The Slot A Paradox: Why It's Overlooked? 

Slot-A is not overlooked at all. It's just absurdly rare and usually obscenely overpriced for its performance level so it's just not an option for a practical build.

Funny thing was that Slot A was mechanically compatible with Slot 1, but of course these two are otherwise incompatible with each other. Connectors for Slot A are rotated 180 degrees to deter accidental insertion of a Slot 1 processor card, but the upshot for using the same slot connector was that motherboard makers are able to use the same part for both Slot 1 and Slot A boards, therefore saving on manufacturing costs.

My first build for going to LAN parties was a 1GHz slot A with 1 GB RAM and a GeForce 4 TI 4600, good times with that PC! I had that ASUS K7M I worked at Best Buy and got a super deal on an open box HP, all I did was order a custom BIOS chip off eBay, loved that it still had an ISA slot so I was able to keep rocking the AWE64 Gold until the OG Audigy Platinum came out.

I think Slot A is a greatly underappreciated cpu and I've enjoyed several builds using them. My favorite of these, using a Shuttle Spacewalker AI61 and a 3DFX Voodoo 3, really is a lovely experience and every bit as good as any of my less attractive Slot 1 builds. Very happy to see you give this CPU some love. I will say that the most powerful Slot A cpus are very hard to come by, with usually only the 850 and lower cpus commonly seen. I've never seen any of the 1.0ghz models in person, and am limited to just a 900. Great video sir!

My dad bought in 1999 a PC equiped with such a A slot Athlon 550Mhz, 320MB RAM and a 16MB VRAM NVIDIA Riva TNT 2. Such a good time.

I love the Slot A platform - my first upgrade from the K6-2 350@380Mhz was to a Slot A Athlon 850Mhz - and it was an absolute beast... my PC was great, I bought a very cheap generic motherboard on the KX133 chipset, and replaced it later with Asus K7V motherboard (the best for Slot A Athlon back in the time) and it served me very well untill I was able to save up money for an Athlon XP 1600+. It was a great platform - very fast and easy to work with.

I haven't watched the video in full yet but I already have the answer. These were so rare back when they were new that finding survival examples of the hardware is difficult. The Slot A platform was very much short lived before moving to the very much more inexpensive Socket A platform that we all know and love. Sadly for those of us that missed out Slot A also missed out on overclocking via the golden finger connector boards. To those not in the know about this, the Slot A CPU's had a edge connector on the CPU that some clever people figured out could alter the CPU perimeters. The boards looked like a plug in thing with DIP switches. Very cool stuff. Back in the day at my very first LAN party in early 1999 we had a member there who had a Athlon 600, overclocked that and installed my Riva TNT2 16MB, gave it a little overclock to produce some of the most insane 3DMark 99 results we'd ever seen. Great times!

One thing about that era, ASUS was so terrified that Intel would prevent them from making a buck on AMD, the first K7M boards were shipped with boxes not labeled ASUS and there were no silk screen markings on the motherboard to identify them as coming from ASUS. I think it took them about 6 months to finally put their names on them.

Thanks for reviewing Slot A. This CPU is rare on RU-vid, so it would be great to see a series of videos on this subject.

IronGate (750) chipset had bugs in the early version, so was often locked down to 1x AGP - it could be overridden in some drivers - the later version which also had super bypass mode for faster RAM performance was ok, but would still get forced to 1x, you did get more ISA slots, typically, but I ended up regretting the lack of upgrade on my GA-7IXE4 (Socket A). I regard slot A as merely a bridge before Socket A - Intel Slot 1 lived on through Pentium 2, and then bridge in Pentium 3, while the same class of Athlon replaced Slot A in Socket A - and there were never slotkets for it!

My first DIY PC was a Slot A Athlon 600Mhz CPU on an FIC mobo with a Matrox Millennium G400 32MB GPU. After putting this together I was hooked and have not purchased a prebuilt PC for myself ever since other than a couple laptops. Love to see your thoughts on these pieces of PC history.

