hunt down another board.. Getting hard to find a Tualatin compatible one with an ISA slot tho, might go down the modded cpu path idk..

Reply 7 of 7, by themetaman

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Ryccardo wrote on 2023-11-03, 06:42:

That (Wow! I suspect a spare "proper" socket and outsourced soldering can be competitive or cheaper!) would likely be an effective workaround, but for the broken clip only - by itself it won't make a tualatin chip work, you'd still need the pin mod and/or microcode swap or whatever if the boards needs those...

Good luck! 😀

Thnx Ryccardo 😀