386SX wrote on 2022-01-23, 13:05:
Tetrium wrote on 2022-01-23, 11:21:My first PC was a Slot 1 one. Back then the Slot 1 concept was sold as the way forward, as progression. Because this way it was […]
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386SX wrote on 2022-01-21, 17:15:
Thanks, I'll see if I can find anything wrong, I didn't check the back side of the mainboard being installed right now but I suppose soon I'll put the 430VX I had back in this case. The slot idea for the CPUs never felt IMHO like the best one seen in consumer electronics considering how heavy and powerful CPUs became and how much power they needed... even back in those times I didn't even have a Slot based mainboard. Jumped directly from the K6-2 to the later Duron 750 socket version.
My first PC was a Slot 1 one. Back then the Slot 1 concept was sold as the way forward, as progression. Because this way it was way easier to scale up CPU frequencies because the cache didn't need to be on-die anymore.
CPU power dissipation had increased somewhat, but at that time noone really saw the huuuge leap in CPU power consumption coming, so this was not something that was even a consideration when the CPU slot was designed. That and for a newer CPU it was quite typical a new cooling solution would be designed anyway, it just didn't matter at the time Slot 1 was released.
And tbf, Slot 1 was actually capable of mounting substantially beefier coolers compared to Socket 7. Some Slot 1 CPU HSFs were basically quite literally just 2 Socket 7 heatsinks with 2 5cm fans mounted on top, made suitable for mounting on a Slot 1 CPU instead of on a Pentium 1 ZIF socket.
Also swapping out CPUs is usually much easier compared to Socket 7 where the HSF will need to be unmounted and remounted every time a CPU using a corretly installed CPU HSF is swapped. So there is definitely something to say for Slot 1 being the superior solution compared to Socket 7, which is a comparison which was made somewhat commonly back in the day. Of course from hindsight things may look very different.
CPU slot design was more expensive, so as soon as the L2 cache could be put on the CPU die again with good enough yields (which happened when Intel made Mendocino), Intel made Socket 370 and soon enough the desktop Pentium 3 CPU went over to s370 entirely.
I understand the cache point but I wonder if like in the past would have been that difficult to design an external fast L2 cache on sockets like the early Pentium that would have solved the L2 problem and still living on old style Socket when until the cpu beside the 1Ghz models with those huge heatsink, they didn't seems impossible to use some heavier heatsink on the socket. Let's see what they did on the Socket 462 and the power demanding various Athlon (1400.. XP 3200 etc..) and heatsink really heavy and large. I understand that the early Pentium II seems to have quite increased the power demand with the early core and that probably felt like a problem compared to the past cpu solution. But once new cores (P2-300/350? I don't remember) were released the temperature problem came back into a acceptable range imho.
What you're saying here is totally true. Later CPU sockets were able to run much heavier heatsinks (especially handy for Socket A since these heatsinks make it relatively easy to find a beefy CPU cooler for the other sockets of the same size (which are s370, s7, s5 and s3)). But Socket 7 for instance was not made with heavy duty heatsinks in mind. Often you'll find there's motherboard components preventing you from actually mounting one of the much larger heatsinks.
Also with the heavy heatsinks I'd say it's advisable to make use of all 3 tabs and Socket 7 often omitted the 3rd CPU tab.
In some cases Socket 3 (which has the same physical size as Socket 7, funfact 😜 ) doesn't have any of those socket tabs at all.
Pentium 2 was often sold with integrated CPU cooling.
Yes, with Deschutes the power dissipation was lowered significantly compared to Klamath.
I don't know maybe I never really like those as a concept, while I understand the theorical positive side of having a cpu that couldn't have broken pins or similar but at least the Slot plastic bus should have been attached to the mainboard in so many points that should have been impossible to make any force on that. Also a different plastic guides logic migh have helped into removing them (like a Socket with a mechanism to help the user). For example similar thing happened over the years with the video card bus, now in metal, double slot etc.. But the video card logic make the bus less problematic to install or uninstall, those cpu had to stay there in a vertical position and possibly suffering also case vibrations or casual hit. Lately talking to a PC store (one of those few old stores remained having worked into this market since the 80's) manager, talking about the Slot cpus immediately said about the "problems with contacts" I didn't even know about but now I'm discovering cause not having Slot board in those times. To say that if even a common local repair store remembers that 20 years later maybe was a discussion subject for those who had them. 😉
Regarding the Slot 1 mounting mechanism, I'm pretty sure that Intel did provide detailed installation guidelines and tbf installing a Pentium2 cartridge is much more straight forward than installing a Pentium 1 as no heatsink needs to be installed and no pins can be damaged like on a ZIF socketed CPU.
To be fair, back when Slot 1 was new there was virtually no mention of any problems with the Slot 1 mechanism being easy to damage and having build dozens of Slot 1 systems myself (both privately as well as for others) I've never come across this problem...which of course doesn't exclude the possibility that I did in fact meet this problem and did not recognize it properly. But the same I can say about socketed CPUs, except we did in fact break stuff more easily. Mostly bent pins, broken Pentium 4 plastic brackets which in fact were quite fragile (but still only if mistreated or being careless) and the pushpins which could be broken which caused throttling issues until we figured out the issue (actually has this P4 which ended up having 1 broken pushthrough pin which caused the heatsink to not be mounted properly, causing the CPU to throttle all the time).
Also, usually the Slot 1 cartridge is not very heavy and after insertion actually seemed to make the PCB more sturdy where with a ZIF socket the board would tend to flex instead (especially and mostly with Socket A HSFs though, never noticed such a thing with Socket 7 stuff).
And the Slot 1 is essentially a lengthened AGP slot flipped onto its side and AGP slots don't break this easily either (even though AGP slots can also break, just like Slot 1 slots can still break).
Regarding the case vibration, the original mounting mechanism of Pentium 2 would lock the CPU into place and I doubt this mechanism could break with just vibrations.
With sudden shock force (like dropping a case), I consider this as mistreatment and usually PC hardware is not designed with sudden shocks in mind.
And regarding the repairman, this seems unlikely to be the case imo. If a Slot 1 board was defective, it's up to the motherboard manufacturer or the system builder to enable the warranty procedure. If the boards were out of warranty, then these must have been older boards. And when properly installed, they don't 'just break' if the insides are left alone.
It seems just so implausible to me.
I mean, if Slot 1 is supposedly very fragile then essentially AGP should be as well, and afaik this is simply not the case.
So I wouldn't worry about this too much.
Of course if mothervoards are thrown around and pulled out of piles of other boards, this is also mistreatment and has essentially nothing to do with the way Slot 1 was produced, nor could it be considered a flaw of the Slot 1 design.
With mistreatment virtually anything can be broken.