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Home▸ Forums▸ 68kMLA▸ IBM dual 1.4ghz PIII xServer 220 and 13 various PCs, many ?s — #3
Post #3 by drbalint
Source Forum68kMLA
CategoryHardware
Post DateTue, 11 Nov 2008 - 06:52
Original URLhttps://68kmla.org/bb/threads/ibm-dual-1-4ghz-piii-xserver-220-and-13-various-pcs-many-s.15558/
Post
First... if I add a second processor, do I have to match the speed of the currently installed one, or can I use a different speed? The current processor is a 1.4ghz Tualatin pentium socket 370. I happen to have a 1.3ghz tualatin celeron socket 370 available... would it be possible to use that?
The speed of the processors have to match and they have to be P3s, I don't beleive that celerons are officially supported in dual configs. Officially you are "supposed" to use the same stepping models, but I have found some systems where you don't have to.

Second... it's currently populated by PC133 ECC ram. Is ECC necessary? Will the smoke escape if I put non-ECC PC133 in there? Do I have to match the pairs?
ECC is not always required, however you can not mix them with non ecc in the same system. ECC is also pretty cheap now a days vs in the past. Pairs are dependent on the system's chipset. I would go to lenovo.com who now supports all ibm systems and servers and find the reference user manual.

Third... Can I use this thing for gaming if I drop a video card in it, or are they just made to serve files?
You could drop a card into it but most servers do not have agp slots for video, newer servers have pcix and pci express, but more then likely that server model has pci and maybe 64 bit pci slots. Either way you are limited to a pci graphic card, which as you may know probably the fastest card for pci is some geforce 5xxx or 6xxx series but still will be paltry compared to rigs of today.

Fourth... there are these weird vertical cards near the processors that have a bunch of capacitors on them... it seems like there is one for each processor. What in the world are they?
Those are called VRMs or voltage regulation modules.

Finally... do I have to run a sever-specific version of Windows on this machine? Can I install XP or Vista on it?
You can run XP pro or any version of windows software, most OS's support single and dual processors since the release of XP in 2001.

If you have any other questions I would be happy to help, I own almost 30 compaq-hp proliant servers. Proliant 5000, 5500,6000,7000, 8000, 8500, dl760, and many others. I love working on servers they are a passion of mine.

mp.ls