Socket 8 / Slot 1 / Socket 370 Motherboards
Socket 8
Slot 1
Slot 1 was Intel's successor to Socket 7. For the first time it featured a "cassette" (instead of a regular CPU with pins) that slid into the Slot 1 slot, much like an AGP card.
Slot 1 was also the first motherboard type that (almost completely) did away with the "cacheable area" limitation due to the CPU's onboard L2 cache (in Socket 7, L2 cache was mounted on the motherboard instead). The very first Slot 1 motherboards featured only a 66Mhz FSB, though some motherboard manufacturers fitted their motherboards with 68MHz and 75MHz jumpers or BIOS settings. Some of the LX motherboards had issues with powering more modern AGP graphics cards, though this was later supposedly fixed. LX motherboards have somewhat limited CPU support, mainly because of it's limited FSB. The fastest CPU's that will work are the Pentium 2 333MHz (or a Pentium 2 400MHz downclocked to 366MHz), the Slot 1 Celeron 433MHz (though faster Celerons can be installed with the use of a slotket) or a downclocked Pentium 3 with the Katmai core (which will be recognised as a Pentium 2 usually by the BIOS). Other solutions are to use a special type of slotket that lets one use a Tualatin-core Celeron which will be underclocked also, but will provide a speed up to around 1000MHz. The most common earlier motherboard was the one with an Intel 440LX chipset. It was it's successor, the Intel 440BX (or just BX for short) that became a huge success.
The BX is one of the most popular Slot 1 motherboards these days. It provides good flexibility with great stability. BX boards officially support 66MHz FSB and 100MHz FSB, though many motherboard manufacturers feature other FSB speeds (the most popular being 133MHz as this provides support for even faster CPU's without overclocking the PCI bus). BX supports up to 1GB of SDRAM (which is double that of it's i815 successor) and features an AGP 2x slot. Most BX boards support 3 memory slots, though some also have 4 memory slots. Even though BX has great flexibility, it does come with some limitations: -It doesn't support memory modules greater then 256MB -It comes with a maximum harddrive transfer rate because of it's DMA-33 controller (some motherboard manufacturers went around this by installing an onboard controller featuring DMA-66) -It's AGP 2x slot will not work with AGP 8x cards -Overclocking the FSB to 133MHz will overclock the AGP bus to an out of spec 89MHz -Not all BX motherboards will work with Coppermine CPU's, limiting the CPU to a maximum of 600MHz
There are some other chipsets around that feature Slot 1 though, the i820 chipset ones and ones which feature a VIA chipset. The i820 chipset ones support only RDRAM instead of SDRAM, which comes with it's own set of problems and the VIA chipsetted ones tend to be more unstable then the BX ones. The VIA Slot 1 boards do have some advantages compared to BX though as many VIA Slot 1 boards feature AGP 4x and support for larger SDRAM memory modules.
Most Slot 1 boards are made in the ATX form factor (or propriety) though very few exist in the AT form factor.
Most feature an AGP slot and ISA slots and all come with PCI slots.
Socket 370
Socket 370 was released around 1998 or 1999 and was originally made as a budget CPU socket compared to Intel's higher-end Slot 1 solution. Later it became Intel's main CPU Socket until the release of the Pentium 4, after which it moved to the budget end of the market again before being phased out altogether. A wide variety of CPU's exist for this socket, ranging from the 333MHz Celeron (with Mendocino core) all the way to the Pentium 3s 1400MHz (also known as Tualatin-s). VIA also made a variety of CPU's for this socket, though compatibility is somewhat sketchy. As this CPU socket went through a couple revisions, not all Socket 370 CPU's will work in any given Socket 370 motherboard, even though they will mechanically fit. Generally speaking there are 3 different types of motherboards using this socket:The early Celeron Mendocino-only motherboards (usually limited to a 66MHz FSB), the Coppermine capable motherboards (having a maximum FSB of either 100MHz or 133MHz) and the Tualatin capable motherboards. Sometimes Tualatin capable motherboards have their CPU socket colored blue instead of the usual white.
To prevent usage of newer CPU's in older motherboards, Intel switched a couple pins around to prevent operation of Coppermine CPU's in the earliest Celeron-only boards and Intel repeated that trick when it started manufacturing Tualatin CPU's. This prevented the use of later chips in older motherboards, even if the right (lower) voltage could be supplied by the motherboard.
Usually Socket 370 boards had AGP (the older ones AGP 2x and the newer ones AGP 4x). All of them had PCI slots and the older types of Socket 370 motherboards had ISA slots. Almost all Socket 370 motherboards are ATX (though a few AT Socket 370 motherboards are known to exist). Only very few Tualatin motherboards featured one or 2 ISA slots. Usually the Intel 815 chipsetted motherboards had no ISA slots, except when the motherboard was equipped with a bridge chip. The bridge chip 'could' cause some problems when using ISA sound cards.
