SillyDog701

[Edward]

Did you learn the lesson the hard way?

No. One of my desktops had a mix of PC100 and PC133 memory installed and the system ran slower than it should have. When I removed the PC133 memory, leaving the one PC100 DIMM in place, the system sped up considerably and in fact, Linux began to boot in only half the time it took previously. I then removed the PC100 DIMM and reinstalled the two PC133 DIMMs, same result, much faster system, but with twice the memory.

The odd thing about this particular motherboard, is that the DIMMs must be double-sided in order for the BIOS to recognize the full amount of memory on the DIMMs.

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[Mandrake]

Mandrake - About those pictures of the motherboard, aren't manufacturers supposed to make these things EASIER to figure out???

And I thought my K6 motherboard was bad...

I also learned yesterday, not to mix different memory types...

Here's a picture of the board on it's own:



The Parallel-ATA port and six of the Serial-ATA ports are all on the edge so that using long double width video cards don't block over the ports. The memory slots are all accessible, even when a long video card is in the first blue PCIe x16 slot. I think it would be fair to say that I've had no real problems with the layout of this board. The only minor problem I've had is that the 8pin power connector is located up the top right of the motherboard, this can be somewhat of a problem because my case mounts the power suppply at the bottom of the case. I just need to get an extension for the 8pin power connector and also the 24pin ATX power connector and I'll be able to route those cables neatly (yes, my wiring looks like a mess of spaghetti!). I imagine that a bunch of cable ties wouldn't go astray either.

Your talk of PC133 memory reminded me of the first system I ever built by myself. I had kept that system around because I felt nostalgic. I even found a full GB of ram and a Radeon 9550 video card for that old system. Lately it's been crashing frequently though. Some of the capacitors on the motherboard have started to leak (hence the terms 'leaky caps' or 'bulging caps'). I could replace the capacitors on the motherboard, but I'm not sure that it's worth the effort.

It's good to see more and more motherboard manufacturers using solid state capacitors instead of low end electrolytic capacitors on new motherboards. The solid state capacitors (such as those on the P6T board pictured above) will not 'leak' or 'bulge' which should help to provide a longer life for the motherboards.

There is a good Wikipedia article on defective electrolytic capacitors for anyone who is interested.

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[Mandrake]

I spent a bit of time sorting out my cable management. I still need some extensions for the 8pin and 24pin power connectors that connect to the motherboard. Other than that, I'm reasonably pleased with the end result.

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[Don_HH2K]

Since I'm moving out soon, I combined my former desktop PC (running Linux) and NAS PC (running FreeBSD) into one box.





The end result has three CD drives and three hard drives. It's an IDE machine so the remaining two drives are connected by a Promise ATA66 card running in SCSI mode. There wasn't any space for the third hard drive so I just lashed it up with duct tape.

I have a 800MHz Celeron (Coppermine) and 512MB of memory in it now, but I'm looking into a 1.13GHz Pentium 3 that I found on eBay for $7.95.

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[Antony]

The end result has three CD drives and three hard drives. It's an IDE machine so the remaining two drives are connected by a Promise ATA66 card running in SCSI mode. There wasn't any space for the third hard drive so I just lashed it up with duct tape.

Why do you need three CD drives in one desktop PC? wouldn't 1 or two do the job?

As for the physical space for your HDD, can't you simply get a larger one?

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[Don_HH2K]

I had two CD drives (one DVD burner and one CD-ROM drive) in the desktops and one DVD-ROM drive in the NAS, but didn't feel like taking one out.

The drives are 3.2GB for the FreeBSD (NAS) install, 6.48GB for the Debian (desktop) install, and 60GB for NAS space. I don't really have any good reason to get bigger ones.

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[Antony]

I had two CD drives (one DVD burner and one CD-ROM drive) in the desktops and one DVD-ROM drive in the NAS, but didn't feel like taking one out.

You don't have to, but by taking one or two out, you would have room to fit HDD properly.

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[Don_HH2K]

The CD drives are mounted in 5.25" bays. I would need a mounting bracket to mount a 3.5" drive in a 5.25" bay.

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[Don_HH2K]

Look what I found today.



There are three Dell Latitude C540s, a Latitude C840, and a Latitude CPi. At the moment, only the CPi has RAM, none of them has a hard drive, and I only have one power adapter.

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[Antony]

Look what I found today.

Congratulations on gaining more computers to your collection.

What is the total number of computers you have now?

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[stoperror]

Today my new hardware finally arrived. That is my new Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition and a new motherboard (the old ECS one didn't "support" the Phenom II, and it was getting flaky), which is an ASRock A785GMH/128M. It's faster compared to my dual core 4050e (which was overclocked to 2.6-ish GHz). Though, I've been hearing about the ability to unlock the 4th core on Phenom II's. I heard that only few processors had the ability, and even fewer had a good core (eg: one that didn't actually have anything wrong with, but one that AMD needed to make X3's). Thankfully, after some moderate testing, I feel that the 4th core works, and works fine. I have yet to overclock it (it's fast enough as is, for me).

Here's my obligatory CPU-Z shot:

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[beanboy89]

As I mentioned earlier, here are the pictures of my new computer:

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[Don_HH2K]

Is that a board with both Slot 1 and Socket 370 CPU connectors? I know that both formats were in common use around that time, but can't say I've ever seen a board with support for both.

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[beanboy89]

Is that a board with both Slot 1 and Socket 370 CPU connectors? I know that both formats were in common use around that time, but can't say I've ever seen a board with support for both.

Yes, there is both a Slot 1 and Socket 370 connector. The motherboard was manufactured by SiS, and I believe it is the 620 model, as noted here.

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[Antony]

As mentioned in another thread, here's the photo of the two Power Mac G4s I got two computers for $0!



They were both from early 2000s. According to the label on the back, Power Mac G4 466MHz and Power Mac G4 dual 1.42GHz.

(blog entry)

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