As some who just got a Jabil Kadoka with a 650, this video is fantastic to provide some perspective. I'm so glad it's running, and I'll do absolutely everything in my power to keep it running. It's a real beast. I was a teenager in '00 that always had my head buried in PC Magazine and PC World. I probably saw an ad for the very computer I now have.

I actually had to search A LOT for my Slot A 800 Mhz Athlon and Motherboard. I have 6 retro PCs, I like the Slot A the most. The AMD chipset was a little messy back then. If you wanted the best performance you needed to get a motherboard with a chipset revision that had "super bypass" which greatly improved CPU to RAM communication. Also, the AMD chipset was AGP 2x (though nvidia drivers would fall back to AGP 1x when detecting the AMD chipset, as we can see in the video; not sure if a technical issue or nvidia just trolling amd) while intel had AGP 4x options for P3.

I have several Slot 1 Intel setups (P2&P3) and no Slot A. This video intrigued me! I'd love to try one. Thanks for sharing👍

I have a Gateway Select Tower slot A 800 mhz Great Machine.Runs Windows 98se nice to see you using the platform

Nice work Phil, good to see slot A getting some love, i had the Athlon 850 at the time, was rock solid.

I remember jumping on the slot A when it came out. Mine was an Athlon 500, which was the fastest they sold at the time. I don’t remember what mobo I bought for it, though…probably a Gigabyte or Abit since those were my preferred brands at that time.

I also was somewhat checked out for the Slot A period, though for different reasons. The place I lived was extremely rural, and for a while from about 1998 to 2005 online games were beginning to require a broadband connection, so there wasn't much compelling reason to upgrade. Everything I still played was fine on my old Pentium 200 and VooDoo 2. So many years on, I think you have the heart of the matter right - there's just so much more in the Slot 1 platform, and so much more of it, that it's hard to pass up. I do see a fair number of Athlon and Duron systems, though, so maybe one day I'll have one to tinker with!

I remember my first ever computer was a cyrix mII 233mhz rig in a packard bell. My second was a hand me down from my uncle and it was a slot A 750 mhz 512mb ram and geforce mx 440 64mb. Great little machine I had it until 2003 when it got replaced with the first computer I built myself which was an athlon xp rig.

one of my pc builds was a slot a build 750mhz athlon and i still have it today had to repair the motherboard but once the new caps were put on runs like a dream

I remember back in 2000 when a friend of mine had an Athlon based system (don´t remember the specs) but it was a Slot A because he opened the case to show me, and remember it was HOT!. Some years later, I´ve worked for many years building and doing support and never again I saw a Slot A platform (but I had plenty Socket A systems). Great times.

They were not popular in Poland either due to the fact that they were available in our country for quite a short time. I worked in a computer store where we assembled computers from January 2001 and even then Socket A was the king. I saw Slot A literally 2 times. One of which was my own :)

I loved my slot A 600mHz system. I ran it as my email server for years.

My first complete system build was a slot A Athlon system with a Guilletmot Geforce 256. I bought the Athlon from a long defunct specialty overclocking company. The put a nice three fan heatsink/fan combo on it. They setup and tested an overclocked a 500mhz Athlon at 750mhz. It lived out it's entire service life running happily at 750mhz. I replaced it a few years later with I think a Thunderbird chip.

Thanks for covering this topic, Phil.

My dad bought a new pc back in 2000. I still remember playing games on it. It was an 800MHz Athlon on an AOpen AK72 motherboard, 128MB ram and an Elsa NVidia Riva TNT2 32MB. It was a world of difference with the Pentium 1 120Mhz we had been using before. Still regret getting rid of it all those years ago.

Slot A, when it came out, it was like unobtanium over here back in the day. Myself, and almost everyone I know went from Socket 7 to Socket A. I knew of one guy who had a Slot A board but his dad was from the UK I think?

