Hi
Some P2 IBM laptops will run fine with a P3 cpu in them, so is the
same trick doable with desktops? Sockets differ, but is a socket
adaptor really all thats needed?
Sometimes yes.
It has to have the right socket, bios support, FSB support
(if the P3 is 133MHz FSB version and you need it to run at
full speed instead of underclocked (though one of the
beauties of running an old box with an underclocked P3 is it
produces so little heat, even less if you can undervolt it,
that it may not even need a fan on the heatsink and if it
still does, even some small fan and sink can run silently if
fan speed is reduced by the preferred method), and voltage
support.
The easier way to do this is google for the motherboard
model and "P3" to see who has asked or done it in the past.
There are also some (powerleap or upgradeware?) socket
adapters with integral power subcircuits to produce the
lower voltage used by a P3.
Come to think of it, you didn't specify Coppermine P3, there
were some 500-650MHz or so slot 1 P3 but since you mentioned
the adapter I referred to the Coppermines. Even later came
Tualatin P3 or Celerons which can also run from some of the
same motherboards with an appropriate adapter, voltage
support, and at least bios support for the Coppermines.
Some chipsets seem simply incapable of running the Tualatins
with a pin-adapter socket even if they were natively running
Coppermines and have the bios support. Sis 620 or 630 for
example, I can across a few boards (can't recall make and
model after so much time has passed) that wouldn't work with
same adapter and CPU which worked in other boards.
If the voltage support isn't present on a board you might be
able to do some pin-modifications to cause the board to
default to the lowest voltage it does support, for example
some boards can be forced to run at 1.8V which is low enough
to keep a P3 skt 370 version from running too hot.
It all sounds most unlikely, yet a P2
300 thinkpad can run a P3 850 ok.
Curiosity value only, P2 desktops long gone. Mind you, if I could put
a P3 in the 486...
Rather than try to list all possible scenarios it is easier
to tackle the issue the other way around, taking a specific
motherboard then considering the factors unique to it which
might disallow use of a Coppermine.
Also keep in mind that decent socket adapters are rare these
days, it could cost as much to buy one or so much time to
find a good one that it's more time/cost effective to just
buy a motherboard spec'd to run a P3 instead... plus these
more modern boards are more likely able to run higher
density memory so you have more compatiblity there or lower
cost to upgrade memory. Further the next generations of
boards were more likely to support 48bit LBA for large HDDs,
AGP 4X, ATA66 or higher, and the last generation(s) even
USB2. There are lots of reasons to go with a late
generation P3 board, but beware of some models that had bad
caps issues, as upgrading a board to use a newer CPU that
consumes significantly more current can exacerbate an
existing problem or at least cause otherwise visable caps to
run hotter and thus have shorter lives... after a fair
portion of their lifespan has already expired, assuming the
systems had been used previously.
