Looking for multi-CPU motherboard

[William C]

I am looking for a motherboard that will hold 2 or 4, socket 478, P4-
1.5GHz CPUs. 5 PCs at my office were flooded by Katrina. They were a
total loss and I have ordered new systems. But looking at the systems, I
noticed that although the water came up half way on the MB, the CPU was
not wet. Additionally the CD-RW drives are OK too...

Anyhow I am just thinking about a hobby project using the CPUs in an
older server MB just to see if can put together a little home server
CHEAP. I currently have P3-800MHz that is about 4 years old and it is
fine for the house with only 3 workstations. I was thinking about
upgrading it son, and thought this might make an interesting project.

Can anyone suggest a motherboard that might work? I also have 5, 512MB
PC133 memory upgrades that were ordered before the storm, but were not
delivered until after the storm. The vendor won't take them back, so a
MB that takes PC133 RAM would be nice too.

So far I have spent a couple of hours browsing the internet but have not
found anything suitable. I guess by today's standards this is not
cutting edge hardware.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Fred.

 

[Paul]

I am looking for a motherboard that will hold 2 or 4, socket 478, P4-
1.5GHz CPUs. 5 PCs at my office were flooded by Katrina. They were a
total loss and I have ordered new systems. But looking at the systems, I
noticed that although the water came up half way on the MB, the CPU was
not wet. Additionally the CD-RW drives are OK too...

Anyhow I am just thinking about a hobby project using the CPUs in an
older server MB just to see if can put together a little home server
CHEAP. I currently have P3-800MHz that is about 4 years old and it is
fine for the house with only 3 workstations. I was thinking about
upgrading it son, and thought this might make an interesting project.

Can anyone suggest a motherboard that might work? I also have 5, 512MB
PC133 memory upgrades that were ordered before the storm, but were not
delivered until after the storm. The vendor won't take them back, so a
MB that takes PC133 RAM would be nice too.

So far I have spent a couple of hours browsing the internet but have not
found anything suitable. I guess by today's standards this is not
cutting edge hardware.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Fred.

Why not use just one of the processors to construct a home server ?
Donate the other three processors to an organization that restores
old PCs for people who are less fortunate.

Desktop motherboards are the cheapest mechanism to package
a processor. Any server or industrial solution would cost
a fortune, and would violate the cheap aspect of the project.

This is without getting into a lot of research about whether
or not desktop processors can support SMP or not.

You'll still have enough trouble finding a motherboard that
will take a P4 S478 and SDRAM, and perhaps that will be
enough of a challenge in itself. In fact, I think if you
purchase a single stick of DDR, and search for a DDR motherboard,
this project will be much simpler. You can try and dump
the SDRAM you own on Ebay, or donate the RAM to someone as
well.

If you find a motherboard with a gigabit ethernet interface
on it, that will save on the expense of trying to find a
separate cheap gigabit ethernet card. I've seen retail prices of
$70 for a gig ethernet card, when they are being integrated
on motherboards for a lot less. So, when shopping for your
uniprocessor motherboard, make sure it has the peripherals
you want, as that will eliminate the need to buy additional
cards.

Paul

 

[Mercury]

P4's don't support SMP - multiprocessor motherboards
I cursed Intel when I found that out. P3 was the last 'consumer' chip to
support SMP.
It is all changing back now...

I suggest finding a recycler and barter CPU's / RAM for the other bits you
need.

or...

I would have tried washing the motherboards from the sunk systems in
distilled water with a lot of gentle agitation if the only issue was water
and contaminants. They are not as vulnerable to water as you may think - so
long as they were off at the time. The hard part will be getting silt
etc.out from under capacitors... Use isopropyl as the last wash step and let
it drain well without force drying.

I new of an outfit that had their floppy library drowned (in the 80's). They
got criticl data back by disassembling the floppies carefully, washing the
plastic discs and reassembling into the shells of new floppies (discarding
the new discs). So there is hope...

 

[William C]

I had a friend who had is computer waterlogged after a fire several years
ago. The system looked pretty bad, but because we were able to get to it
within hours of the fire department soaking it, we were able to save almost
everything. Not so in this case...

The problem is not just getting wet, but that we could not come back for 2
weeks and they sat in the water until they were all corroded and NASTY.

Thanks for the info about the SMP limitation. I think I will see if I can
trade for a single good CPU/motherboard or something. If not perhaps I
will look into the donation idea. Things are pretty rough for us, but at
least we have insurance, and in time we will get back to normal, others
were not so fortunate.