The first PC I ever built was a Slot A Athlon 650 with an Epox board. Great CPU!

Ah, those were the days. I remember transitioning from a troublesome Pentium 200 to a smoother Pentium 2 400MHz, and later to a Pentium 3 600MHz with a rather subpar motherboard. After making the wise decision to switch both the motherboard and processor to a more reliable combination of a Pentium 3 550MHz and an Intel motherboard, paired with a Diamond Viper V770 Ultra (TNT 2 Ultra), I found true bliss. This upgrade allowed me to run contemporary games at their maximum settings for the first time, all on the fantastic Slot 1 platform. It was a remarkable experience. Your video brought back a flood of memories, and I appreciate the trip down memory lane. Interestingly, up until this point, I wasn't familiar with the Slot A platform. Thanks for shedding light on that, and it's fascinating to learn more about the diverse paths our computing experiences took during that era!

I had a Slot A 900 that I overclocked with chiller back in the XtremeSystems days. Many Slot 1 and Slot 2 as well.

I can't even find them! I barely remember seeing them in the wild back in the day too.

Slot A 800 Athlon + K7M + Voodoo3 user, checking in! It's a great platform though I can concur the Slot 1 probably has the better motherboard selection. I'm lucky enough to have my grandpa's original motherboard, though i've upgraded from his 500 mhz CPU. Looks like it was a good buy back in the day.

Oh I had one Athlon like these, very steady CPU. I think I used with a Mx400 AGP, loved that machine! Thanks for the memories (DIMM, not DDR for sure)

I've got an old slot 1 system I need to get running, thanks for the motivation.

Around 1998 my dad built me an AMD k6-2 at 333mhz, with Maxi Sound Muse sound card and an ELSA Gladiac 311. 1999 Im at college and probably playing Half-Life/Opposing Force, AvP, Jedi Knight, System Shock 2 during my free time that I bought with christmas money (if Im not modding or making map with worldcraft 😊). 1999 is a great year for pc gaming ! Never had a Slot A machine, it's quite interresting, especially the flawless install on win98 you got !

Back in 2000 I had to tie that Slot-A bastard to the case frame using fishing line, as the mobo slot was loose, it was losing contact with the processor. Good times! :)

I've had good luck finding OEM Jabil Kadoka Slot A boards found in many Gateway Select, IBM Aptiva, and Acer S systems. It has all-solid caps. There always seems to be one or two available on eBay.

I still have exactly the same board now. Sometimes I take it out and use it now. The Biostar M7MKA board has a layout very similar to the AMD Fester reference board. It was very nice to be a user of the same board..

Great platform. Around 2006-2008, I had 3 of these Athlon 700 in my classroom for teaching basic user tasks and office lessons. The other computers were different Pentium 4 configurations, some Socket 423, a few 478, but FSB400, and the only thing that seemed slow in the Athlons was the network, (also in the P4.): ADSL times, 256k/512K bandwidth, shared in a 100Mbs network. When I quit from teaching, I sold or gave away all the computers, except for the best working condition Soltek motherboard foir the Athlon 700 CPU, which I still have those today.

I had a slot a athlon 500. It ran windows 2000/98 dual boot. The gpu was voodoo 3 3500 with video input connected to ps1 for final fantasy. I mostly played counterstrike on it. I upgraded to athlon 800 and geforce ddr. Then went to socket a, maybe 6 months later. Upgrading was fast and furious back then. There was a goldfinger mod for the slot athlon where dip switches could overclock it but I didnt go for it.

The Slot A Athlons were only around for a year. I remember the going advice for much of that time was to wait for soon-approaching Socket A and Thunderbird to get full speed cache as opposed to the slower cache of the Slot A Athlons. I followed that advice and I never knew anyone who actually owned a Slot A Athlon. Speed was increasing so quickly in that time period that if you could squeeze 6 more months out of your existing rig, you could get way more speed for your buck just waiting that short amount of time.

I actually didn't realize AMD had a slot type CPU. Very interesting.

