Resurrecting the deads.

[CougTek]

Maybe I ate something that had oestrogen in it or I just felt weird, but I decided to do some housekeeping today.

I did a short inventory of my old, unused computer parts :

• Duron DHD1600LV1C (I thought Duron stopped at 1.4GHz, not 1.6GHz)
  Athlon Thunderbird 800MHz
  
  Asus A7N266-VM (nForce220-D, µ-ATX)
  ECS L7VTA rev. 1.0 (VIA KT400 + VT8235 south bridge)
  
  "Elixir" 256MB PC2100 Cas 2.5
  "Elixir" 256MB PC2700 Cas 3
  
  Diamond Stealth graphic card AGP (Savage 3D GPU I think)
  ATI Radeon 9100 64MB AGP, with a dead fan
  Guillemot Maxi Gamer Xentor 32MB AGP, also with a dead fan
  GigaByte unknown nVidia GPU, AGP
  
  Zalman CNPS-7000A -AlCu s462/s478/s754
  AMD retail socket-A heatsink
  
  Enermax EG301P-VB 300W (single rear fan)
  Antec SL300S (single rear fan)
  Antec SL350S (single rear fan)
  Antec SL350 (dual fans)
  
  One smashed Antec SLK3700AMB.
  One seriously smashed Antec SLK2600AMB.
  Another generic mid-tower ATX, one side panel missing.
  
  8GB Quantum Fireball CX
  Seagate Barracuda ST39175LW 8GB (scuzzy)
  
  One floppy drive
  
  Adaptec AAA-131U2 PCI
  
  No less than 10 power cords
  
  10ft parallel male-to-male cable

Each and every component is suspected to be dead, except for the Quantum Fireball CX and the Adaptec SCSI controller (and the power cords are all functional). I hope I'll be able do resurrect the Duron and the Asus motherboard, as well as one of the DIMM module, so I can add a low-end box to my folding effort. I'll still need to buy an optical drive and a new enclosure though.

I would like to have a system on which I could test the Win2K installation CD I made with nLite.

 

[CougTek]

Incredible.

On the very first attempt, it worked. I put together the Duron (1.6GHz confirmed) topped by the Zalman heatsink on the Asus motherboard, with the PC2100 DIMM module and the Quantum hard drive, all this powered by the Antec SL350S. It booted up just fine. I even realized that I had Win2K installed on the Quantum!

As soon as I'll have an optical drive, I'll test the RAM (I'm sure the floppy I have in my inventory is dead) and I'll make a fresh OS install. That won't boost my folding stats by much, by every bit counts.

:mrgrn:

 

[Mercutio]

If you find out that all your RAM works, I happen to know that jtr could really use a 184-pin DIMM of some kind...

 

[timwhit]

I can too. I had a 512MB PC2700 DIMM go bad a while ago.

 

[jtr1962]

If you find out that all your RAM works, I happen to know that jtr could really use a 184-pin DIMM of some kind...

I'm actually busy checking out RAM right now so if Coug gets the other DIMM working Tim could probably use it more than me. Best price I've found for 1GB PC3200 so far is $68.49. If anyone knows of any better prices please let me know soon since I'm about ready to order. Note that I need low-density 1GB modules here-apparently the cheaper high-density ones won't work in the A7N8X-E.

 

[timwhit]

I should probably just order a gig of new memory at that price.

But, with the evil holidays coming up I should probably save my money and wait until next year when all the gift giving is over.

 

[CougTek]

Ok, so I re-flashed the BIOS (now version 1.07), installed an OS and configured everything (add a Duron 1.6GHz to my folding farm). Then I tested the PC2100 module using Memtest 86 v3.2. It had a bandwidth of 585MB/s according to Memtest. I let it run for two hours. After that, I came back to the computer and noticed it registered 14 errors during the sixth test of the third pass. All the other 8 passes were error-free. Fairly good, but not perfect and I didn't like it.

I swapped the PC2100 module for the PC2700 one. I let it run for a single hour. Even though I thought it was bad, it turned out that it got no error during the first 5 passes. The bandwidth was a bit better than with the PC2100 module too (652MB/s). I freaked out and decided that it was good enough, not whiling to let it run for another hour to see if errors would appear.

So I'll keep the 256MB PC2700 module. If anyone wants a 256MB PC2100 DIMM that's perfect 8 times on 9 according to Memtest 86, just let me know.

 

[CougTek]

Ok so the ECS mainboard and T'bird 800MHz also work. I used the PC2100 DIMM on it and the defective Diamond Stealth AGP card (the colors are dark, probably because the analog signal is too weak). I can confirm that the Adaptec AAA-131U2 works, but that the Barracuda 18LP 9.1GB (not 8GB like I first tought) doesn't.

I'll try the other graphic cards while I'm at it.

 

[CougTek]

The Guillemot Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 works, its fan isn't completely dead. The Radeon 9100 is dead capoute. I won't bother testing the GigaByte card.

I put a Western Digital WD400JB that I had in surplus and I installed Kubuntu 6.04 on the system. Unfortunately, I have no cable to connect it to my network, so it won't be of any use for me except for testing. Too bad I don't have an intact enclosure for it because it would still be a decent office box with another RAM module (256MB is not enough).

So for archiving purpose, I've been able to assemble the two following systems out of my spare parts :

• SYSTEM I
  Duron 1.6GHz
  Zalman CNPS-7000A -AlCu
  Asus A7N266-VM
  256MB PC2700
  Quantum Fireball CX
  (I added a DVD-ROM and I packed it all inside an X-Qpack µ-ATX cube)
  
  SYSTEM II
  Athlon 800MHz
  AMD retail fan
  ECS L7VTA rev. 1.0 (VIA KT400)
  256MB PC2100
  Guillemot Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 AGP
  WD400JB

I'll probably swap the hard drives someday, put the old CX in the older box and the WD400JB into the newer µATX enclosure.