AL440LX: CPU Upgrade from PII/233?

[funcrew]

Thanks to John Prophet for raising this possibility:

My old Packard Bell (remember those?) has mostly upgraded (now-obsolete) replacement guts, but still has the original PentiumII/233. At John P's suggestion, I blew a couple layers of dust off my motherboard, and found a sticker I assume is relevant, marked "Intel AL440LX". Also found out the motherboard was made in Ireland of all places. One of the 1% of items made elsewhere than China...

Anyway, upgrading my CPU sounds pretty good, especially since the CPU fan has been making ugly grinding sounds for a while. What are my PII/PIII choices for the board vintage listed above, and where would you suggest looking? I use Ebay a lot if that is a good source.

Thanks!

[Xeroid]

Check out this LINK

[John Prophet]

unfortunately a "lx" motherboard doesnt have the possibilities of a bx motherboard.

Mainly because an LX only goes to a 66mhz bus speed and a bx goes to 100mhz...

So your possibilities are sort of limited to using a slocket and a celeron..since celerons are based on 66mhz bus speeds.

LX boards though, Im not too sure about as far as telling you anything for sure and slockets also are sort of hit or miss.

If you have a buddy with lots of spare parts you can fool around and see if a slocket/celeron works.

The only other thing I can think of is for us to try to figure out your motherboard model.

you can post up the "bios string" for us and we might figure it out and find the possibilities.

The bios string is a long number that appears on the bottom of the screen when the comp is booting.....it will look something like this

62-314E-060700-00101111-071595-440LX-FLORIDA-EM-H

thats just an example..usually they arent that long.

you will see it usually at the bottom of the screen and sometimes you can hit "pause" to freeze it so you can write it all down..otherwise it is a matter of rebooting several times,lol. (if you do manage to pause it, hit "enter" to unpause it, lol)

JP

[John Prophet]

ok, you probably can ignore the deal about the bios string, I wasnt thinking about the Al440lx being the actual model (I was thinking about it being a chipset)

What you can try is doing some google searches for stuff like

AL440LX slocket
AL440LX upgrade

stuff like that.

Sorry to get your hopes up, lol...an "lx" board usually cant be upgraded very far....but the searches and link might help you define your agp options more clearly.

Good Luck, JP

[funcrew]

My BIOS (from setup menu F2) is version 4A4LL0X0.11A.0009.P07. If I am interpreting the Intel link from Xeroid (thanks!) correctly, that means mine is a very early version, not compatible with any Celeron processors. Makes sense, PII's came out about the week I bought mine (open box store return, 100MB Zip, 128MB RAM, $1100, yipes!). So, a PII/333 is as far as I can go. Is it worth upgrading from a 233 to a 333, and where can I get one?

Thanks to all!

[Xeroid]

There is a link on that page for an updated BIOS. Bios LINK 4A4LL0x0.86A.0031.P14. If you flashed your Bios to this level it will support up to a 433mhz Celeron.

[John Prophet]

you might see a slight boost.

Ive got a P2-333 I can depart with....what zip code are you in?

I "found" some computers in a dumpster (after the store that fired me a year ago went out of business last week, lol)..anyway, I got several P2 comp chassis etc....so I have several spare P2-procs....I already had a 333..but since I have some spares now, I dont really need it.

You want it, it yours. PM me with your address and Ill send it out....then you can spend your $$$ on a vid card, lol. And if the processor doesnt work in your board..you havent lost anything.

JP

[Xeroid]

HERE is a Slot 1 Celeron 400 (used) @ the Computer Geeks for $14.

[radeon7000]

i was wondering if you had any klamath PII cpu's left!

[radeon7000]

if you don't have one thats fine but mabye a link to find one?