Old rig - new life.... NOT!!!

[SteveI]

Just bought a slot1 mobo from .piranhatech.com for $22.. I took my chances and lost my bet..

It seems to boot up ok a few times, then it won't. Not sure what the deal is. I've been confused... it seems to not kick in video at times. Fans & hdd spin, lights come on, no monitor.

I have it set up outside the case... and it saved the cpu. When it doesn't boot up, the CPU fan is also not spinning right. It starts for a moment and dies. Needless to say, the HS got very hot quickly.

This is on the ECS P6BATME w/ Via694 chipset.

I guess you get what you pay for.

[Daniel ~]

More often than not you get less! Sorry this one didn't work out for you SteveI, Go play with your little ones, they make everything alright":O}

[S_Wilson]

I was looking for a slot one board also recently. I got a bad feeling about piranhatech so I didn't get one there. 3Btech has a decent 440ZX board for 19.99 with free ground shipping and there reseller rating is good. The ZX is pretty obsolete but will handle both PII and PIII and is somewhat similar to the BX.

Edit: here is a LINK.

[SteveI]

Thanks,
I think I might try them out.

[Pinky]

$20 for a $2 cpu

[cloasters]

Sorry to hear this, SteveI! It's possible that www.centrix-intl.com may have a few 440BX's left. I've bought from them twice, good experience both times. They specialise in obsolete gear, for good prices. However, most of it is unused, in the orginal box. If not, they post that fact.

I saw a brand new P3B-F advertised for $299 around six months ago. If you're a diehard 440BX fan I don't think that there is a better Slot1 mainboard. IMHO, of course.

[SteveI]

Not looking for real performance... Just an 850mhz printserver :nervous: :nervous: :nervous: . Of course it's going to stay on 24/7, and since it is, I guess I can install folding on it,


Guess what guys, I emailed tech support last night before going to bed... tonight I came home, no response... but I decided to give it a shot... and it boot up right away! Tried rebooting half a dozen times, and it's good. I'm installing an os as we speak.

It'll be a temp rig for my daughter, since I shuffled everything around. Coolest part is I also noticed a 103fsb setting... so I'm using it. The best this old cpu ever did was 105 anyway, lol.
Let's see if the mobo holds up to the torture test.

While it is loading the os, I've modded the case quite a bit for air flow in front.. I couldn't resist.

Just as a worthless sidenote, I'm using an old 2gig hdd I have laying around, waiting for my RMA, and it runs PIO.... Meanwhile the CDROM is actually a DVD, with ATA66 no less, hahah.

[cloasters]

I love success stories! When i815's were the latest, the 440BX held its own. Nowadays... Glad that you have a happy inexpensive mobo!

[dimmreaper]

Any leaky capacitors on the board? Most every board I've seen that is tempermental about booting ends up having leaking, or at least blown, capacitors. The metal part on the top of the capacitor will be domed if it is blown, if it is leaking it is even more obvious.

[SteveI]

Originally posted by dimmreaper
Any leaky capacitors on the board? Most every board I've seen that is tempermental about booting ends up having leaking, or at least blown, capacitors. The metal part on the top of the capacitor will be domed if it is blown, if it is leaking it is even more obvious.

Funny that you say that Jeff,
I have 2 old Abit slot 1 boards with that problem... That's what got me into this mess.. Well, spread out on a desk it worked fine.. Now that I have moved it to a case... same problem.. What killls me is that the 12v line on the mobo seems to be toast. No fans work from the mobo 9 out of 10 times I try to boot. I'm getting my money back. If they don't give me a refund-RMA, I'm calling my credit card company Monday night.

[BigRed]

I have an old Asus 440LX that you can HAVE. Im pretty sure it still works (been in the box for a few years). With a bios update it should support a p3.

Edit: BZZZ wrong, only supports 83mhz fsb max You can still have it if you want it

[S_Wilson]

Originally posted by BigRed
I have an old Asus 440LX that you can HAVE. Im pretty sure it still works (been in the box for a few years). With a bios update it should support a p3.

Edit: BZZZ wrong, only supports 83mhz fsb max You can still have it if you want it

LX and EX will run a P3 but you wont get the proper Mhz. Got to have a BX or ZX(100) to get proper support.

[SteveI]

Thanks Bigred. I appreciate the offer. But I already used S_wilson's link, thanks bud .

