Installation

The installation of a CPU is usually the easiest part of almost any upgrade although it does help if you have the manual for your motherboard handy as running into problems could well require you to look up a few settings. The system I had decided to upgrade is as follows:

Intel VX Pro Chipset
PentiumMMX-233Mhz CPU @ 75Mhz Bus (O/C to 266)
64Mb-66Mhz EDO Ram
24x IDE CDRom
2x2Gig HD's
16Bit Soundcard (SB32)
Matrox Millenium2-8mb

The system mentioned is my fathers computer from work and knowing him the word 'backups' means very little, so we were under extra stress to get things right. The installation manual was very useful and in following the steps the first thing I had to do was boot the system and do a diagnostic using the enclosed floppy disk. A few minutes later and the set-up showed me that it didn't have a bios update for my system, however we weren't worried so I hastily exited the program and shut things down ready for the hardware.

Now as things go this system happens to be about the most up to date PentiumMMX Board that Intel produced for the Socket7 line and so we very much doubt a Bios update would have been needed anyway. The system itself was already Y2K compliant as well, or so previous testes would have us believe. Either way a hasty removal of the OLD CPU was no problem and now came to installing the new one. We lined up the pins and moved the CPU down into position; it was now that the first problem arose. The universal problem with motherboards is that people only make them to support specific hardware and so sometimes you get space problems. In this case a group of batteries and transistors lay in the way of pressing the bulky kit hard into the slot. Thankfully we were able to move these aside just enough for the processor and it's mount to sneak into position and get locked in.

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