I'm doing an upgrade project for a friend (old K6-2 IBM Aptiva, circa 1998), and I'm trying to determine the form factor for the Motherboard (and ultimately, the power supply requirements).
The system shipped with a 95W power supply, and based on the peripherals and cards they have installed, it needs more juice (or less peripherals).
IBM references the form factor as "Microtower", which I believe is synonymous with Baby-AT.
Is this a correct assumption?
My experience is primarily with Intel rigs (i440BX and later), so this is new territory for me.
"Micro-Tower" refers to the case size & many times has nothing to do with what size mobo will fit or what form factor it can take inside.
My advice: do not upgrade anything with a K6-II in it. Your friend will only blame you when the next part fails, you may even lose your friendship. If this friend understand computers he would not have a K6-II. If this a girl that you are trying to get in good with...........replace the whole system & keep the case. I also hope you are already sleeping with her, & she does not use you, just for your free help. Either way, I can see no reason to upgrade this system, keeping this CPU & basing the rest of the system around it.
Now to answer your question: crack the case & check the PSU plug that connects to the mobo. I think you know what a ATX connector looks like, if it is not a ATX connector, but a smaller connector, you can assume it is a AT PSU. Good Luck
It doesn't make sense that IBM put "MicroTower" in the form factor section of the system specification. But you're right - I can get the info I need by looking at the connector.
They plan to buy a new system, but they want to give the K6-2 to the kids for homework and web browsing. So I offered to add more memory and a new hard drive, as well as reinstall and gut the OS for bloat.
A new PSU would help, but I agree that there are risks.
