Which Socket 7 board?

[NRG = mc²]

Hi all,

I've got plenty of spares lying around from work, enough to make a system out of. I'm thinking of making one and giving it to my sister as she doesn't have a computer at the moment and I'm sure she wouldn't mind one to surf the net on.

Basically I need to find some sort of AT case and a Socket 7 mobo - everything else, I have.

I need suggestions for a reliable board that can be got hold of easily on Ebay.

I'm going to use a P200MMX on it (either that or a Cyrix MII-300 (230MHz)), and I've got boatloads of 16mb Compaq, 60ns EDO sticks, but as I'm intending to run NT on it for stability reasons I'd rather be able to get more memory in there than the usual 64mb that would fit on a 4 slot board with the sticks I have. I can probably find larger ones at work but as its such a mess in there no ones knows what is what.

Are there any mainstream boards that have more than 4 memory slots?

Tony must know :wink:

I'm off to look at Redhill's reccomendation, meanwhile you guys give me ideas.

 

[Tea]

There were quite a few HX boards that had lots of EDO slots, Will, but I don't recall ever seeing that on newer ones. Well, hardly ever. I didn't sell that many HX boards so I can't remember which model number was which, I'm afraid.

Alternatively, SDRAM is really, really cheap now - about US$25 for 256MB. If you go that way, an FIC VA-503+ is the best.

 

[NRG = mc²]

Thanks for the suggestion - I forgot that some S7 boards take SDRAM - of which I have plenty as well.

Do you have any experiences with the FIC PA 2012?

 

[Cliptin]

My main file server runs NT. It is a Dell P133 with 64M. It runs pretty well. Especially for someone that doesn't have something to compare to.

I occasionally surf from it for programs and stuff.

 

[NRG = mc²]

Especially for someone that doesn't have something to compare to.

Heh, well... she's used to her machine at work, and God knows what kind of crapbox that one is. She always comments on how fast my machine is over here when she comes round from time to time.

But hey, shes not paying for this, and she didn't even ask for it so if she doesn't like it then tough! :mrgrn:

 

[Clocker]

Get a HX chipset mobo and you can pile on some ram.

C

 

[NRG = mc²]

Found the answer. Don't know if it will be any good but I found a Compaq desktop case with its mobo and a floppy drive for £6 ($10).

Nothing to loose, though to be honest I would feel bad giving her comething with the name Compaq on it

 

[Mercutio]

Most HX boards didn't have the voltage circuits to handle an MMX chip, although HX did support up to 8 SIMM slots.

The FIC 2012 is a very good Socket7 board. It's not the 503+, but it does have an AGP slot, DIMM slots and the characteristic stability of an FIC board from that era. IIRC, it is limited in its support for the "super7" CPUs, probably because of changes in voltage regulation for the later chips.

 

[NRG = mc²]

Thanks - I've gone with the Crapaq board and case and I'll see if its any good otherwise will get the FIC.

 

[NRG = mc²]

I got the case and its mobo yesterday, everything is fine but I cant get into the BIOS, no doubt as it doesnt have the original drive that came with it - I tried downloading the three disks but after creating them it will not boot - NTLDR missing.

Any ideas? (apart from throwing it out of the window - which I am considering)

 

[blakerwry]

as I remember, some compaq's required that you use F8 or f10 to get into the bios.... not the normal esc, del or f1/f2.....

NTLDR missing eh? I believe that means that the boot.ini file is missing, wrong, or corrupted.... most likely it is pointing to the wrong partition on your hdd.


I recommend using a win98/winME bootdisk and booting with CDROM support. FDISK/Format the hdd using FAT (you can reformat/convert it later if you want)... Then i believe you run the winnt.exe file located in the i386 directory of the winNT CD-ROM... follow the instructions from there.

 

[NRG = mc²]

Hi,

Basically, I get this error when trying to boot with the Compaq disks which are the ones that create that partition with the BIOS info. I cannot understand why it wants NTLDR in there?? The hard drive has been totally zeroed.

It just beeps if I try to press the F10 key (or any other key). There is no 'press Fx to enter setup' message displayed. the only thing I get is the memory counting on the top left of the screen and a 'Compaq Deskpro 2000' logo on the bottom right.

 

[Buck]

NRG, are you running Windows NT?

 

[NRG = mc²]

Theres nothing on the drive, I zeroed it two days back.

The machine I used to make the disks was running 2k though, and I dont know what these disks had on them previously

 

[Buck]

Ah yes, you made a bootable diskette under Windows2000, so it is prompting for the System Files. Can you create those diskettes under Windows 98 or 95?

 

[NRG = mc²]

I made these using the .BAT file I downloaded - it then did all the formatting etc by itself so shouldn't that work anyway?

I have no 9x machines to do it from, do you think if I booted to DOS and ran the BAT file from there to create the floppies in DOS it would work?

 

[Buck]

It just might. You're not trying to install the diagnostic partition, are you?

 

[NRG = mc²]

I made the disks in DOS, and this time I get the message bad command interpreter and the mahcine halts - I have to reset it.

I am trying to make that partition - ROMPaq or whatever they call it. Crapaq would be much more honest.

Basically I want to get to the BIOS and I cant! Also, I tried installing Win98 on two different hard drives and it says I have no hard drive connected.

But as Compaq are so genius, there is nothing to tell me what it is detecting and what it isnt so I cannot tell what the problem is.

Wha was wrong about the good old POST display and regular BIOS that they had to go screw it up so royally. I've spent three hours on this POS to do something that could be done on any other machine in 2 minutes!!

Should have just found a regular old AT case and used the MSI board I have sitting here.

 

[Buck]

NRG, you shouldn't be required to install the RomPAQ. If you boot to the first diskette, you should be able to access the BIOS and set up your drives that way. The RomPAQ is NOT the BIOS, it is diagnostic software and a UI for the BIOS (which loads when you boot to the diskette anyway).

 

[NRG = mc²]

Well... it wont boot to any

Thanks for the help, I'll have another look at the compaq site and if I cant get it working it goes out of the window, literally :frusty:

 

[Buck]

Make sure that the diskette is bootable. Not having the command interpreter means that either command.com, io.sys or msdos.sys is missing. You can always sys your floppy.

 

[Mercutio]

... of course, Compaq has occasionally been known to link to the wrong ROMPaq on their site. I've run into that problem before.

 

[NRG = mc²]

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?h...g33kknpc429oe940n5a6cc7ff818%404ax.com&rnum=6

Exact same problem. Maybe my floppies are bad or something...

 

[Buck]

Don't forget NRG, lift with the legs and don't twist your shoulders separate from your hips when you swing that thing out the window.

 

[NRG = mc²]

OK, I made the floppies once more, from DOS (booted from W98 startup disk).

Still gives same error. Then I do an ls and the disks, each and every one of them are empty! I check it in Windows also and the same - no hidden files, just 72kb used space on all three.

WTF?

 

[NRG = mc²]

ls... been spending too much time on Solaris for uni lately. Dir of course.

 

[Buck]

What was the outcome NRG?

 

[NRG = mc²]

There was no outcome.

I just sold the entire machine on ebay and told the guy I couldnt get the BIOS to install. He didnt seem to mind.

I mean, it works fine but you cant mess with anything and thats not good