Dual SLOT1 CPU's? 90's/2000's Retro PC's - Saved!! 

I've seen videos of people reviving Matrox video cards by booting with a secondary vga card and reflashing the vbios with a known working bios - apparently it's a known issue of eeprom chips birotting, random bits of eeprom get corrupted over time. Of course, ideally you'd replace the eeprom chip, but reflashing should give it a few years of working life

That dual PII is such a great find. What an interesting video card too plus you got a SB16. So lucky!

The DELL is more likely used as an Engineer workstation for Autocad or Wonderware. It's very rare to use additional video card for a server.

Lots of good memories. Briefly owned a dual slot P2. But only ever had one CPU for it. That machine was a turning point for me as MP3s had just become a thing and I found the P2 struggled to play them. That single problem pushed me to upgrade to much more modern platforms. Socket 939 I believe, and a whole slew of processor upgrades for that. Had my P2 been better, I would likely have stayed put. But I did love that cartridge form factor.

Wow! Those are some amazing finds! Thanks for sharing!

Both dual Pentium systems are the highlights of this haul! I'd love seeing those restored!😁👌

I would like to see Linux on the dual CPU machines. For the dual P2 something with 2.4 Kernel (e.g. SuSE Linux 7.3 to 8.2) and for the dual P3 something with 2.6 Kernel (e.g. SuSE Linux 9.1 to 10.4).

All Windows NT versions except XP Home will be able to utilize the second CPU. Best choice for older systems like this would be 2K. They will make great late early 00's gaming systems considering they both have AGP. I've always wanted to try that out dual CPU gaming on an old system like this. None of the games would be optimized for it, but the CPU scheduler should be smart enough to run the OS and game on a separate CPU.

Glad to see those machines saved!

good to see these rare machines being saved. have a dual P3 'katmai' slot 1 rig myself with matched 600's running @ 650 with golden orb coolers and custom made ramsinks on the cache chips. Dual boot of windows ME and Debian Linux (ME for retro games, Linux to properly make use of both cpu's) and its always been rock solid stable. (I also have Rloew's ram patch for windows ME, and a zip disk I use to boot pure dos when needed). Originally I had a Voodoo 5 in it, but now I run a geforce 6800. Its a real powerhouse for classic games, and runs linux surprisingly well for basic websurfing too. (I dont go online with ME except to play Mechwarrior 3, so no issues there).

Dual Pentium 3 866mhz love to see that system restored and put through its paces.

The 4x 5.25" bay/3x 3.5" beige 90s ATX case (with the PSU in the correct location at the top) of system #1 were the absolute best. Enough room for many optical/hard drives, a big motherboard if you wanted it, space for extra fans and all the room you could ever need to stuff with a tangled mess of ribbon cables. The 90s were great.

Nice finds. I recommend to always test de PSU before turning ON the PCs. You can connect the PSUs to some damaged HDDs and measure the voltages to make sure they are within spec. There is the risk of damaging the motherboard or other stuff just because it was connected to a faulty PSU.

Many P4 era cases had some side ventilation for the CPU. I remember having one Antec case with an air duct which the CPU cooler could use to get some fresh air.

The video card in that Dell is either a Matrox G400 DH (dual head) or G400 Max. That can on the chip suggests that it's the Max.

Just a spectacular video

The dual p2 450 with a tnt16 & sli v2 12s would be a montrous 98 build & artifact. The absolute best at the time.

Dual slot systems... not practical at all today, but still a fun think to have and tinker with! I wouldn't mind having a dual PIII system just to look at it once in a while and smile!