I LOVE my 900MHz Slot A Athlon + AMD 751 + Voodoo3 3000 + Win98 machine! It is so much fun. Glad to see some coverage of that platform.

The sad thing is, at least if you look on prices in Germany/Austria on Ebay (even over whole Europe) Boards are €€€ these days. Would be eager to try one again. I do still have some socket 462 boards with Athlon XP´s though.

Ah those were my heyday in terms of building PCs. I was a huge fan of AMD so I built several Slot-A systems. I recall it was incredibly difficult to make s stable/reliable system though. I worked in s PC manufacturer so I knew some AMD sales engineers; they provided me with some tips and sometimes patches, too, but I could never really overcome the flawed chipsets (AMD/VIA/SIS).

I still remember printing my music sheet for composition class with a dot matrix printer.

Great video, also thanks for addressing the PSU 5V issue.

My First Athlon was a Shuttle Board with 512MB DDR266 and a Athlon XP 2000+

Slot A was a good system Phil running Athlon 700 mhz on Octeck motherboards and of course Ati graphics.Had 20 machines running here in my İnternet Cafe in Ankara from 2000 to 2002.Never had any problems with them.Still have a 750 mhz Athlon and a Octeck mother board from Amd still brand new in the box.One day I might build a system again mate.Cheers from Turkey.

Nice throwback. I didnt join the amd bandwagon until socket462. You jogged my memory on this one.

The first PC i built totally from scratch by myself (dad had assisted previously) was Slot A, Asus K7M 700MHz K7 Gefore256. Still runs (mostly) and was super powered at the time. Great platform if you could get all the pieces working together.

I had a Slot 1 motherboard in my prebuilt system and my friend had a Slot A prebuilt. Both machines were solid and had no issues running in terms of stability and he was able to get the 1GHz processor once that came out. A few years later I would build a Socket A system that would start off with the Duron 1.3GHz and moved onto an Athlon XP and stayed there for several years well into the Socket 939 era. In those days AMD's own chipsets were considered better than VIA but VIA came with more goodies.

Back in the day the Irongate chipsets had many issues with Geforce cards. Driver lockups and freeze of the OS I had one K7M back in the day, coupled with an Geforce 2 MX. It worked but it wasnt stable. Fun fact, these boards also had problems with Voodoo 2 boards. I couldn't get my Diamond Monster 3D II working. After a long search I found a working driver from Guillmote. Right now I have a working Slot A set-up, with a Thunderbird Slot A. These CPU'S are awesome. 256 kb cache on full speed instead of the 512 kb of cache on 1/2 the CPU or even 1/3 or 1/4 of the CPU speed with Athlon 800 or higher. I have mutiple Slot A CPU'S for nostalgia reasons.

Was very rare we even seen a Slot A board / Systems back in the day, when Socket A/462 came around though, way different story. Fun systems IF you can find the parts for a decent price.

thanks for this video Phil. Very interesting! I have the same motherboard and the K7 600 mhz on the 180 nm process. It is combined with a voodoo 3 2000. What I really like was the thing about the power supply. I really like to update my power supply to a more modern one. As your system consumes 60 watt I think a power supply of 15A on the 5V rail will do just fine. I think the system is a real sweet spot for playing retro games. In my case, the voodoo3 might be a bit of a bottle neck, but all in all, a very beautifull system.

Nice vid! I'm sure I read somewhere that slot A was pretty much the shortest lived platform ever and that besides intel causing trouble and maybe pushing AMD to switch package, once socket A came the new cpus were also much cheaper to produce so AMD were in a hurry to move people along to sockets, which may have made it so. Slot A boards seem quite pricey and rare from what I've seen. I had a pentium II back then and then missed slot A and went to socket A next. I've always loved the cartridge format though. Was very nice from a user perspective, easy to handle and very cool and cyber punk looking. I love my socket A, one of my favourite retro setups.

