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Not everyone's into DIY

That was then, and this is now. With the decreasing price of Celerons, and the public awareness how well these CPUs run, it seemed like a good idea to have the option to go dual-Celeron. However, the process of soldering stuff, even though it's on the slocket and not on the CPU itself, was still rather daunting. What was the solution?

SuperMicro was kind enough to deliver 2 TMR-006s to us, and of course 2 slockets immediately gave rise to the thought "dual-Celeron!" These unique slockets are already modified for dual-Celeron operation. The modifications are incorporated into the original design the slocket, so you don't see any weird wires and resistors glued on the converter. Even with a trained eye these slockets look like any other slocket. We didn't bother squinting at the trace elements to see that they were connected to the proper pins. Thus, you get the dual-processing capability without the headache of having to solder stuff yourself!

Testing the claim

After powering on, we were greeted by a beautiful sight. On the BIOS screen, during POST, we immediately saw the line "Celeron 400MHz (x2)", informing us that the slockets are working properly and both Celerons have been detected. Confirmation during NT bootup and benchmark sysinfo told us the dual-processor hack was indeed present, no tools required!

As we know, Windows 9x does not support SMP (symmetric multiprocessing), or any multiprocessing for that matter. In order to take advantage of our souped-up slockets, we need to go with an OS that will enable SMP. In most cases, the easiest way to do this would be to go with a Windows NT installation.

If you're familiar with NT, you're probably aware that it loads different kernals for single and multi-processor installs. BIOS will recognize the dual Celerons, but NT will not. To avoid the pain of reinstalling due to the insertion of one lousy CPU, Microsoft has an applet called uptomp.exe that can upgrade the current installation of Win NT to take advantage of SMP. We've used it several times, each without any hitches or unexpected phenomena. For our current test, uptomp once again performed as advertised, prepping NT for dual-operation without problem.