Funny enough, here in the slum jungle, in the repair shop I work sometimes we get people bringing their pcs that are still being used for repair and they are around that age, lots from the 775 era that we stick an ssd and people still uses them today, a paint store still uses an 478 pentium 4 with XP to run some old software

Nice computers. Work enough. Greetings from Steven from the Netherlands

Honestly, I miss the dual slot ones now let me explain. Apple did their own dual slot one. It was a older workstation machine that ran Mac OS8. If I remember correct and it was dual slots, it would take 2CP. U's And you could max out the Ram to a 128 megs and out of nowhere. This machine would go from barely running to running through a brick wall and keep going. It was absolutely wild with just a Ram grade and another processor you could literally have Mac os 8. smoking on this machine. And same for a lot of the Dell computers at the time. They were Beast when it came for running windows 98 95 and 2000 at the time with dual cpus Then we got the CPU adapter cards. And when we got those holy cow, could you speed up this machine? Dells machines were literally being overclocked without overclocking by just changing out the slot one to a socketed adapter

Those dual cpu systems are pretty neat, the Asus P2B-D motherboard should support the early pentium III cpus like the 600 mhz & also via slocket adapters socket 370 processors, the board version 1.06 does support more processors up too the 900 mhz pentium III. Ofc there is a modified bios that allows much more processors then whats officially supported via vogons in " Modified BIOSes for ASUS P3B-F, P3V4X, P3V133, CUBX, CUBX-E/L and P3C-E "

My God... Many years ago I had the same Dell Precision 420 with two PIII 1Ghz processors and a Radeon 9800Pro card. It was a great machine with Rambus memories. Where did you get it from ?

Wicked video, brings back the days of fixing and building these beasts !! Now you need the Slot a machine ( AMD versions )

Two nice Dual Slot One Systems. Great for Windows 2000. I have the Same Case as System One, Strange that they make you pull the front bezel i guess they just wanted to be different mine has a Pentium III . Thanks for the Video

Good PC's you have there, especially that Dual slot server pc also the second dual slot. First PC might have also a corrupted bios, you should try to re-flash new bios to the chip or if you have re-programmer tool, like i have one i ordered from ebay a year ago, it is very easy on good tool. Thanks for the video.

good vid as always

Good finds you got, I love Slot1 systems. and about the first system this is things you can check: Cmos battery, change it and also cycle and control the Cmos reset jumper, check if you have a open case switch that reset the system, also check if your actual reset button is not stuck in a pressed in or shorted position. I don´t really think the caps gonna make this issue is very likely unless they are completely shorted out or if the VRM are shot somehow. my recommendation is to make that system as bare bone as possible to exclude as much as possible and if nothing works you could try a different CPU as well. good luck

wow NICE score!!

the case on the first computer is Enlight 72500SZ, I have the non usb version, it takes drive rails sadly. but a very good case non the less. I built a AMD Duron system in it when I went over to ATX back in the day.

Put the system 3 motherboard in the system 1 case. That would make an awesome system,

MMDHA32, Matrox Millennium Dual Head Agp 32MB (DELL Matrox Millennium G400 Max)

I did spring for PATA SSD drives recently, as my quantum HDDS were starting to have issues, but I still use real floppies, and a zip250 paired with a PATA DVD/rw drive.

I owned several dual CPU systems back in the 90's. Windows NT 4 and Windows 2000 supported dual CPU just fine.

Love that 2nd PC, the dual P3 system. Not surprising it's well looked after. Just imagine if it was dual P4s, the same CPU as detailed in the 1st system, not only will you have a home server, you'll have a room heater built-in as standard.

That Dell did not use two power supplies at once, and I wouldn't recommend trying it. The lower end model, the Precision 220, used a more conventionally shaped power supply at the top of the case. The 420 like yours and the 620 use the bottom mounted power supply, which was designed for ease of replacement and had more wattage. More workstation-oriented.

On the first pc, check the clear CMOS jumper. Generally near the battery. Some techs will leave the jumper in the clear CMOS position when they decommission a system. Tends to discourage dumpster divers. As for PC #3 In that era Win 2000 and Red Hat were all that could run duel CPU's. Knoppix should run on that system. However K9 is too new to run live. Try Knoppix 6, if I remember right should go like mad. Another thought, are those slot 1's Xeon? If not there may be issues with resource allocation in Linux.

I had one of these running Windows 2000 Server, great solid machine! 'Dell Precision"

I had a couple of dual slot 1 PC's back in the day. 1 was based on the QDI Legend 4 motherboard with an LX chipset and onboard ultra 2 SCSI. the other was the gigabyte GA6BXDS which i ran dual PIII again with SCSI drives. Damn good machines and if i recall a dodgy PSU took out all the SCSI drives on gigabyte system.

