building a pentium from the MB up...

Aug 24 03:50 UTC 1999

A friend of mine is upgrading his computer and has offered me his old
Pentium133mHz motherboard (with processor).  He knows my current computer is
a 486DX66 with only 150MB hard drive.  However, I have several old IBM PC
boxes with power supply, an old 286 box with supply, and a couple of 386 boxes
with power supply.

aside from finding out if his board is for a tower or desktop, is there
anything else i should try and find out about it before I try and get in into
a box and start outfitting it into a working computer?  I understand it has
32M RAM, but i don't know about the cache.  also, all other components will
be needed (monitor, sound, serial/paralell ports, etc).  His pentium was
originally purchased from Tech Partners and the new owners (Computer alley)
will be doing his new computer, I think.  but they're not offering him
anything (much?) for the old motherboard so he's offered to give it to me.

I have a few boxes of I/O cards, a 3.5" drive, a few 5.25" drives, maybe even
some other stuff all piled up in the basement.  Might any of these be of use
in outfitting this Pentium, or should i just plan to buy all new (or slightly
used) components?

I'd like to be able to put in a 3-5gig drive, 32x CDROM, sound (with MIDI in
and out...games not important), moderately high resoution monitor, and I plan
to install Win95 (rev C) as a step up from my current Win3.1.

Probably, I'd also like to network this with my 486, if for no other reason
than to learn a bit about networking, so I'll need to get a hub and couple
of 10-base-T cards (rather, 100-base-T which are the newer/faster and about
the same cost, as i understand it).

any comments here before i embark on this hardware DIY project would be
greatly appreciated.

response 2 of 11:

Aug 24 13:41 UTC 1999

Thanks Klaus.  I think most of the power supplies in my boxes are 250 watt,
so I'm sure I'll have enough power for add-ons.  The 'traces' you refer to,
these are the sharp solder points and/or circuits on the bottom of the MB I
assume?  (My background is in human surgery, not electronics...sorry if I
sound dumb).  I intend to take my time, and my most current reference is Que's
"Upgrading and Repairing PCs, 3rd Edition" which covers the early pentiums
as I recall (I also have a few other text resources, but I think this one is
the most comprehensive).

I'll post more once I see the MB in question.  Any other thoughts are
continued to be appreciated.

response 4 of 11:

Aug 25 14:56 UTC 1999

You mentioned wanting a 3 - 5 GB hard drive.  Most likely the BIOS won't 
support a drive this large.  This isn't really a problem since the drive 
will come with software (EZ-BIOS or some such) to bypass this 
limitation.  However, it may be possible to download a flash BIOS 
upgrade to allow your BIOS to recognize the drive without the extra 
software.  If you can identify the manufacturer of the MB (not always an 
easy task) check their website for flash BIOS upgrades.  Perhaps the 
company that originally sold the PC to your friend can be of assistance 
in determining the mfgr.

As far as the other components you might need...  All but the oldest 
pentium MBs have most of the basic hardware built-in.  They usually 
include the floppy controller, two IDE controllers, 2 serial ports, and 
a parallel port.  The only cards you are likely to need are video and 
sound.

response 6 of 11:

Aug 25 19:32 UTC 1999

Re #5: I agree, but don't be afraid of the EZ-BIOS stuff if you need it.  It
works fine as long as you don't mess with it.  (In other words, don't expect
to use programs like Partition Magic to repartition your drive without
backing it up first, and don't install things like LILO that mess with the
boot sector.  This will incur the wrath of the EZ-BIOS demons, and they will
punish you by taking your data.) Also, if you have strange problems with an
EZ-BIOS'd drive, your first step should be restoring the EZ-BIOS program
with the original disk.

response 8 of 11:

Aug 26 15:23 UTC 1999

Several companies make mini-controllers and BIOS cards that can update
units without funny DDO programs.  I recently set up a computer with a
10GB drive using an 8-bit BIOS card in an ISA slot.  It is slower than
normal during the first phases of boot up, but once your OS gets the
protected mode drivers in, speed cranks up to the max your setup will do.
This is a cheap and low-risk solution, safer than DDO programs because it
is OS-blind, and I don't recall any P-133 systems being able to flash the
BIOS, I recall that as coming later, but I could be off there.  Using DOS
mode stuff only would be slow, but it should work.

When I say BIOS card, I mean just that, little more than a chip on a
mini-card with some address jumpers, it uses the existing controller to
operate drives up to the limit of the new disk BIOS (32GB in the case of
the cards I've been using).  These have been running me about $20.

response 10 of 11:

Aug 26 16:49 UTC 1999

Useful thing to know about, I didn't think the concept went that far back.