1999? Boy howdy what a year. Found some new friends in high school who got me into Half-Life and the broader world of pc hardware. Up until that point I had mostly been interested in the software side of things. What a time to be alive!

I have a Pluto 650 on a Asus k7m with the P.O.S. Irongate chipset, superfast but goes flat on its face 95% of the time when you install the chipset driver and put agp on 2x. Best paired with a Voodoo 3.

Nice video Phil, the AMD Slot A is by far my favourite CPU. 👍

Phil in 1999 I was in Melbourne Australia doing a religious experience. I went home at the end of 2000 to the USA. In 2003 I started my journey of building computers. I built 2 AMD Athlon XP systems. My first computer was a AMD K6-2 that I got at a salvage yard at a Thrift store. It smelt like cat pee. So, I cleaned it up. I had taken classes for pc hardware trade school in 2002. A lot of my knowledge of computers came from working at a Universities Surplus store. It was fun seeing all the different systems. Most of them are on your channel. Sadly, I bought a slot one computer but gave it to the thrift store. Just some of the computers I wished I had saved.

As I got really deep into computers around 1999+, I still remember Slot A very much as it was the first time AMD trumped Intel to my knowledge at that time. At least in the hardware retails store where I worked part-time in that time frame, it was very popular.

Personaly I use Asus K7V mainboard Slot A Athlon 700 Voodoo 3500 agp Aureal vortex 2 Win98 Inwin A500 PC case As main 90s gaming rig Love the system. Glad you have covered slot A, looking forward to see more of it on your Channel. This is probably better than 440bx but pros and cons need to be compared on both

I remember buying an AMD K2 350Mhz as my second computer build, and it crashed constantly. My next and First real computer was a Pentium 3 Slot 1 600Mhz. though windows crashed all the time, it was no longer random and for no reason. I have had a very hard time buying any AMD processors since. I did buy an AMD economy desktop board with 6 cores about 5 years back, but ended up staying with intel for my servers and have not regretted it. Thanks for the video--we have come a long way !

Interesting story Phil. I was more or less starting to check out from computers around 2000, and for similar reasons. What kicked my interest back into gear was when I randomly bought a PC magazine to read about the new 1GHz intel dominating Athlon 1000, Slot A.

I remember slot A. I looked at it and thought it wouldn't last. Pin density and io connections were my primary concern. I never purchased one myself.

I haven't checked in for a long time. It's nice to finally put a face to the voice.

I had some amd's back in the day. First new built desktop was k5-100, then i went to 566 celeron and later back to 800 duron. After that it was intell all the way. I have always had some retro stuff as a hobby but mainly i did some old unix workstations, sun, ibm, hp, sgi and then i got around to play with amigas again, still playing but now the hobby has evolved to old consoles too and other stuff. I also got inspired with different eras so had to get 286, 386 etc and noticed i got some old hardware in the storage so i wanted to also build some more powerfull stuff that i couldnt get back in the day. Core2duo+sli nvidia vs athlon 64x2+radeon crossfire, then it went to P3-550 vs Athlon socket a 550. Also went on buildin a all blue sempron build. Although couldnt find everything blue eg psu but its all blue/white like winter. Audio card was hard to find, a soundblaster from china but its blue :)

I was very young (not even a teen yet) when the Athlon came out, but I still remember it vividly. Loved reading my dad's computer magazines and seeing all the anticipation swirling around the K7 architecture. AMD had a bad reputation at that point for over-promising and under-delivering, so it really sent shockwaves when Athlon arrived on schedule and somehow lived up to the hype. I've read that Slot A Athlon was a big commercial success for AMD, but most AMD fans like myself, being budget builders, could not afford the premium price. That might be another reason why it has less nostalgia and popularity among retro enthusiasts.

These processors were great overclockers. I had my Athlon 750MHz running at just under 1GHz with almost no effort!

I still have my Asus K7M with my original 700Mhz Athlon I bought in May of 2000. Back then I used it with a GeForce 256 SE and 128MB Ram, now it has a GeForce 256 DDR and 512MB.

