Guided Tour - Second Stop: Pentium Place

(We are looking in the left side of the computer. The front of the computer is at the right side of the picture.)

In the center of this picture, we see the 'brains' of the computer. This is a 60MHz Pentium chip, sitting in a "Socket 4" type socket, and clamped under a large black heat sink. It was the first (and slowest) Pentium on the market, and it runs off of 5 volts. There were often problems with the first-generation (60MHz and 66MHz) Pentiums overheating in some computers. A chip this large was also difficult to manufacture, so Intel had a hard time keeping up with demand. Second-generation (75MHz and faster) versions of the Pentium were actually smaller and ran on a lower voltage. This reduced the amount of heat they produced, and made the Pentium easier to manufacture. The second-generation versions also used a differently shaped socket, so the only way to upgrade this computer is with Intel's "OverDrive" upgrade chip. I've been told it's quite expensive, and that getting a new, faster motherboard wouldn't cost much more.

A large fan on the front of the computer blows air over the processor's large heat sink. The only other fan in the computer is in the power supply, which blows air out the back of the case. There is a long vent along the nearest edge of the computer, along the bottom. I've read that running a computer with the case off can actually cause the computer to overheat, since the case can channel the air through the areas that need cooling.

Next to the processor are several connectors and jumpers. Closest to us are power connectors for two fans, but only one fan is connected here (this is how the computer was set up at the factory). The multi-wire twisted cable connects to the 'power' light and reset button on the front of the case. If we were using the motherboard's IDE connectors, we'd connect the 'hard drive activity light' here, too.

On the left side of the processor are several small chips. These form the cache. Behind the cache is one of the four chips of the Intel MERCURY chipset. We'll see another one of these chips later.

We can also see part of the Sound144AM card with the CD-ROM ribbon cable attached. It is interesting to note that because of the processor's heat sink, the card won't fit into the bottom ISA slot. When inserted in the middle ISA slot, the card is less than one centimetre away from the top of the heat sink - a bit too close for comfort, in my opinion.

Below the card and behind the processor, we can see one of the SIMMs seated upright in a white socket. SIMMs must be installed in pairs of equal memory capacity. This computer has all four of its SIMM slots filled.

At the top of the picture, we see part of the mounting tray, in which there are two IDE hard drives, one floppy drive, and one CD-ROM drive mounted. Later in the tour, we'll take a closer look at those drives.