[jackdw]

I got hold of a really old motherboard today. I plan to use it as a router/web server. Pic of it is here: http://img455.images...dscf3990yb5.jpg .

There's no obvious way to turn it on. It's not in a case I know, I'm working on that but there's no front panel connectors to even connect a power switch to.

It will also run off my old PSU which is ATX. Which turns itself on and off electronically, not with a huge hefty switch, like this one.
What do I do? Will it work? How do I turn it on? It it worth putting XP on it (18gb hard drive), CPU: ??? RAM: ???

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

-Jack

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Looks like a Pentium 2 or early Pentium 3 setup. My guess Pentium II because of the ISA Slot. Therefore it will only take SDRAM, not DDR.

This may well be one of those transitionary type-boards that can use an ATX power supply, but requires a physical AT switch in order to provide power. These, as you might expect, require a special power supply that provide such a switch and with ATX connections on it.

Then again, these were only ever made during the transition from AT to ATX, and power supplies that can handle both have long since disappeared. Add to that of course, the switches were usually case-specific anyway, as were the power supplies.

[Neil Jones]

Looks like a Pentium 2 or early Pentium 3 setup. My guess Pentium II because of the ISA Slot. Therefore it will only take SDRAM, not DDR.

This may well be one of those transitionary type-boards that can use an ATX power supply, but requires a physical AT switch in order to provide power. These, as you might expect, require a special power supply that provide such a switch and with ATX connections on it.

Then again, these were only ever made during the transition from AT to ATX, and power supplies that can handle both have long since disappeared. Add to that of course, the switches were usually case-specific anyway, as were the power supplies.

[jackdw]

I actually found a front panel connector hidden under all the IDE cables last night. It boots up but stops because there's no hard drive.
It's a 366mhz Intel something or other with 64mb ram. But I do have another computer which it pretty old with 256mb ram. I swapped a 32mb stick for a 128mb stick and it worked, said it had 192mb ram.
What sort of RAM do you think? SDRAM?

[silverbeard]

It's probably an early PIII. Micro-ATX , 2 PCI, 1 ISA . It should use PC-100 low density RAM 256MB max (PC-133 low density would also work). You should be able to run up to Win2k on it or most Linux distros (especially with max RAM). The IDE controller may be a bit of a bottleneck because they are probably ATA 66 which will reduce read/write times to hard disk drive. With only to PCI slots this could limit use as a firewall/router to remote administer but Smoothwall should work nicely as it can be remotely administered. It is still a viable machine and not ready for scrap yet.

[jackdw]

Well it was a loan from a friend but he said I could keep it. I have tried 256mb RAM in it, PC100 SDRAM and it find it in BIOS.
Yes, I will only use a screen, mouse and keyboard to install everything and get it working. Then I'll jsut turn it on and it should boot before this one does.

I haven't yet got a OS booted up on it, but I have so many hard drives it's not suprising.

I'll get some more detailed stats when it boots.