Back in 1999, computer hardware was far more expensive than it is today. At the time, the difference between “top of the line” and “middle of the road” in processors was (looking back on it today) laughable. Back then, people seriously agonized over whether to buy the 500MHz or 533MHz processor; it was a clock difference of only 33MHz. But back then every megahertz counted, even if those 33 MHz cost you an extra $100.
I wanted a new computer at the time, as my PII-300 box was getting a bit long in the tooth. The only problem was that the high-end Intel processor of the time – the Pentium III 933 – was incredibly expensive… like, “well over $1000” expensive. I simply didn’t have that much scratch at the time.
And this is where the Abit BP-6 motherboard came in. The Abit BP-6 was a wonderful feat of hacker engineering. At the time, Intel didn’t allow Celeron processors to be used in SMP (multi-processor) systems; the BP-6 changed all that. Using Intel’s legendary 440BX chipset, the BP-6 board allowed end-users to use two inexpensive Celeron chips in place of a single high-end Pentium III processor. So instead of buying a $1200 PIII-933 processor, the BP-6 allowed me to buy two $150 Celeron 466 chips. Sure, two Celeron 466 processors working together wouldn’t be as fast as a single PIII-933… but performance would be very close, close enough to justify the $900 savings. The BP-6 was also one of the first boards to heavily advertise its overclocking features, so people lucky enough to get a closely-matched pair of the “special” Celeron 300A MHz chips got the same performance for even fewer dollars (because the Celeron chips were essentially a Pentium II without the L2 cache, the 300MHz “Mendocino” Celerons could easily run at the Pentium II’s 100MHz FSB speed, thus they could easily be overclocked to 450MHz).
I put together my BP6 with two Celeron 466 processors, a then-outrageous 512MB of RAM, and the largest hard drive I could find at the time. Since Windows 9x couldn’t handle multiple processors, I installed Windows NT Workstation 4 on this new box… and then went to town. This computer and I went through a lot together. We learned a lot about IT and computers together. I was an official Microsoft beta tester at the time and would soon be constantly installing (and reinstalling) beta versions of Windows NT 5.0 (later named Windows 2000). I got my first taste of Linux on this computer. I fell in love with the BeOS on this computer. I soon got a TV tuner card, and learned all the ins and outs of video capture on that computer.
I eventually got a new computer – ironically, a PIII 933 – and the BP6 temporarily went into hiatus. But soon, the BP6 was up again, this time as a Windows 2000 server. This was quickly upgraded to Windows Server 2003, running Exchange 2003. You might think that a server with only two ancient 466MHz processors and 512 MB of RAM wouldn’t work… but it did. For years. The BP-6 sat faithfully in a dusty corner of my room, running Active Directory, Exchange, serving a few files and sharing a printer day in and day out for almost five years. This was, of course, after four years of first being my every day desktop PC and then being my “testbed computer”. That’s nine years of service out of a computer I paid less than $1000 for nearly ten years ago. And remember, the last five years of that life were running pretty much 24×7 as a full-time server! In all that time, I only had a single hardware failure – a dead hard drive. The BP6 still has the same RAM chips and 3Com network card I put in it way back in 1999. Oh, I’ve upgraded it over the years – it got a leftover CD burner back in 2003, and her hard drives have been upgraded along the way. But still, given all that, its just amazing that this little guy and I have been around together for so long.
Sadly, the BP6 – last known as “Westminster” from my London Underground naming scheme, but also known as “Sharpe” from my Bernard Cornwell scheme, as well as “Swiftsure” and “Victory” from my Royal Navy schemes – has been retired. I got a new x64 triple-core computer for Christmas, and I took my then desktop PC – a Northwood P4 with 2GB of RAM – and installed Small Business Server 2003 on it. Actually, the BP6 was running SBS 2003… and straining mightily. SBS 2003 was the thing that almost broke the BP6, but it hung in there until I finally got something that can run SBS all day long.
Still, it makes me kind of sad to see the BP6 go. The thing was a tank. It was damn-near bulletproof. And although it was almost old enough for the Smithsonian, it still kicked ass when it had to.
Goodbye old friend!