I ordered a ZX mobo... If it works, I'll order another from them. At $20 shipped, as long as it works at 100FSB, I'm happy. (Hmm... dejavu all over again, lol)

I couldn't wait, I had my cc co, contest the charge. THey promised me an 'immediate and permanent credit'. Telling them that they advertized NEW, and the invoice said NEW, and in fact it was not NEW, was enough... The etailers ridiculous policies are meaningless (no refund my @$$) when they have broken laws.

EDIT: having had the same platinum credit card for 10 years has it's priviledges. The bank is happily taking the $22 hit for customer service, and they can deal with piranha.

[SteveI]

Well, this is an adventure... I got the board. It's a Biostar M6TZA slot1 ZX board. I set it up, and no go. power light blinks, fans & drives spin... no more. I check the manual. It says max mem is 256mb, so I take a couple of sticks out and try with 128.. no go.
Check jumpers.. only goes up to 8x, uhoh. Take it out of the box. no go.

THis is with an FCPGA celeron, with a good slotket. I check my closet and find an old 450 slot1 processor. I try that.. WHAM!!! it boots up. Dang, this thing doesn't like FCPGA. I try my other celeron, same result. I thought it should work. Anyone remember the default voltage on the Katmais? I've tried forcing 1.95 & 2.0v with the slotket.

Any suggestions?.. It would be a shame if I couldn't use 1 of my celerons since they can do 850 easy. The P3 I have is only a 450.

I'll check out biostar info, but any help would be appreciated.

[S_Wilson]

Sorry to hear that SteveI. Not all boards like slokets and not all boards supported coppermines and I don't have one to test in my board. I am just using a P3 500 Katmai. The default core is 2.0V. If you have a different brand of sloket you might give that a try.

[SteveI]

I've got 2 soltec slotkets only, and the 450 katmai. I have another backup plan tho.

I gave a good friend a mATX board a while back with a slot1 P2-400... He's going to bring it back to see if the FCPGA chip will work. If it does, I'll swap mobo's with him. The down side is his board is all in one, so I have to dig up a nic, sound, video.. and I'll thro in some extra memory for his trouble.

I've got my fingers crossed that the mobo will work with my slotket+chip.

[cloasters]

Dunno if it's worth the effort. There still may be Asus Slockets around. Never had a prob with them. Of course, they'd prolly cost the same as the Slot 1 mobo's you've bought recently!

[BigRed]

Why not just buy a s370 board? Seems like your going through a lot of trouble, just take the easy way out

[SteveI]

Cloasters,
Honestly, I believe the slotket is not the fault. If the mobo is not set to recognise multipliers over 8, it won't work. Unfortunately, I did some digging, and if the mobo makers didn't go through the trouble of updating their bios's for fcpga CPUs, then it can't be done.

BigRed, You make sense, but these cB0's can't do 100 fsb without 1.9-2.0v. I don't want volt mod (too much hassle for these old suckers), and since the slotket has pins on board to control it, I'd rather stick with them if possible. I tried running stock 66fsb, and even then, they need 1.8v now.

Cloasters (again),
I'm considering tossing the CPUs and buying that Asus you mentioned today, and another 1600+AGOIA. I'd rather not, and later have an excuse to upgrade in the spring, but this is killing me.

My buddy's mobo has the same problem, so no go there. Looks like I'll just run the P2-450 on this ZX mobo and keep my eye out for another slot1 mobo... (I'll research the model first before I buy next time.)

[SteveI]

Oh, this little saga gets even better.
While I was messing with my friend's pc, I noticed a few things. I thought I had given him 3 sdram sticks of 32mb each... it turns out 1 stick was a 64mb, but was bad... so I upped his ram a bit. I replaced them so now it's 64 + 64 + 32. It reads as 160something. So that's good.. Well one of the 64mb sticks came out of a Dell SLOT1 mobo I thought was dead... Well it so happens that the stick was in slot 3, So I put the Celeron850 in it (the P2-450 came from the dell too) and a stick of 128mb in slot 1.... Guess what, it booted right up... duh???

I'm gonna be busy tonight testing it out to see if it is good or not. In the mean time, ever see the old massive heatsink on the dell's?? no fan just this massive hs... so I'm gonna attach an enermax fan to it somehow to cool the old 450 in the ZX board, and run the celeron off the dell...

I don't know whether to laugh or cry... I hope someone's getting a kick out of this... 'cause I'm just sitting here typing this and scratching my head, lol.

More to follow...