@23:48 It says on the label on the back just above the FCC symbol 'G4 + MMDHA32' thats a Matrox G400 Max. A very nice card imho one of the best Matrox cards.

I have come across Asus boards of that era (first board) where the small legs of the FETs that make up the VRM get broken solder joints which causes the CPU core voltage to not come up.

I built a dual P3 733MHz box in the early 2000's, ran Windows 2000 and eventually XP Pro. Was a decent workhorse for video game development work I was doing.

Perhaps whoever had the Dual Pentium II system actually had multiple systems, and something caused them to swap motherboards? (Maybe the power supply died in their Dual Pentium II system and they did a motherboard swap instead of a power supply swap? Maybe they did a cheap upgrade to stretch the life of their system after upgrading to Windows NT or 2000?)

Dual Slot 1 PII's and PIII's----wow! I never even knew those existed until now. The people that bought these machines were obviously power users---I wonder what programs they ran that were so CPU-intensive? I agree that the first system has bad motherboard caps---I've never heard of a dead Pentium 4

one of the boards I had back in the day was the Legendary Abit BP6, it be interesting to see what you think of it, if you can get one...

That Dell machine Looks very much like mine Precision 410 i have. In my case the power supply is at the top of the case and the ports on the back are shuffled arround a bit. Nothing at the bottom to even accept a PSU in that place. Yours has a different chipset as well. And lucky you! You got 2 matching and OEM processors. Mine have swapped for 2 others that don't even hold on the shroud. (by yours truly of course). Tip: To use dual processors a Windows NT is needed(NT4, 2K or XP) as Windows 9x does not support multiple processors. Or use a Linux ;). Someone also mentioned the Matrox card. Those have very excellent VGA signal quality.

Did you try using the knoppix boot option to set a custom resolution at boot? This is something I had to do a lot back in knoppix 3 and 4 days. I cant find the wording in my head right now but it may help if its still supported in knoppix 9.

I think system number 3 case looks quite cool when the besel is in the correct position and it should clean up well u should probably be able to find a bay cover that could fit there + you have that nice sleep button

Cable management is easier said than done in systems that use those IDE ribbon cables.

Another fine Video Sir, System 1 at: 1:20 It’s a reasonable Case and having 4 x Bays for Optical Drives etc is always a bonus, I’ve had or have 1 or 2 Cases where you have to pop the front bezel off in order to remove the side panels, It looks like the Rear Fan would’ve been completely useless in that Case with the inclusion of the Air ducting which was built into the side panel, Did you check to make sure that the Jumper was not set to “Clear CMOS”, It’s just a thought & not sure if that was the issue? I couldn’t see them very clearly but the Capacitors near the CPU looked fine to me but I could be wrong of course, The only reason I mention it is because I’ve never had a problem with ASUS Motherboards with leaky Caps, System 2 at: 16:57, That Dell looks a little bit like my Intel Server Computer with Dual Slot 1 Processors although the bottom half of my Intel has a Door and behind it there’s provision for 6 x Hot-Swap SCSI Hard Drives & I think I have 3 in mine, It needs some TLC actually as the last time I attempted to power it up it refused to Boot, I’ve got quite a few of those Dell Slot 1 CPUs with the chunky Heatsinks that are riveted to the CPU itself, I haven’t actually got or seen a Dual Processor Motherboard that uses Rimbus or RD-Ram Modules! The 2 x Motherboards that I have here both have 4 x RD-Ram Slots & I believe all Motherboards that use RD-Ram have 4 x Slots, I have a few of the Blanking/Spacer or Dummy Cards whatever you want to call them along with a few sticks of RD-Ram itself as well! System 3 at: 31:55, Not sure if you spotted it but the PSU installed in System 3 at: 34:04 is set to 230v, I did have an issue once in my early days with Computers when a PSU was set to 110v here in the UK and it made a spectacular bang along with some Fireworks, I’ve made sure that I have never had that issue happen again since, Not sure what would happen the other way round, Would it just not do anything being set to 230v when you plug in a Power Cable and only give it 110v and it’s not something I plan on trying anytime soon either, Some nice components in it but it’s just a shame about the Case, The Motherboard looks a bit like my Gigabyte 430 Dual Slot 1 Motherboard which has both SCSI & IDE interfaces on the Motherboard itself, It’s back in its box but I do plan on using it for one project or another at some point! Anthony - Birmingham/UK 🇬🇧

I just ordered a post diagnostic card, can't wait to find another PC in the trash 😀

I believe the reason Knoppix wouldn't boot on the last system is simply because version 9.1 is too new for it.

