Upgreade it :)

[Guest]

Finaly I decided on the mobo and Upgrade to a 1 Gig Tbird. It's sweet!
A7PRO mobo (I don't have use of the promise card, and don't like anything built into the board)
1 Gig Tbird (enough for now)
Chrome ORB heatsink/fan combo
128 Mb PC-133 RAM
SB 128 PCI sound
Maxtor 30 Gig 7200 hard drive
Asus 6800 Pure DDR 32 Mb
D-Link 528 Ethernet card (combo)
Acer 32x CD ROM
HP 7500 Seriex CDR-RW
Sony floppy

Installation was simple a sweet after realizing I made a mistake installing all my hardware at once and didn't format drive. I was having problems with everything at first! Removed everything except hard drive, vid card, and did format.

CPU installed with jumpers set to OFF because I couldn't find info on the voltage it need, and in case it's on the CPU it self the store put a nice sticker on it that I can'r take off. LOL damn

1. After installing windows (98se 4.10.2222.A) installed the 4 in 1 drivers first.
2. vid card driver
3. sound card/driver
4. ethernet card/driver
5. mouse driver
It was taking them all nice and sweet. After that I set the RAM speed to 133 MHz in bios. Installed all my usual software, and I was on-line again just under 1 hour. Running the system non-stop since, just to see if it stays up or cough up something. All good till now, Quake 2 timedemo 240 fps, CPU temp 50C/122F, mobo temp 32C/89F.

So far I can't complain about this setup, I would if I didn't rip everything out after problems and start it all fresh, instead of trying to work out the problems. Interesting that using the 2nd PCI slot still gives me a message that the resources (can't remember what) is used by the promise controler card. heheh I don't have that card, but now I know where it will go if I ever need one.

Changes coming up: Set jumpers when I find out right voltage, see if everything running the way it supposed to (like 4x AGP, don't know where to look). Some 3Dmark runs for the fun of it, and hell of a lot action in the gaming department!

So I guess it was a good buy. Now I have to go install all my old stuff into my dad's new Alpha blue case, time for him to use something above that nasty 486-100 he liked so much till now.

 

[Bubba]

Glad everything worked out. See, doing a little reading and research does help and reduces frustration. I wish more people would do it before they jump right into an upgrade project.

To check to see if your card is working at 4X or 2X or even 1X, try a program called WCupid.

The message about having something in the #2 PCI slot sharing with the promise controller always comes up the first time you put something in that slot even if you have the promise disabled. But its very strange that you get this message since you are using the A7Pro and don't even have the promise chip on your board. Maybe the A7V and the A7Pro uset the same bios?
Not to worry.

Good luck.