My Slot-A system was burned by a defective power supply. Even though it wasn't that obsolete, the AthlonXP having come out not too long before, it was almost impossible to find a Slot-A board for sale at that point. I finally found one, but it was a super off-brand one, and the capacitors were garbage, the magic smoke ended up escaping from them. I ended up going to a Celeron on the Pentium 4 base after that, because I wanted a heat spreader and Athlon XP lacked that. I had both a Athlon 500 and Athlon 1000 chip at various points.

In 1999 is was 15 and I worked for a Computershop after school. After a few months I buyed and build my dream PC with an Asus K7M, an Athlon 800 with Pluto Core, and a Voodoo 3 3500. I loved it! And I still own it, but today I swapped out the CPU to a 1ghz Orion ❤️

My roommate had a Slot A AMD Athlon which he had heavily overclocked. That thing was a beast. Later he got his hands on a Barton core AMD Athlon and a very nice MSI motherboard, proceeded to mod the motherboard and got a modded BIOS to push that chip to an insane overclock. He did not upgrade his PC again till well into the release of the Socket 939 AMD Athlon 64.

Fun Fact : 3 years ago, i tried to see could an Athlon 600mhz play RU-vid on Windows XP SP3, because it was an offline computer until then. I thought that was impossible, considering that it is a processor from 1999. For sure, I couldn't believe that that old processor could play a video on RU-vid in 144p resolution. AMD Athlon Slot A and Diamond Viper v770, paried with Shuttle AI86 motherboard are an indestructible combination that has been running smoothly as a my personal retro computer for over 14 years. The fact that it run GTA Vice City at respectable average of 20-ish FPS, even though it was an underpowered machine says it all.

I found a "naked" Thunderbird 700 in some e-waste a while back, got me a GoldFinger and yeeeeeehaaaaw! That thing still posts with 1 Ghz but the last stable clocks are 900mhz in Win98. This is the only one i overclock because i dont wanna destroy the processor covers, and besides that its not even necessary to overclock since i own 900mhz Thunderbird and the classic 1Ghz, but for experiencing the things that i missed doing back then this 700mhz Thunderbird can take some beating.

Later revisions of the AMD 750 chipset had a feature called "super bypass" that improved performance quite a bit. Might want to check if that feature is available in the BIOS for your board. Also the AMD 750 was limited to AGP 2x speeds. VIA chipsets like the KX133 (for Slot A) supported AGP 4x.

My first home built PC was an Athlon 850, Slot A and clocked to 1050 with a golden finger device. I was disappointed when they switched to Socket A for the Thunderbird

The Slot systems came to market after I Bought my first Pentium. In Germany I haven't seen the AMD A-Slot system in shops at this time. The Intel Slot system was available. For all the pre build PC systems there was never a system with AMD ... Thanks for shedding some lite on this story

There were a LOT of Really Fun Old Games in the 90's- early 2000's ... I wish I could find some again... I bet they would play Great on these newer PC's (sometimes)

Happy to have a Slot A 500 and 750 systems

I run an Orion 900MHz on a FIC SD-11 motherboard and honestly it's performance just isn't what it's clock would suggest. I also have nothing but trouble with Geforce AGP cards and so use a Voodoo 3, which works for me, but the higher clocked slot As have a lot of drawbacks in addition to being somewhat rare. The right motherboard is definitely important.

Slot A was a beast. I had a slot A 800 MHz. You have to remember to install the Via chipset drivers otherwise you'll be disappointed. Or you'll be surprised if you used your computer without the Via chipset drivers for a while thinking it was working normal and then you install the drivers and boom, unprecedented performance uplift. The heatsink is a very bad design. You need to apply thermal paste to the cache chips also IIRC. So take off the housing, apple thermal paste and then apply thermal paste a lot in between housing the and the heatsink. Then it becomes really cool. Temps go way down. My friend one day brought me a 2 pin external temp sensor. Motherboard had a connector for it. I was able to watch the temps go down using the temp sensor after modifying the CPU with new thermal paste.

