Poweredge 2300 CPU upgrade

Fastest Officially supported is dual 700's

Unofficially 1.0 Ghz /100mhz fsb PentiumII's

or 1.1 Ghz cpus from powerleap.

When you say "Unofficially 1.0 Ghz /100mhz fsb PentiumII's"

Does this mean that fsb of 133mhz will not work?

Also was that PentiumII's" or PentiumIII's"?

Thank You

Bob Whitman

boomer@iwaynet.net

---

xboomerx wrote: When you say "Unofficially 1.0 Ghz /100mhz fsb PentiumII's"

Does this mean that fsb of 133mhz will not work?

Also was that PentiumII's" or PentiumIII's"?

Thank You

Bob Whitman

boomer@iwaynet.net

---

Pentium 3's work fine in either system as does the Powerleap Kit but its not supported by Dell. 133Mhz FSB cpus run at less than their rated speed because the bus clock cannot be made faster.  I use one of my 2300's as a game machine.  I added a Geforce FX5200 PCI video card and Soundblaster Value Live PCI Sound card.    The biggest difference is that the GX motherboard supports up to 2 GIGs of Registered Ram whereas the BX board supports 1 Gig of Registered Ram.  Overall these servers are VERY reliable when kept in a dust free controlled temperature environment.

533 Mhz cpus run at 400Mhz Aka 4.0 X 133 = 533
866 Mhz cpus run at 650Mhz AKA 6.5 X 133 = 866
933 Mhz cpus run at 700Mhz Aka 7.0 X 133 = 933
1000 Mhz cpus run at 750Mhz Aka 7.5 X 133 = 999

None of the 133Mhz FSB CPU's work in the 2300 officially due to the 440BX and 440GX bus being fixed at 100Mhz.

My experience with The EB versions of the CPU aka full speed advanced transfer cache means that they actually run faster for many things due to their cache running at full speed instead of half speed.

You should upgrade the ESM and the Bios from Dos if you want to experiment with these things.

Otherwise it doesnt recognize the cpu's and thinks they are PentiumII's

You need to make MSDOS Startup Disks for the ESM
and The bios.

ftp://ftp.dell.com/esm/a41cust.exe

EMBEDDED SERVER MANAGEMENT FLASH UTILITY FOR DELL(TM)
POWEREDGE(TM) 2300, 2400, 2450, 4300, 4350, 4400, 6300,
6350, 6400 and 6450 SYSTEMS
------------------------
Summary Of Build   Firmware Build A41
     ESM v5.22
     SBP v5.35(5.34)
     PSPB v2.36
     HOTPLUG PCI v1.18
     GBP v1.16
     PE4400 HOTPLUG PCI FPGA v15
   SMFLASH A4.02
------------------------

The Embedded Server Management (ESM) flash utility is a tool to update
firmware(FW) to the Embedded Server Management and all devices connec-
ted to it on the system management bus (SMB). The devices currently
implemented in the utility are:
* Embedded Server Management
* System backplane
* System power supply paralleling board (PSPB)
* Hotplug

As new devices are available, this utility program will be upgraded
to support them. The utility is available on an MS-DOS(R) readable
diskette containing the following files:
* SMFLSH.EXE
* SMFLSHNT.EXE
* README.TXT
* SMSVSTOP.BAT
* SMSVSTRT.BAT
* CHECKSUM.TXT

The "SMFLSH" utility runs under MS-DOS and "SMFLSHNT" runs under the
Microsoft(R) Windows NT(R) operating system. Both utilities includes
the binary code for ESM, system backplane, system PSPB and hotplug.

ftp://ftp.dell.com/bios/PE2300-BIOSA15.exe

DELL COMPUTER CORPORATION
BIOS RELEASE NOTES

System:        Dell(TM) PowerEdge(TM) 2300/XXX
Version:       A15
Release Date:  02/13/2003

The following changes were made to the A14 BIOS to create the A15 BIOS:

1. Added support for the Microsoft(R) Windows(R) Server
   2003 operating system.

 
System:        Dell(TM) PowerEdge(TM) 2300/XXX
Version:       A14
Release Date:  09/20/2000

The following changes were made to the A13 BIOS to create the A14 BIOS:

1. Added Intel(R) Pentium(R) III C0 Stepping support.

System:        Dell(TM) PowerEdge(TM) 2300/XXX
Version:       A13
Release Date:  03/30/2000

The following changes were made to the A12 BIOS to create the A13 BIOS:

1. Added Intel(R) Pentium(R) III B0 Stepping support.
2. Improved method for allocation of Option Rom space to prevent plug and
   play errors.
3. Made modifications to pass Windows(R) 2000 Hardware Compatibility Tests.
4. Updated firmware version numbers (A40 firmware required).
5. Updated Dell copyright messages to include the year 2000.

