Later today I'm getting one of these beasts from a fellow techy down the road from me. It's a dual processor capable jobbie, currently sporting a single PIII 550Mhz, 256MB PC 100 SDRAM and a ~4GB SCSI drive. I've got plenty of other drives I can install, and I'm pushing the RAM to 448MB as soon as it's in my hot little hands.
However, I have never owned, or really even used, a dual processor machine. The guy I'm buying it from is including another PIII 550 processor, but says he doesn't have a Voltage Regulator Module (VRM) for it. I know what a VRM does, but pardon my ignorance, would a single processor PIII 550 machine have a VRM? I have a PIII 550 machine with a cracked board in the garage, and I was wondering if that would have what I'm looking for? I've never run into a VRM before, and I haven't a clue about them (except for my small amount of Googling on the subject).
Is there anyone out there that's got a lil' more knowledge than myself and would be willing to enlighten me?
Thanks,
The Czar
generally speaking, multi cpu PC systems have one VRM per processor. They are commonly available.
Well, desktop or small form-factor multi-CPU systems usually just have an adequately-sized voltage regulator built onto the motherboard. But for servers, well:
http://search.ebay.com/VRM-HP
Pentium II/III and Pentium IV Xeon modules are different, so get the right thing. (Ideally get one labeled as compatable with your specific machines, as I believe there are also vendor-proprietary versions.)
--Peace
On all the mutliprocessor machines i have and have seen, VRMs were only required for the older pentium pro models. I have a couple of newer duallys and they don't make use of the VRM modules. (newer=pentium 2 class and newer). I have 2 tyan thunder 100 motherboards with duallys on them and one Micro netserver 3100 (or something like that) that had a single cpu on it but I replaced the single 400 with 2 penitum 3 550s after I updated the bios. Neither of them appear to have external plug in VRMs
When I put the extra 550 into the 2nd processer slot on the netserver, i did have to remove some sort of a dummy cpu board that was in place of the cpu in the cpu slot.
Look on the motherboard, does it have what looks like a large empty jumper pack with hooks near the cpu? It might be like 3 rows of 12 pins or something like that.
We have a bunch of these netservers and none of them have external VRM slots.
Just to note that VRM modules arn't extinct... all the 2U Dell PowerEdge servers I've seen (2450 -> 2850, spanning the range from 800Mhz PIII up to 3.4Ghz+ PIV+64bit Xeon) use them. If the former owner of the machine apologized for not including a VRM then it's a fair bet the box, well, uses them.
Simple answer, of course, is to download the service manual for your particular machine.
--Peace
It turns out that I do need an additional VRM to add another processor to my Kayak. I've put a bid in on eBay for one *crosses fingers*.
In the mean time, the Kayak is now sporting a Pentium III 550Mhz processor, 448MB RAM (I've gotta track down another stick 128MB stick of PC 100/133), and 70+ GB of hard drive space. It's currently running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise, and in addition to serving music across my network, it's acting as my personal jukebox with a Sanyo 10 CD changer (rescued from a dumpster) hooked up to the soundcard in the back.
Thanks to everyone who responded.
Cheers,
The Czar