I've been testing many motherboards from e-waste last month and have encountered two dual Slot 1 boards: an Epox KP6-BS with two P3-450, and a Gigabyte GA-6BXD with two P3-700 on Slockets. Unfortunately both were heavily corroded and had too many bulging capacitors; fortunately their CPUs were fine.

Windows 2000 should be able to run on your third system, but NT 4.0 is probably more "age appropriate" ;-) But I mean, either way, the big question on systems that age is usually the inding of the right drivers to get things running. And I think the Dual-CPU system drivers are generally not the drivers that made it into the standard-repertoire of the later OS versions, giving how rare and expensive they tended to be.

Matrox Millennium G400 Max Dualhead 32mb SGRAM i had one of them back in 1999 payed £$190 for it wish i still had it ,,, loved playing Expendable.....on about the one in the dual p3,different type of video card you MAD that was just as good as a voodoo 3 and the g400 max is rare ebay $190 for 1

First case is an Enlight 7250 case.

I build an P3 dual cpu slot 1 back in the days, epox motherboard in an Aopen HQ08 case, it was a monster on that time

Interesting finds!👍👍 Have you obtained any Apple Mac computers yet?

HAVE you come a cross a agp and pcie graphics slots yet that are on the same board i have 1 mother board with that on its a asrock

@TheRetroRecall Can system number 1 have a stuck reset button and show the symptoms described in the video? Also it would be very interesting if you can install the CPUs from system number 1 into system number 3 and compare their performance with different RAM standard, RAMBUS vs SDRAM.

for the most part, it windows, for dual cpu you'll need an NT based system (nt4.0, win2000, XP Pro). Always wanted to play with those.

In system number one you have a very rare desirable socket 775 motherboard with AGP. I suspect once the capacitors are replaced it will work again. This board is perfect for retro gaming Windows 98SE with a stick of 256MB RAM.

It looks like a matrox card i had, a g400 dual head, the one in the dell.

God, ive been looking for that model of precision, but they are so hard to find in good condition!

System 3 should be rebuilt into a RGB case. Just for the fun of it. Maybe one of the cheaper Sharkoon ones, VG7, that still have a 5.25 inch drive bay. Or a Fractal Focus G. The hardware looks to be ATX, could work.

Don't make em like that any-more do they!

wow the p2b-d is a nice find, i own a p2b-ds which has an onboard scsi controler. i want to build a windows nt 4 server with it

Great Dell system. Don't think my dual slot pIII has dual psus.

I serviced a dual p2 workstation in 2002. But the owner installed Win98. What a waste, because the os just use one cpu. NT based os will use both cpu

The videocard is a Matrox G400

MB and cards in sys 3 in case 1 wood be sweet pc

How's the new camera ..

i have this p2b-d based pc as well . found it on the street 4 years ago , it came with 2 P2 cpu's . took them out and installed 1 P3 cpu 500mhz . i run windows 98 and xp on it for nostalgia but the thing is so damn slow , single digit transfer speed in MBPS of the disk . i also tried ssd drive with adapter , no luck . tried playing with bios (same as yours , 12-8-2000 date) , nothing . i have another P3 board , it has the same slow speed . dont know why it is , i had a P3 pc also 20 years ago and i remember it was much faster than these two . maybe hardware gets old too..

TWO dual slot 1 boards, one of which uses Rambus memory?! My dude - you struck gold there! Also, wouldn't two Pentium IIs make that last system a... Pentium 4. Eh? _Eh_ ? Ah, that wasn't funny; guess I'll just leave before it gets awkward.

Here I am with the first comment. Super early to your clip today TRR!

