Is it possible to put a K6-2 on a motherboard that doesn't
"officially" support them? The motherboard is a socket 7 motherboard
that supports Pentiums and K6 chips, but not K6-2. However, using
overclocker bus speeds that work w/ my other hardware, I can get CPU
speeds up to 375. I'm thinking of buying a K6-2 350 to run at 375 on
this board as a third computer. The board is namely the Global
GCT-8ITB.
I "think" that board is a TX chipset. This means it has ATA33 hard drive
support, and that may not work properly if you exceed 66-75 FSB due to the
corresponding o'c of the PCI bus. You might also find the already-limited
USB support to be a problem at FSB speeds higher than ~70MHz.
It's very likely that the board supports a K6-2, and "maybe" a K6-3...
geneerally a TX board had good odds of running a K6-3 but slightly older
boards wouldn't. Note that whatever you end up using, the CPU may not be
identified properly, including the speed reported in the BIOS POST
screen... you'd need to use a CPU identification tool like "WCPUID"
(Google search will find it) in windows to check actual operating speed.
The later K6-2 processors supported multiplier translation. That is, if
you set the multiplier to 2X, the processor interprets it as 6X, so you'd
have 400MHz @ 66MHz FSB, with the ATA33 working. However the TX chipset
is somewhat limited in that it can only cache 64MB of memory... but for
some uses that's enough, or for other uses there might be a benefit to
adding as much memory as possible regardless (for example a fileserver,
could cache the hard drive much more effectively).
Other issues to consider are core voltage support. K6-2 run at either 2.4
(earlier revisions) or 2.2V core. Your motherboard might physically
support those voltages, and yet may or may not have documentation as to
the jumper settings needed to attain those voltages. You could run a 2.2V
chip at 2.4, but not necessarily the other way around. Also it's
hit-or-miss whether you can overclock a K6-2 very much, there were MUCH
less tolerant of o'c than Celerons or PII. I did a brief Google search
and saw that this motherboard has jumper settings for 2.0V, which will
likley allow running at around 400MHz with one of the later CPUs, perhaps
not a CPU spec'd for 350MHz though, rather one spec'd for higher than
400MHz. It's also likely you have support for an intermediate voltage
nearer the 2.2-2.4V, but without knowing the jumpers it's a risk trying to
determine the proper jumper setting. It's possible to determine that with
a continuity meter on the pins while consulting the regulator controller
chip's datasheet, which pins map to which of the controller's pins, but
that's a bit involved for most people, a lot of work for such an old
system, particularly these days when such an old board might be found in a
dumpster or very cheap if not free.
