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Forums - Gaming - The great vintage PC gaming thread!

KungKras on 26 March 2016
Bofferbrauer said:
KungKras said:

Another question. How do I remove RAM that looks like this? And what should I replace it with?

I've tried bending aside those metal thingies, but the RAM still feels a bit stuck and I don't want to break it. The metal also chipped away some of the silicon from the cirquid board :/

I would like to insert four 16MB sticks instead of these three 4MB sticks. When I search Ebay for 16MB RAM I find SIMM EDO RAM and one that was labeled FPM-RAM. Are those the kinds of RAM that goes in a 1996 computer?

To tell you which RAM is correct to use, that's a tricky question, as there where several standards coming out around that timeframe. Apart from EDO RAM (starting in 1995), there was FPM RAM (Fast Page Memory), which most PC where using at the time, and SDRAM, which started out in 1993 and slowly began getting wider acceptance around that time. If you can tell which Processor and Motherboard this 1996 computer uses (or originally used), it could be a bit easier to determine.

Thanks for replying :D

It uses a 133MHz pentium processor.

According to this page, it probably uses EDO-RAM which worries me now that you mention that EDO and FPM are different, because I just bought four of these



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Bofferbrauer on 26 March 2016
KungKras said:
Bofferbrauer said:

To tell you which RAM is correct to use, that's a tricky question, as there where several standards coming out around that timeframe. Apart from EDO RAM (starting in 1995), there was FPM RAM (Fast Page Memory), which most PC where using at the time, and SDRAM, which started out in 1993 and slowly began getting wider acceptance around that time. If you can tell which Processor and Motherboard this 1996 computer uses (or originally used), it could be a bit easier to determine.

Thanks for replying :D

It uses a 133MHz pentium processor.

According to this page, it probably uses EDO-RAM which worries me now that you mention that EDO and FPM are different, because I just bought four of these

EDO RAM is an evolution of FPM, similar to DDR and DDR2. It got called colloquially HPM for Hyper Page Mode due to this for a short while.

All Pentium Boards apparently can use FPM, and apart from the 430NX (well, and the 430LX, but that one couldn't handle the processor, either) all can handle EDO RAM too. I don't know if the physical connectors are any different. If they don't, then you shouldn't have any problem with the RAM you bought, and FPM is just slighly slower than EDO.

While we're at it, all Pentium boards can support at least 128MB of RAM. It would have made no sense to go any lower since all 486 Boards already could use 128MB RAM. My Am486 DX40 has 96MB of RAM - which admittedly is absolute overkill - and shipped with 16MB in 1993.



KungKras on 26 March 2016
Bofferbrauer said:
KungKras said:

Thanks for replying :D

It uses a 133MHz pentium processor.

According to this page, it probably uses EDO-RAM which worries me now that you mention that EDO and FPM are different, because I just bought four of these

EDO RAM is an evolution of FPM, similar to DDR and DDR2. It got called colloquially HPM for Hyper Page Mode due to this for a short while.

All Pentium Boards apparently can use FPM, and apart from the 430NX (well, and the 430LX, but that one couldn't handle the processor, either) all can handle EDO RAM too. I don't know if the physical connectors are any different. If they don't, then you shouldn't have any problem with the RAM you bought, and FPM is just slighly slower than EDO.

While we're at it, all Pentium boards can support at least 128MB of RAM. It would have made no sense to go any lower since all 486 Boards already could use 128MB RAM. My Am486 DX40 has 96MB of RAM - which admittedly is absolute overkill - and shipped with 16MB in 1993.

Awesome! Thanks a bunch for the info!
Even if FPM might be a bit slower, I hope having 64MB of them will do the trick for my computer :)

Now I'll just need to try and remove the old ones withhout everything breaking. Those tiny little metal things confuse me a bit.



I LOVE ICELAND!

Bofferbrauer on 26 March 2016
KungKras said:
Bofferbrauer said:

EDO RAM is an evolution of FPM, similar to DDR and DDR2. It got called colloquially HPM for Hyper Page Mode due to this for a short while.

All Pentium Boards apparently can use FPM, and apart from the 430NX (well, and the 430LX, but that one couldn't handle the processor, either) all can handle EDO RAM too. I don't know if the physical connectors are any different. If they don't, then you shouldn't have any problem with the RAM you bought, and FPM is just slighly slower than EDO.

While we're at it, all Pentium boards can support at least 128MB of RAM. It would have made no sense to go any lower since all 486 Boards already could use 128MB RAM. My Am486 DX40 has 96MB of RAM - which admittedly is absolute overkill - and shipped with 16MB in 1993.

Awesome! Thanks a bunch for the info!
Even if FPM might be a bit slower, I hope having 64MB of them will do the trick for my computer :)

Now I'll just need to try and remove the old ones withhout everything breaking. Those tiny little metal things confuse me a bit.

I wish I could help you on that, but I didn't upgrade my 486 myself back then (also uses FPM RAM), so I don't know what's the trick here.



KungKras on 26 March 2016
Bofferbrauer said:
KungKras said:

Awesome! Thanks a bunch for the info!
Even if FPM might be a bit slower, I hope having 64MB of them will do the trick for my computer :)

Now I'll just need to try and remove the old ones withhout everything breaking. Those tiny little metal things confuse me a bit.

I wish I could help you on that, but I didn't upgrade my 486 myself back then (also uses FPM RAM), so I don't know what's the trick here.

I'll post an update on how it went once the RAM arrives :)



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Pemalite on 27 March 2016

EDO Ram. Dear god.
Should try and find an Abit BP6 motherboard, pair it with a couple of Pentium 3's, 256mb of SD Ram and call it a day. :P

With the Ram I find "squeezing" the metal pin thing and the plastic part that holds the ram in works.




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KungKras on 06 April 2016

Now the windows 98 machine has 512 MB of RAM installed ^^

The final specs are:

Intel celeron 733 MHz processor.

512MB RAM.

Windows 98 SE.

30 GB IDE harddrive.

USB card with 3 USB ports.

Sond Blaster Live! 24-bit with support for surround sound.

And a Geforce 2 MX 200 graphics card. (This last part is the bottleneck since it's a budget card for its time. If I replaced this with a top of the line graphics card, this computer would have been a total beast for its time. Hell, it's allready kind of a beast)

Pretty good for something I found in a junk container with harddrive and RAM missing :D

It runs everything from its time perfectly except Warcraft 3 (although that game is a bit newer than the Gefore 2 MX card)

Tiberian Sun still plays amazingly.



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