Old PII Unlocking article

[ProZack]

A long long time ago... Anand (himself I believe) did a little ditty on unlocking the PII's. It required a bit of soldering and/or destroying a lead to one of the slot connectors.

Anyone know a link to it in the archives?
please?

thx
ProZack

 

[chemwiz]

I've got a program that's supposed to unlock p2's, never tried it though. I can send it to you if you want.

 

[IaPuP]

No you don't.

The multiplier of the PII is set via a register which can only be accessed during reset.

I believe it must be configured in the first 16? clock cycles after RESET. After that point, the pins used to configure the clock multilier are assigned to another function (I forget which).

Intel physically cuts this circuitry out of the PIIs when they lock them. It involves extensive hardware modifications to undo this.

Eric

Edit: I just realized what you are talking about.

One of the early PII core steppings could be unlocked by re-asserting pin B21. This affects early stepping PII-350 and PII-400 chips. Abit SoftMenu I & II have this option in BIOS and some boards have jumpers (sometimes called SEL 66/100). Otherwise you have to cut a trace on the CPU or tape or paint over the contact area of that pin.

Search for "b21" around and you might find some info

 

What about p2s on the 66mhz fsb?
Ive heard that early ones were natually unlocked.
Like the p2 333.

 

[Sunny129]

IaPuP:

I have a PII 350 Dechutes core. might this CPU be one of the "early PII core stepping" CPUs you are talking about? i plan on getting rid of this system (actually giving it to a friend), but i think it would be cool to mess around with it and try to OC it b4 i give it away. and since my mobo is an Intel SE 440BX (impossible to OC the FSB), a clock multiplier would be the only way. the CPU has a slot-1 interface and 100 mHz FSB (its inside the plastic casing of course), what do you think...might i be able to unlokc the multiplier on it?

 

I heard that all cpus over 333 were locked.
*shrug*
not really sure.
I want to try and OC my p2 333. Which uses a LX chipset, but ill just toss it on a BX and shoot for 100fsb =D

 

[IaPuP]

Yeah. All PIIs before August 19th, 1998 are unlocked. The multiplier still must be set by the motherboard in the first few cycles after reboot.

Eric

 

[IaPuP]

Some PII-350 chips can be unlocked.

The only way to find out is to cover up pin b21 with a piece of tape and find out!!

search Tom'sHardware or Anand's for "B21"

Eric

 

[compuwiz1]

The b-21 trick was really most useful in "tricking" a motherboard into detecting the CPU as one that was supposed to run on 100MHz fsb, vs. 66MHz. This applied to Celerons. That is how people were getting the 300a to run at 450 on BX boards that offered no such bios setting.

To the best of my knowlege, there was never a way to unlock multipliers on any Intel CPU, once they started locking them.

If anyone ever tells you they have a PIII 500, as example, that's not locked, it's an engineering sample.

 

[chemwiz]

I did a little looking, the file I have is called NEWSPEED.EXE, but I guess it is just for engineering samples. One guy said it does make the CPU speed show up as whatever you want, that might be interesting, but not too useful.

 

[oldfart]

I used to run a PII 333 that was unlocked. Intel changed it mid-year. If you have an eary one, it will run 4 x 105 no sweat @ 2.0-2.1V. Maybe 4.5 x 100 if you had a good one.