Hi
I have a Pentium III CPU. Not sure how to find out if it is 386 or 686?

Physical inspection:
667/256/133/165v s1
00230175-0134 Costa Rica

Sarge 2.24.7-2-386 reporsts:
/proc/cpuinfo reports
cpu family: 6
model name: Pentium III (Coppermine)
#uname -a
reports i686 GNU/Linux

the BIOS reports:
CPU Name Is: Intel Pentium III MMX

Window 2000 reports:
X86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 3 GenuineIntel ~500 Mhz

so, is it MMX or not?
if so, why not showing on the physical inspection?
which of the above inspections is the most credible and in which way?
why #uname -a showing i686?
alot of questions and I cann't sleep at night not having a good answer.

thanks

Definitely 686. All Pentium Pro and above are 686.

Yes.

/proc/cpuinfo will clearly show MMX...

Here is cpuinfo from a P3 here...

[jason@smeagol jason]$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 8
model name : Pentium III (Coppermine)
stepping : 3
cpu MHz : 702.031
cache size : 256 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse
bogomips : 1372.16

Note the MMX flag entry...

And as said, pentium pro and above are at least i686 - p2's p3's etc...

What an old computer, you had better throw it away and buy a new Pentium 4 3.0GHz.

Old PC's, new PC's... They can be good for a variety of things. I have a bunch running, from P160mmx up to AMD 64's... There is a P4 somewhere as well

Pentium III's are excellent machines as either Linux desktops or light duty servers. I've got one (Pentium III 600Mgz, running Slack) which has been in service now as my secondary PC for several years, and there's no reason to "throw away" a machine works perfectly well. Let's try to keep discussions focused on actually answering the question, thanks