Re: AMD K6/300 CPU in a Orange Micro 530?

I posted the following massage on April, 25th.
I believe, this should also work with a OPC 530.

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AMD K6-2 works in OPC 540!!!
by Guido Brenke

Hi.

Perhaps some of the OrangePC 540 users might be interested in this:

I have been using an OrangePC 540 with the original Pentium MMX 200 in a Quicksilver 933 for quite some time. That might be enough CPU-power for DOS or Win 3.1 but not really for Win 9x.

After the upgrade of my other OPC 550 to a 400 MHz K6-3 I had a left-over K6-2 300 MHz in my drawer and always had the idea of putting it into my OPC 540. The only problem should have been to cut down the core voltage of 2.8V - 3.45V (depending on the used cpu type) that is provided by the OPC 540 to the 2.2V the K6-2 needs.

This is what I did:
I purchased a "Multimedia CPU Upgrade Kit" by MADEX (www.madex.com) for socket-7 CPUs and configured it as said in the quickstart guide. Since the bus speed of the OPC 540 is limited to 66 MHz the Clock Multiplier had to be set to 4.5x in order to match my 300 MHz cpu (the MADEX card supports Multipliers from 2.5 to 6). The voltage-jumper on the MADEX-card had to be set to 2.2V.

The OPC 540 then had to be set to a supported cpu type with core voltage of 3.45V or 3.3V. The setting for a Pentium 100 works. According to the OrangePC-manual neither JP5 nor JP6 had to be shortened.

The last thing to do was to install a new fan on the K6-2 (the original OPC-Fan did no longer work, since the new CPU installed in the MADEX-card is about three times thicker than the original Pentium MMX) and to attach the powersupply-cable to the MADEX-card (cable was included, but a standard PC-cable for 3.5 inch floppies will work as well).

After reassembling the Mac and launching the OrangePCi application the OPC 540-bios reported a 300 MHz AMD K6-2. With this CPU Windows 98 is much more usable. You'll notice the speed increase.

Since the MADEX-card provides core voltages of 2.4V, 2.2V and especially 2.1V, an AMD K6-3 400 MHz should also work. That is something I'll try someday.

E-mail me, if there are any questions.

G.Brenke


Posted on Apr 25, 2004, 5:09 AM
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