2CPU.com » News » July 2002 » Random Stuff (tm)...

After a nice lunch and a little DVD shopping, I felt obligated to sit down and surf a little bit. I stumbled upon some interesting and mildly amusing links:

- Via AMDMB.com I noticed a link to an article entitled 'Abit boards have "extreme" failure rate'. I laughed out loud; if this is news it must really be a slow day.

- KDS RAD5 review at Ascully.com. I have three of these LCDs and I'm quite partial to them. In the summer months, enjoy the lack of heat output and power consumption! I feel for those of you sweating behind your large CRTs.

- Over at /. they're talking about Serial ATA, Mandrake being too cool for UnitedLinux and other things that absolutely no one else cares about, anywhere.

- RatedPC has a huge article up about running Linux on your desktop. I may be a unix/Linux geek at heart, but you can have my Windows 2000 Professional cd when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.

I may add additional stuff (that's random) to this as the day progresses. If your weather is anything like the natural sauna we're experiencing in Canada... try to stay cool.

02/22/2001 03:30 PM: Random Stuff by duke
Just thought i'd update you guys on couple of things. First I'd like to congratulate everyone, we were ranked as 19th in yesterdays RC5 stats. Second, I think everyone has heard of this by now but th...

02/03/2001 06:20 PM: Random Stuffs for the Weekend! by J0rdan
Now that Newspro is actually working again (zombied process bad! - Good call on that one MalHavoc, thanks!), I can get back to posting some newsage for you SMP freaks. Let's see what I was able to scr...

Rikimaru Moderator Posts: 1681 Joined: 2001-02-05

#16602 Posted on: 07/03/2002 11:05 PM Abit MB's with circuit problems... you must be kinding:rolleyes: I should have started offering that type of service. It sad but true I've seen all too many Abit boards with dead/bloated caps. Mostly Harmless

fig_wright SMP Fresher Posts: 736 Joined: 2002-02-05

#16603 Posted on: 07/03/2002 11:19 PM You know what - I've never had a bad experience with Abit. Seriously. Our internet-gateway/fileserver/webserver/ftp-server/ssh-server/mySQL-server/gnutellanet-server/seti workhorse/smtp-server/pop3-server and soon to be IMAP server is a old TX5N (Intel TX) that has been modded up (wire trick) to accept an AMD K6-III 450. It's running a stripped down RedHat linux called ClarkConnect. Want to know how many times it's crashed in the 1.5 years that it's been running up there in the loft? None. Zip. Yadda. Didley-squat. Never. The only things that take down that old horse are me and power cuts. That's only happened a few times and the longest stretch so far was 5 months uptime before I took it down to fit a working keyboard. Oh, and it's doing all this on an old recycled 486 SX25 power supply, that previously died and was soldered back to life. Honestly. I swear, Abit have no trouble with design - perhaps they have serious troubles with unreliable components and manufacturing. I like to give the guys credit for catering to the enthusiast market... Mark MSI K7D-L|XP1700x2 @1584MHz|TaiSol CGK760092x2|Crucial 1792MB PC2100 ECC CAS-2.5 @140MHz|Enermax EG465P-VE 431W|Abit Siluro GF3 Ti-200 128MB DVi/TV-out|SBLive! 5.1|NEC USB 2.0|Seagate 7200RPM Barracuda 30GB|Win XP & Ubuntu Hardy

glitch Registered User Posts: 1173 Joined: 2000-11-18

#16604 Posted on: 07/03/2002 11:19 PM If you follow the serial ATA links, there are also mentions of the new ASUS board with AGP 8x, leading to here a site on OC WorkBench. From the main page, "It supports Dual Channel DDR, 8X AGP, S-ATA, Voice Diagnostic and most importantly Gigabit Ethernet."

AssKoala Anti-Zealot @ GATech Posts: 3309 Joined: 2002-01-02

#16605 Posted on: 07/04/2002 12:00 AM Well Florida's summer weather has been crappy as usual! Not the best time for a convertible..Thunderstorms every afternoon. Me Webpage | If you always think like an expert, you'll always be a beginner. | "A handful of knowledgeable people is more effective than an army of fools" -Writing Secure Code, 2nd Ed.

widefault Registered User Posts: 1202 Joined: 2001-02-06

#16606 Posted on: 07/04/2002 12:03 AM Have had five Abit boards. Out of the 5 I had two die on me, neither was a cap problem. One was a VP6, the clock pll melted down. Really, left a nice puddle of reddish-brown goo on the board. This was after I had sold it to someone, when they put it in the case the pll somehow got grounded and the clock shorted out. Other one that died was my first Abit ST6-R. The northbridge went out on that one, a result of running it for around 4 months@176mhz fsb with no cooling except for what air came off the CPU fan. Of course, the RMA process was painless for both. The VP6 cost me $25 because I couldn't prove it was less than a year old, the ST6-R was done for nothing. Both times it was less than 3 week from the day I sent the first E-mail to when I got the replacement board. Ranks close to the speed of Intel(6 business days for a CPU), and WAY ahead of some other major manufacturers. &E

marcocom SMP Veteran Posts: 538 Joined: 2000-08-08

#16607 Posted on: 07/04/2002 01:58 AM no smoochies there. =P "THE GOD-ROTOR" | Tyan TigerMPX-4M | 2xMP 1900+ | 512MB ECC Reg. Corsair DDR | GeForce3 64MB (primary) | 3dfx Voodoo3 PCI (secondary) | AudigyMP3 w/5.1 | Promise FastTRAK100 - 2xIBM 75GXP 45GB - RAID 0 |This machine drinks my beer, has its way with my woman, slaps me around and calls me a sissy bitch.

dji386 SMP Newbie Posts: 6 Joined: 2002-04-01

#16608 Posted on: 07/04/2002 02:25 AM I have three abit mobos. A BP6 running two celerons 450's, a BE6 with a PIII 500Mhz, and a BE6-II with a PIII 750Mhz. I have never had a problem with any of them.