I came too late into the game to enjoy Slot A - My first system was the later Socket A/462 with the Athlon XP. I only once got a Slot A board dumped in my lap ever - it was an impossible repair for me at the time. Badly leaked caps in a time before I got he grasp on soldering and electronics. Slot A was very rare in my area back when I started out with PCs - Intel still was king 🙂

I remember those days, and indeed Slot A was not all that common, all while Socket A that followed was huge (had two myself back then).

My MSI K7Pro with AMD ATHLON 700 Slot A always runs perfectly and my ASUS K7V-T to

I owned one of these CPUs when they very first came out. It was a 650mhz model but I bought it pre-overclocked, which on these chips was performed by physically resoldering resistors on the slot a pcb. I don't recall the actual clock speed but I do know it was over 700mhz, at the time this was pretty much the best CPU performance available and I used the machine happily for many years - it was always a great gaming pc!

I love my slot A, had a 500mhz and upgraded to a 700mhz with a Ninja Freespeed pro OC card :) best CPU I still have in terms of overall fun.

This brings back memories. At that time I bought a decent gaming machine: Athlon 500 with 128MB RAM on an ASUS K7M (in one of those oem packages), GeForce 256 DDR and a (I think) 6.5GB hard drive. The old days of lan parties with friends.

I would say the board would be holding the system back due to the AGP as for slot ones it was rare to see back then, plus slot was short lived compared to sockets, back to the 440bx there was another chipset based on it that was newer and offered a wide clock range i just forget the name of it but i will have a look as i still have the board, but yes running at same clock as 440bx it still killed it due to the new AGP even with a basic APG card. I finally found the chipset that replaced the 440BX as this chipset was really hard to replace due to stability and speed, The board that i jumped to after my shortly lived slot 1 funtime was the Asus CUSL2 with the 815E chipset.

I have very fond memories of Slot A. We had a 350 MHz Pentium II machine in 1998, but it stopped working a year later, so we got rid of it and went shopping. The K7 CPUs had just been released to great reviews, and I was happy to get one - an OG 500 MHz "Argon" model, with an AMD750 "Irongate" chipset on a board by FIC (if I remember correctly). I gotta say, that thing was *fast*! Going from 350 to 500 MHz, I expected a ~50% increase, but it was way more than that, especially in tasks that made use of the FPU. (That was also a first for AMD: the FPUs were the K6 family's weak spot, but with K7, that changed completely.) It was rock-solid too; I never had any compatibility or stability issues with it. I used that system as a daily driver until 2005.

For several months there was someone in my local area listing a 'never used in box' Athalon system with a CRT monitor on FB marketplace. Asking price $120. I just looked and the listing is gone so they may have finally sold it. Anyway...seemed like a reasonable asking price and I was surprised it took so long to sell (I thought about it myself, but my collection is big enough already).

My first self-built PC was a Slot A AMD Athlon 600 system, back in 2000. I regret doing away with that thing, it probably would've made for a good retro PC nowadays. It was a great upgrade over the Pentium II we had before, and it worked very well for pretty much any Windows 98 or DOS game.

Pretty sure I had either this exact motherboard or a very similar revision (I think I remember it having 4 ram slots but, goodness, this was like 25 years ago). It was definitely a 700mhz slot A as shown here running a TNT 2 and later an original Geforce 256 DDR. The processor and really the whole platform was very solid in my use. I do recall having a lot more problem with the nforce board I got for my Palamino processor a few years later that.

My first build was a AMD K6-2 333. Was a great little system. I later that year upgraded to a Athlon 750-mHz slot A Thunderbird CPU and a FIC SD11 mobo. That board had almost nothing on it and was about the most basic board you could get, but it was stable. Paired with a trident TVGA AGP card and a voodoo2 card.

