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390E & 390X CPU upgrade questions...

Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 10:15 am
by richtoy
Hi

Second post so be gentle with me

I have a 333MHz PII 390E, a 400MHz PII 390X and a 450MHz PIII Dell Inspiron 7500.

Both of the IBMs have 256Mb PC133 SODIMM (2x128Mb) and new 40Gb Hard disks and have been running XP in this configuration for the past 2+ years.

The two IBMs belonged to my kids but they persuaded me to buy them new Acer 2GHz Core 2 Duos so I get left with 3 old laptops

After a bit of research I found this site and the WimBIOS site with lots of info about CPU upgrades so I splashed out and brought 2 brand new 600MHz PIII MMC-2s for £11.00 for the pair off ebay

My plan is to put the 450MHz PIII from the Dell into the 390E and the 2 new 600MHz PIIIs into the Dell and the 390X.

So now the questions: -

I have not found the Ctrl D Hex editor in either of the 390's BIOS's so do I assume that there is nothing to change in either of the 390's BIOS's because they don't have L2 cache or onboard memory?

Even after reading all of the threads, I am still confused about which CPU is supported "as is" by which motherboard. Many links point to the 600 threads but these motherboards don't seem quite the same as the 390X or 390E. Should what I am attempting i.e. a straight CPU swap just work?

I am looking out for a 850MHz PIII for the Dell because I think this will work "as is" so I may have a 600Mhz PIII for the 390E in the future. I presume I will have to make the hardware mod to get the FSB up to 100MHz to get this working in the 390E?

Thanks for your time....

Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 12:17 pm
by Sharedoc
I think most of the required information is available here
http://www.wimsbios.com/phpBB2/topic804 ... light=390x

You can also contact directly the authors to get futher info