Siemens Scenic D6-333

This PC is a low-end, branded, small office/home PC from 1998. It contains a Siemens-Nixdorf D1081 mainboard, a 333MHz Celeron CPU and 128MB of RAM in a single DIMM stick which was these times the best configuration for it (configurations started at 32MB, 64MB was the most popular). Although memory can be theoretically upgraded, the chipset is picky about RAM and the only upgrade of this particular configuration which does not make memory faults is adding one more 128MB module (or generally, adding two modules with the same capacity). Its hard disk is relatively small - 4.3GB.
On board, there is ATI graphics chip built-in, but there is no sound or network interfaces. They have to be added in expansion boards, and there are only 2 PCI slots and one ISA, interchangeable with third PCI.
This computer shows us that there were times when Intel sold frequency, not performance. 66MHz-bus Celerons were one of the worst CPUs available then and were comparable to middle-end Pentium MMX. A 233MHz Pentium MMX was in practice more powerful than it. But here, magic of a new Slot 1 and name "Celeron" made its way. The computer is slow comparing with many well-configured Pentium Is.

Its BIOS, Phoenix Revision 1.03.1000, is terribly buggy. Maybe later versions (there were 1.03.1001) are better? One capacity of RAM is tested while another is shown to system. Checksum validation doesn't work as expected, so you will get alarmed about battery problem when it's totally exhausted, if it's failing you will get random settings without warning, e.g. date resets to year 2095 :). More, you can irreversibly turn off graphics chip when runing the machine with single 16MB DIMM stick which is dual-bank (being seen by computer as 8MB). You have been warned.
If you turned this graphics chip off by installing smaller RAM, it cannot be easily turned on even by resetting BIOS settings. I had to use a PCI graphics board. I think that if RAM amount is small, it turns graphics chip off some way, expecting user reset it with Setup which doesn't happen as there is no BIOS setting for it. The case itself is made of plastic, only chassis is metal so it's a problem to put monitor on it. There were reports that putting heavier displays made this computer crash because mainboard lost some contact. Generally, it's a very weak machine for these times. Contrary to e.g. Scenic Pro M5, a Pentium-based 1997 semi-professional computer, it's a step backwards.

These machines with Celerons and later Pentium IIs were popular in Poland as they were bought in large quantities from Germany e-waste and restored to operate as simple computers for text processing... and usually only for text processing. Unfortunately my unit doesn't have a green sliding cover.
 

Manufacturer Siemens

Origin Germany
Year of unit 1998
Year of introduction 1998?
Class ATX
CPU Intel Celeron
Speed 333MHz
RAM 128MB (1x PC66 DIMM)
2 DIMM sockets
ROM Phoenix BIOS
Graphics Built-in ATI chip
Sound None
[in my unit - SoundBlaster 16]
System expansion bus ISA, PCI
Floppy/removable media drives 1x 3.5" 1.44MB Floppy drive
 
 

Hard disk: Seagate 4.3GB

 

Peripherals in collection:
 - Keyboard
Other boards:

 

 3Com EtherLink XL PCI network board
Non-standard expansions: S3 ViRGE 4MB PCI graphics board
Operating system(s): Windows 98SE
   

My unit was extensively used as office computer i.e. typewriter. It was imported with many of these from Germany and restored, then sold for office purposes. Near 2014 it was replaced and then I purchased it cheap only because I needed 128MB stick of RAM. Then I found that this RAM was PC66.

Contents: Starting, usage Configuration    

Starting

Press F2 for BIOS Setup. You can boot from CD-ROM, but not from USB. BIOS Setup is very simple.

 

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Configuration

See D1081 mainboard manual for jumper settings. The maximum CPU this mainboard can get is Slot1 Celeron at 333MHz with 66MHz front-side bus. Other jumpers are for disabling floppy disk drive write or BIOS recovery using proprietary disks.

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