Socket 7 Motherboards
Some call them Pentium 1 motherboards
Yes they are still available
Intel came out with their Pentium CPU in the 1990's
and the supporting socket on the motherboards was called socket 5. When Intel
came up with it's smaller size square looking Pentium CPU's, the socket was
upgraded to socket 7. Intel was not the only company selling CPU's for the socket
7 motherboards - AMD and Cyrix were also jostling for position.
When Intel moved over to the slot 1 processors, AMD kept
making higher speed CPU's for the socket 7 motherboard platform. The highest
speed AMD processor for socket 7 motherboards was 550MHz and the slowest was
75MHz.
Socket 7 motherboards came in various form factors:
- AT
- Baby AT
- LPX
- ATX
- Micro ATX
The early generation socket 7 motherboards only had PCI
and ISA slots. The later generations sported an AGP slot, more PCI and fewer ISA
slots. Later on, manufacturers totally discarded ISA slots and just had an AGP
slot and the rest as PCI slots.
Though Socket 7 motherboards have long been forgotten by
the general populace, certain applications that were introduced in the 1990's
and still being used will only run on socket 7 motherboards and will not run on
newer faster configurations.
People with such legacy applications are generally in a
bind as nobody makes these legacy motherboards anymore. In fact these pentium 1
motherboards as some call them haven't been made in over 15 years. So what to do
if you have applications that will only run on such legacy motherboards?
That's where companies like interloper.com come to the
rescue. They scour the country for such legacy parts and when they find them,
they test, repair and stock them. They are a life saver for companies who run
processes off of such computers that require socket 7 motherboards. Many of
these applications require ISA slots as their SBC or specialty controller cards
will only run on 16 bit ISA slots.
If you need a socket 7 motherboard with ISA slots, the best thing is to contact interloper.com or use their motherboard search engine at
https://www.interloper.com/mbsearch.php
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