First Pentium 100
System Specification
Generic Mini tower case, 200Watt AT PSU
102 Key keyboard
3 button serial mouse
SVGA monitor
Intel i430VX board, 4 72pin SIMM slots, 2 168pin DIMM slots
Intel Pentium 100 Stock CPU and fan.
32 meg of 70ns 72 pin simms.
4x Creative CD rom
Creative Soundblaster Pro
CL-GD5446 Graphics card, 2meg with 3Dfx Voodoo2 accelerator.
2.1 Gig Quantum Fireball hard drive
Eventually, the 5×86 was becoming a little limited…good PC, but a bit weird with some programs. Time for a new beastie. Enter an Intel 430VX board, P100 chip, 32 Meg of 72Pin RAM, a Generic casing, and the bits from the 5×86, and we have Karl’s first Pentium.
As conventional and boring as the other was weird…it had the 4 speed CD, a 2 meg CL-GD5446 PCI Video card, A Soundblaster Pro and a 2.1 gig drive. It had 2 actually…I fitted a quantum fireball drive on Christmas day 1999, and it lived upto it’s name..it caught fire. It was replaced under warranty though..:)
This PC did me well for a year or so…no internet back then, so it was games and college/work tasks only.
I got a P100 to make sure I avoided the original Pentium FDIV bug in the early chips…and this system has been the most reliable system I’ve seen.
However…back then I had money,and nothing to do with it. With Stuart ( a friend from ex-school) we were “upgrade jockeys”..new kit arrived and we got it. A friend of ours had a habit of coming by PC’s and new parts rather nicely..and he built me a new system for the “multimedia age”.
The P100 was given to mum..and is still running today (6th January 2003) as well as it was in 2000, when I gave it a new install of Windows 95 and handed it to her for use with the accounting work she was doing. It’s on 24/7 and it never, ever breaks.
As for me..I moved on..Away from Intel, to AMD.