Pentium 166MHz Tower

In 1996 Pentium MMX line became more and more popular. They were sold with mainboards for P55C (Pentium MMX) which sometimes had interesting capabilities like DIMM support or some built-in components. MMX machines were usually equipped with better PCI video cards like S3 Trio and network cards or modems.
This computer has a Shuttle HOT-555 mainboard. Although Shuttle Technology got some poor reputation later, this mainboard is very well finished - it has even rounded edges instead of typical sharp angles to make assembly easier.
The casing is not very standard. It has "INVAR" sticker, so it comes from Polish shop "Invar PC" (see this flyer). The floppy drive bay is missing, and I added the covers for it. Entire bay is missing from inside - and hard disk is mounted using two metal brackets. Some tape drives were installed this way.


Approx. year 1996

Class AT
CPU Pentium MMX
Speed 166MHz
RAM 48MB
(32MB DIMM + 2x8MB SIMM)
ROM Award BIOS
Mainboard Shuttle HOT-555 (Intel chipset)
Graphics S3 Trio64 V2 (PCI)
(800x600x24bit)
Sound Creative SoundBlaster AWE64
(16-bit ISA)
Ports I/O On-board
(2x COM, 2x LPT, PS/2,
2x IDE, FDD)
Network Realtek RTL8029AS
System expansion bus 3x PCI slots
3x ISA slots
Floppy/removable media drives 1x 3.5" 1.44MB floppy disk drive
 
 
Hard disks/ATA devices: Fujitsu M1624TAU (2.1GB, IDE, C/H/S: 3298/16/63

40X PATA CD-ROM drive

Peripherals in collection:
 - None

Other boards:

 

None
Casing Standard small AT tower
Non-standard expansions: None
Operating system(s): Windows 98SE


Contents: Starting, usage Drivers Links

Starting

The only problem in this mainboard is the RTC, it's built-in between slots. If battery fails, it will be hard to rework it. The only way I think is unsoldering the chip and soldering socket. Because everything there is tightly packed, it will be hard to put a CR2032 socket there. A good solution will be soldering few centimeters of wires and mounting CR2032 socket somewhere else.

The combination with S3 Trio, SoundBlaster and Realtek RTL8029 is quite friendly in Win98SE and everything works from the installation of OS.

Up

 

 


Drivers

BIOS for HOT-555
HOT-555 Manual

 

Up

 

 


Links

https://www.shuttle.eu/_archive/older/de/555.htm - Shuttle HOT-555 Support. Most files don't work.