Slot A is a development milestone for AMD and performance wise and history wise it makes sense to have it. But the boards are very hard to get and it cost arm and leg. During approx. 4-5 years collecting all the HW "garbage" around I have got 1! One board and 2 cpu and 1 very nice 3rd party cooler. And this is all from slot A in my hands.

I really WANTED to build a 1GHz Slot A system, but you're right - the parts are unobtainium. I've come across more 3dfx cards at the recycler in the past three years than Slot A motherboards - and 3dfx cards are a super-rare find!

I built a few Slot A systems for people but unfortunately that was also during the era of bad capacitor manufacturing. Within 3 years, all of the Slot A systems I had built had leaking caps and power regulation issues. :( I think I was big into Elitegroup motherboards back then…

I have only 1 AMD slot cpu, you are correct, Intel strong armed motherboard mfg's. During this time period, I was into the 440BX systems with Intel cpu's, still have several in my stash including 1 with a on board ATI gpu. As always, great, well presented video.

Nice video. Thanx. 🙂 The Slot A was created for the same reason as Slot 1 & 2, namely the issue of not being able to place (sufficient) cache on the CPU die, making them stop gaps introduced in desperation due to the need of introducing a CPU platform / socket that is proprietary enough (again) to not just be copied or contested by cheaper CPU / Chipset solutions. And yes, this started with Socket 3, somewhat escalate with Socket 5 and had its peak with the Socket 7, when Intel alternatives both outpriced and outperformed their own offerings - sometimes at the same time. Before the introduction of the CPU slots, CPUs of different manufactures shared the same socket and (mostly) chipsets, which meant that Intel quickly ran out of arguments as to why and in what way an Intel CPU was better. It didn't help either, or not Intel at least, that updating / switching to a different CPU was very easy because of this. This essentially is what the "Intel Inside" jingle was all about - associating PC with Intel with Power. To say Intel was ... displeased ... when the socket 7 turned "Super Socket 7" seemingly over night, still offering competitive performance despite essentially using "old tech", would be an understatement. And when AMD introduced Slot A on top of things, daring and succeeding to directly compete, Intel was beyond furious - and quite scared. So they doubled down creating even more advanced versions, hopefully a CPU with cache on die, while delaying AMD as much as possible by suppressing the HSPs. And it worked to some extend, which is one of the reasons why Intel got to two slot variants and AMD only one which didn't have many sales or a long shelve live. Because of this, AMDs "Slot A" with its legendary "Irongate" (AMD-750) chipset, is rather rare and quite expensive to buy used today. When the cache issue finally got solved, Intel started offering the "Socket 370" while AMD introduced the "Socket A" - both essentially a relaunch of their Slot 2 respectively Slot A offerings, only as socket CPUs. Both had good performance and a very long shelve live, as well as support from increasingly decent alternative chipsets from VIA and SIS. For vintage computing the socket 370 is the better choice though, because you need less additional drivers, don't need the occasional AMD (timing) patch like for windows 98, and because native ISA support means finding a board with at least one ISA slot is a lot easier - never pick a PCI sound card for DOS sound if using an ISA card is an option. Oh and a small warning since "proper power supply" was mentioned: ISA (sound) cards sometimes need not just +5V, but also -5V to work properly, which is something excluded from modern ATX power supplies. If you run into this issue, find yourself an older power supply, a board which helps you out with an additional voltage controller, or buying one such controller (off ebay).

back in the day after my socket 7 motherboard died from the chernobyl virus (I could easily fix this now) I briefly went to SS7 with K62-500 then straight to Socket A with a KT7-RAID and Duron 650@850. I'm not sure how long Slot A was around but I bet it was nowhere as long as Slot 1. The cpu manufacturers obviously realised that these slot processors cost more to make than just a cpu itself so did what they do best which is to make the board manufacturers spend more money. A good example of this is Intel Socket 775 and AMD AM5 socket, put the pins on the motherboard.