Rikimaru Moderator Posts: 1681 Joined: 2001-02-05

#16609 Posted on: 07/04/2002 03:01 AM Well, I guess your mileage may vary. /me brings out flame retardant suit. I have 3 BP6's, none of them worked reliably until I changed a few VR's and some of the cap's. Most of all the failed Abit mb's I've seen are PII and S370 generation boards. Mostly Harmless

Kimberly Lazarski Unregistered

#16610 Posted on: 07/04/2002 04:45 AM Out of: * (2) Abit IT5-H (I know, ancient history. I've been at this for a while) * (3) Abit BH6 * (1) Abit BX6 * (3) Abit BP6 * (1) Abit VP6 I've had only ONE (1) failure: one motherboard that got damaged in a flood. Every other board, to my knowledge, is still working. The boards have always outlived their usefullness - in fact I'm hoping that Abit comes out with a dual Xeon board because of the track record I've had with their products vs. other manufacturers' crap. In fact one of the WORST product lines I've dealt with when it came to motherboards is Intel's shiat. BTW are there any NON-i860 dual Xeon boards out there which offer an AGP4x slot? I haven't found anything worth buying yet. I'm not interested in on-board sound or video, and because of the tasks I perform (database programming, LOTS of C++ compiling, and media editing) I actually benefit from a server chipset because of the optimized I/O. . . so I'd go for either a workstation or server chipset. Onboard SCSI I could go either way since I have several 2940U2W cards lying around (and no they're not for sale). --Kim

Kimberly Lazarski Unregistered

#16611 Posted on: 07/04/2002 04:49 AM Oops I suppose I should register an account so I could edit posts, because I just remembered some more boards I've used recently, but here goes anyway. I apologise for the double post. * (2) BD7II-RAID * (1) BD7-RAID Again, no failures. The only failed board was the IT5-H which bit the dust in a flood (CPU was still good - I may still have it kicking around somewhere but I'm not sure). That machine's function? It was used to browse the web and dual booted Win98 w/Linux.

snowsquirrel Sheik of SMP Posts: 190 Joined: 2001-03-26

#16612 Posted on: 07/04/2002 09:06 AM If your weather is anything like the natural sauna we're experiencing in Canada... try to stay cool. That's right everyone, Canada is not all snow, igloos, and doglseds. It was 38C here in Saskatoon yesterday. Where else can you get both +40C and -40C. ~S

Big B Psychic or Psycho? Posts: 3631 Joined: 2001-07-03

#16613 Posted on: 07/04/2002 10:33 AM I know this board has some members that are vehemently opposed to Abit products, but that list is kinda old, and may not have any bearing on newer Abit products. If you dig up some of my old posts, you can see that I have the Anti-Abit Coalition (I did intend to kill it, but, uhhh, I never got around to it). Currently, my main box uses the Abit NV7-133R, and it's great. It's been up and running totally stable (and would be running several weeks on end if not for the blasted power failures we've had recently). I don't know if it's the use of an nVidia chipset or what, but this board kicks serious ass in the area of stability. Maybe it's the extreme lack of overclocking options. Maybe Abit has gotten it's collective head out of it's collective ass? I dunno, but the newer Abit boards seem to be doing a lot better in the reliability and stability departments. Hardware Forums|2CPU|My DVD's|Heatware=BigB Gigabyte NF650SLI|2GB OCZ PC6400|Pentium E 2160|GF7900GS (SLI)...XP SP2 MSI P965 Neo-F|1GB SuperTalent PC2-5300|PentiumD 920|Radeon X1650...XP SP2

Bert SMP Newbie Posts: 2 Joined: 2002-05-29

#16614 Posted on: 07/04/2002 06:58 PM I can't wait to see some dullie boards with Serial ATA. As a matter of fact, I'm not going to upgrade my Asus P2B with P2 450MHz PC until I can build a rock-solid-stable 2 horsepower Athlon setup with Serial ATA and at least two 64bit/66MHz slots. Damn right - I'm holding out for onboard Serial ATA, which would be a real motherboard upgrade! I just think it looks silly to see all these new motherboards with old wide-ass IDE and floppy ports. And no, I don't want to waste a PCI slot of any flavor for a Serial ATA card or USB 2 card. All that stuff belongs on the motherboard. And yes, I'm anal about having free PCI slots. Hell, I'm a free PCI slot Nazi when it comes to stuff that I think could & should be on all motherboards Right Now - not in a year or so!

Fr0st Registered User Posts: 493 Joined: 2001-01-05

#16615 Posted on: 07/06/2002 03:44 AM Originally posted by Kimberly Lazarski BTW are there any NON-i860 dual Xeon boards out there which offer an AGP4x slot? Not yet- wait for boards based on the E7505/Placer chipset to appear. Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

Rikimaru Moderator Posts: 1681 Joined: 2001-02-05

#16616 Posted on: 07/15/2002 03:24 AM This confirms that I'm not the only one to have had problems with Abit MB's in the past. Mostly Harmless

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