AMD K6/300
System Specification at Purchase
VIA Super Socket 7 Motherboard
AMD K6/266 overclocked @ 300mhz
32Meg 72Pin SIMM DRAM
16 Speed CDROM
4 Gig hard drive
Creative AWE64 Soundcard
Modem Card
S3 Virge DX/Onboard PCI 4mb video card
Windows 98SE
This PC I collected from Master Slater one fine summers evening, and took it home with some trepidation….an AMD…Not an Intel….would it work ok? Would it be reliable? Would it pay me back?
Slater recommended an AMD over an intel because clock for clock, the AMD K6 can kick a Pentium’s arse to hell and back. I was impressed….this PC was a demon! Windows 98, a K6/300 chip (3 times faster than that which I had before), same memory, a 16 speed CDROM, and a 4 gig hard drive.
It had a Creative AWE64 soundcard (pre release top of the range then), and a nice all bells and whistles modem/fax/answering machine card. there was also an S3 virge DX PCI video card in it. Quick, it was!
The PCI S3 soon gave way to an AGP S3 Virge GX, and the voodoo 2 card from the P100. This was a gamers PC and no messing.
I also got myself connected to freeserve at this point, so it served as a web machine too.
Bear in mind at this point i was (happily) single again, and somewhat more focussed that perhaps I am now. Networks were not my problem. I wasn’t yet working full time. I could spend all day sitting at this beastie. I did actually…
It was through this PC that I applied for the Job I’m in now..idle browsing of the web found me the website for here,and the contact details. As I found myself entering full time work, I had less time to spend on my PC, and more money to spend…and since technology quietly moved on..I decided to pay this PC back for helping me..
The CPU was still plenty powerful enough, the VIA board was no bad performer…so I had a good core PC.
I changed the ever trusty Creative Quad speed CD for a Creative 32xMAX..I figured “creative labs..good kit”..NOT this drive! Peice of junk from day 1. Wouldn’t read disks..sent it back twice. Every time it was returned as “worked fine on test system”. My arse it was.
It was in turn replaced with a generic 52x CDROM. Perfect. The 32xMAX was given it’s just deserts…a hammer put paid to THAT.
The Phillips CDD3610 CD burner was purchased and fitted, and that was great…a nice quick burner for it’s day, multi capable too…not bad.
I fitted a 20gig hard drive as a slave on this machine to give myself space to master CD’s and for a while, all was great! I could go to work, work, come home, kick back and relax..nice. I network equipped it to play deathmatches against stuart as well..great fun.
About this time, I picked up a £10 packard bell multimedia Celeron PC..no use for it though, so it got NT4 as a plaything and stored.
Not long after this, I met Jem…the PC got ICQ installed and I got introduced to the wonders of Instant messaging. The PC was then in use nightly, for hours talking to Jem. ICQ became MSN Messenger, and the hours got longer..then I went to Jem’s in person to “fix the PC” at first..to find she’d engineered that to get me there..:)
Since then the PC had been used almost every night to talk to her, since we live 7 miles apart. It did all I could ever ask. However..98SE eventually died on me…and I was faced with a decision…do I reformat and restart, or do I change to the Packard bell and do it at my leisure?
I chose the packard bell route, as it was quicker..so the AMD was “retired”. Temporarily…I always intended to go back to it.
The Packard Bell(as was) is now my main machine..the AMD lives on running Windows XP Pro…I installed it for a laugh expecting the machine to struggle as a pentium would….I gave it an NVidia TNT2 AGP video card to help, since I had one in the Celeron and liked the speed.
Imagine my surprise to find that a Super Socket 7 AMD K6/300 Generation 1 chip took XP with no problems and ran with it at a speed on a par with a new p2/400! This machine really IS a flyer…it runs XP 24/7 without even warming up. I fitted a 20 gig drive to the AMD to replace the drive I removed from it for the P2, and it runs to this day..still bloody quick.
It’s currently in storage, one day I daresay it’ll make a comeback
System Specification-Current
VIA Super Socket 7 Motherboard
AMD K6/266 overclocked @ 300mhz
240Meg 168Pin DIMM SDRAM
52x Speed CDROM
20 Gb Hard Drive
10Mps NE2000 network combo BNC/RJ45 card
4 Gig hard drive(boot)
Creative AWE64 Soundcard
NVidia TNT2 Overclocked AGP 32Meg Video Card
Windows XP Pro
I’m impressed with this old stager…it’s reached it’s fifth birthday and it STILL kicks ass. All Hail AMD…it’s nice to know that I have a solid emergency PC to back me up if I need it..:)