Try disconnectimg reset switch on first system.

there is a bios update for the last asus but its just a newer beta bios with no fix listed. But anyway update any pc. And show how you do it please.

👍👍😎😎😎😎😎😎

I have a question, I have an old emonster 600 with a pentium 3 in it with a slight problem. It posts but I can't get into the bios. The keyboard is not fully recognized. The system beeps when I press the print screen button, but when I hit f1 to get into the bios nothing happens like it's not registering the key. I have tested the keyboard so I know that is not the problem, it was previously in a data center so I'm not sure if it has some setting enabled. Does anyone have any ideas on what the problem is, ant help appreciated.

Sorry to be nitpicky but the first case you featured isn't an InWin case -- it's an Enlight EN-72500SZ. Love your work!

Linux will take advantage of dual cpus. Try installing Knoppix to a HDD as don't think you have tried that yet.

i have a few 2nd and 8th gen intel systems i keep as backups but they are not really worth anything as in resale 5th gen ryzen and 10th gen intel are VERY cheap new these vids hold alot of nostalgia... but who is buying this ? ??

PSU's "power good" signal will keep the motherboard in reset if the signal is not asserted.

I’m so jealous of the Pentium 4, dude if you want 5 Pentium 4 full systems for it I’ll trade you lol I have a bunch of dell e310 e510 e520 btx systems I’m kidding I got one massive Pentium 4 built up

Dual PII very rear

Wow I had a dual Celeron absolutely blistering booty biscuit box with a humongous 4MB RAM, 80GB HD…. I was poopin in high cotton, for abut six months, till it was outdated and almost obsolete. Amazing how fast tech changed and speeds where doubling about twice a year in those days.

17 Minutes ago🎉

45:32.. BSD & LINUX

23:50 The AGP card is a Matrox G400 Max - a card I've been looking for. Actually that entire 2nd system would be a golden find for me! Slot 1 is my favorite retro platform, and a Dual Slot 1 server with AGP... awesome!!! Can you turn it into a Windows 2000 retro gaming system?

I only restored the DELL and HP models, Packard Bell. What you have, people build at home themselves, why restore that, they did a bad job in 2000 making them ! Why restore that ? If you need help, let me know. Sony invented the floppy 3.5 drives, NEC produced them too, some did Sony branding on it.

Hello. Brings back memories. i have many pc parts from 1995 & forward. While planning on moving I'd like to send you all my old pc parts. How can I do this? Does RU-vid show you my email address? Thank you. Glenn.

That late Pentium 4 would make a great XP gaming machine, pretty sad it's not booting. Great components on the ugly PC though!

For me the first case is an Enlight not an InWin, but maybe they are the same company, I don't know.

It's always Dell 420 somewhere.

System 2 and 3 are really something special. You can hardly find it like this anymore and if you do, it is often very overpriced. Just getting a board with Rambus memory has become difficult. You were really lucky there. I once had a server with 8 Xeon slot CPUs, but the device weighed 60 kg and was loud as a turbine and therefore not suitable for everyday use. At the moment I still have a dual slot Pentium 3 system with 2x 700 MHz and GeForce FX 5900, with which I am currently playing Half Life. You can be really lucky to find something like that. But it has to be said that special games of the era hardly benefit from the dual processors, as these were mostly still developed for single-core processors and Windows 9x. There were only a few like Quake 3.

Too bad the Pentium 4 board does not accept Cedar Mill CPUs

ive been looking for a dual slot pc let me know if you want to sell it

Heh,on those dual slot 1 computers you basically have dual core :) Also when the processor is cold to the touch it usually means dead vrm,you could try replacing the caps but i think the chances are low. I had an ECS board that had the same issue,all caps were fine but the cpu wouldn't get any power

That should be an ASUS P2B-DS? great board! I'd put that pair of 833s on it if it will work with them and run windows 2000 on it. SB16 is a total bonus. NT4 should work fine on it too.

Like your vids and legacy systems are kewl but explaining and showing each little item and every component on the system is a tad bit tedious. Been mucking about with computers since 1989 and it's kind of funny to think that a vast majority of your audience has no idea what 'autoexec.bat' or 'config.sys' files are nor have they ever seen one.