Boot Up

Now is the moment of truth. Mount the CPUs and heatsinks onto the slockets, and carefully insert them into your dual-CPU motherboard. Make sure that the Slot-1 contact hasn't caught against the soldered wire and ripped it from B75.

Turn the system on, and keep your eyes on the BIOS screen. The first indication of whether or not your dual modifications have worked should present itself here. For most BIOS versions, you'll usually see "Intel Celeron 300Mhz (x2)" or something fairly obvious indicating that two processors have been detected. This is a good sign. Now it's time to install a multiprocessor-aware OS.

That's right, as most of you know, Windows 95/98 does not support SMP or multiprocessing of any kind. You can have them installed on your system, but you won't get the benefit of having two processors. In fact, the second processor will simply sit idle. In order to use your new dual processors, you need an OS that supports it, and for most people, that means upgrading to Windows NT.

Move Up to Multiprocessing

However, you can't just stick 2 processors into an existing session of NT and expect it to work. In most cases you'll need to reinstall the OS to support multiprocessing. Fortunately, this isn't always necessary. If you have access to the Microsoft NT Resource Kit Support Tools, you can use an included applet called uptomp.exe to upgrade your existing install. The utility is included free in the Microsoft Management Console. In either case, it's highly recommended that you reinstall Service Pack 3 or 4 after you run uptomp.exe and BEFORE you reboot.

Once NT recognizes your multiprocessor system, you'll see "2 Processors" in the familiar blue startup screen. Task Manager will also show each CPU separately.

Now that we've got everything set up, let's take a look at what running dual can do for the average PC user.