System:        Dell PowerEdge 2300/XXX
Version:       A12
Release Date:  10/13/99

The following changes were made to the A10 BIOS to create the A12 BIOS:

1. Added Intel(R) Pentium(R) III A2 Stepping and 700 MHz support
2. Added support for seven characters in service tag
3. Updated ACPI support

System:        Dell PowerEdge 2300/XXX
Version:       A11
Release Date:  10/08/99

The A11 BIOS was not released

System:        Dell PowerEdge 2300/XXX
Version:       A10
Release Date:  7/07/99

The following changes were made to the A09 BIOS to create the A10 BIOS:

1. Added Intel(R) Pentium(R) III 600 MHz support
2. Fixed issues with lock functionality with RCU (Use RCU version 1.27)
3. Added warning when unsupported CPU (Speed or Stepping) detected
4. Updated ACPI support

System:        Dell PowerEdge 2300/XXX 
Version:       A09
Release Date:  5/05/99

The following changes were made to the A08 BIOS to create the A09 BIOS:

1. Added Intel Pentium III C0 stepping and 550 MHz support
2. Updated ATI Rage Pro (Turbo) Video BIOS to V3.089
3. Added support for Control keys in Setup
4. Updated ACPI support

System:        Dell PowerEdge 2300/XXX
Version:       A08
Release Date:  2/11/99

The following changes were made to the A07 BIOS to create the A08 BIOS:

1. Corrected problem that occurred when installing an Advanced Configuration
   and Power Interface (ACPI)-aware operating system.
2. Fixed Plug and Play error resulting from an IRQ sharing problem.
3. Added support for the Intel Pentium III Processor Serial Number in
   System Setup. The default is Processor Serial Number disabled.
4. Corrected a problem with entering the utility partition when
   SCO(R) UNIX(R) System V/386 or Banyan VINES operating system is
   installed.

System:        Dell PowerEdge 2300/XXX
Version:       A07
Release Date:  1/26/99

The following changes were made to the A06 BIOS to create the A07 BIOS:

1. Added support for the Intel(R) Pentium III(R) microprocessor,
   B0 stepping (version)
2. Added support for the Intel 440GX AGPset
3. Updated support for the A0 and A1 steppings (versions) of the Intel
   Pentium II microprocessor

System:        Dell PowerEdge 2300/XXX
Version:       A06
Release Date:  12/15/98

The following changes were made to the A05 BIOS to create the A06 BIOS:

1. Added support for the B1 stepping (version) of the Intel Pentium II
   microprocessor
2. Corrected intermittent "no video" boot problem

System:  Dell PowerEdge 2300/XXX
Version: A05
Release Date: 11/04/98

The following changes were made to the A04 BIOS to create the A05 BIOS:

1. Resolved a nonmaskable interrupt (NMI) problem that occurred while running
   the Microsoft(R) Windows NT(R) operating system with integrated video
2. Added support for the new stepping (version) of the chipset
3. Updated video BIOS to support new ATI Rage Pro Turbo video chip
4. Updated firmware version numbers

System:  Dell PowerEdge 2300/XXX
Version: A04
Release Date: 08/12/98

The following changes were made to the A03 BIOS to create the A04 BIOS:

1. Corrected the video BIOS version string
2. Added support for the 450-MHz microprocessor (cpuid 652h)

System:  Dell PowerEdge 2300/XXX
Version: A03
Release Date: 07/06/98

The following changes were made to the A02 BIOS to create the A03 BIOS:

1. Added support for the Dell Remote Assistant Card version 2.0
2. Moved password prompt to occur before the scanning of adapter option ROMs
3. Added support for the B0 stepping (version) of the Intel Pentium II
   microprocessor
4. Updated the Adaptec SCSI BIOS

System:  Dell PowerEdge 2300/XXX
Version: A02
Release Date: 05/06/98

The following changes were made to the A01 BIOS to create the A02 BIOS:

1. Added support for 1-GB of cacheable system RAM
2. Enhanced support for the following operations:
    a) Configuring PCI resources as specified in the Resource
 Configuration Utility
    b) Utilizing free IRQs for PCI devices
    c) Booting the Utility Partition from any drive

System:        Dell PowerEdge 2300/XXX
Version:       A01
Release Date:  03/10/98

This is the first shipping release.

System:        Dell PowerEdge 2300/XXX
Version:       A00
Release Date:  02/23/98