Are the dimensions of these mobos the same?

B wrote:
Hi,

I downloaded the manuals so that I could learn the width and length
of three ASUS mobos, if one board has the same dimensoins as another,
but it occurred to me that you guys might know already, without having
to check..

Right now I have am A7M266 but it seems to have failed**

A friend who gives me his old hardware has given me
an A8N-SLI Deluxe and an A7V600,

I could put either of these in the case that now holds the A7M266, if
they will fit***, but before I tried, I wanted to measure, or check in
the manuals, or ask you. ????

***I figure tha tif the boards are the same dimensions, the mounting
screw and plastic post holes and slots will also be in the same
places.

Thanks a lot

**I'm not sure the mobo is broken. Feel free to iIgnore this if it
is off topic . I was using the computer when all of a sudden the
screen image turned to black and it started to restart. A second
later it started to restart again, and again and again. I pressed and
held the On button and turned the computer off. The power supply
case seemed hot but not burning hot and there was a bit of a smell.
I let it cool off a couple hours and ran it again. It was fine for a
hour and then stopped without trying to restart. I slept and the next
day, pushing the ON button wouldn't do anything. I removed the power
supply and installed another, brand new one, but still nothing
happens when I push the ON button. I opened the old power supply and
there is definitely heat damage. Could a bad power supply have
ruined the mobo? It's time for an upgrade anyhow, but I'd like
to know. If the mobo can be saved, I'd use it for something else.

Thanks again.

ATX motherboards come in standard sizes. Full size is 12"x9.6", while
microATX is 9.6"x9.6". Now, that being said, the most important thing,
is whether the I/O area lines up, and whether the screw holes are common.
You'll find the microATX holes are a subset of the full size holes.
So generally speaking, you have nothing to worry about there. If
your computer case could take a full sized 12"x9.6" motherboard,
you can use another full or you can use a microATX.

Motherboard makers cheat on the dimensions. The cheaper the motherboard
gets, the less wide it is. An expensive board might be 9.6" wide,
while the cheapest of boards might be 7.0" wide. This can cause a problem,
since the right-most mounting holes would be missing if the motherboard
is only 7.0" wide. If you were to press on the right-most edge of the
narrow motherboard, the motherboard would flex a lot. Some users are
quite irate, when they discover this mechanical shortcoming. To Asus,
every inch of PCB material counts (they'll chisel off pennies worth
of material, because they make millions of motherboard). You can always
make a wedge of some material, to support the weakened area (something
that doesn't conduct obviously).

*******

Before installing the new motherboard, pop out the old I/O plate on
the computer case. If your friend has given you both the motherboard
and its accompanying I/O plate, you can snap the new plate in, before
installing the motherboard. There is no excuse for holding on to the
I/O plate, since the next new motherboard will have its own custom
I/O plate. The I/O plate touches some of the connector bodies and
attempts to drain static discharge or electrical noise that might
cause emissions to the outside world. Once the I/O plate is there,
you can then drop the motherboard into place.

******

The power supply could have failed. Some supplies are notorious for
damaging the motherboard they're connected to (Bestec 250W). At the
first sign of trouble, you should stop using the supply. Attempting
to beat on the power button, until all signs of life have disappeared,
is taking a chance.

A board like the A7M266 probably leans heavily on the 5V rail. It
could be that the 5V rail died on the power supply. Since that is
a relatively old board, it sounds like you did get some good use
from it.

I'm surprised that a new supply didn't give some response. On
some motherboards, if you pushed the power button, the fans
will "twitch" a little bit. That is a sign that the supply
started for about 50 milliseconds, and then something shut off
on overload. No twitching at all implies a different problem.

Asus motherboards usually have a green LED on the surface of
the motherboard, and that is tied to +5VSB. The first thing
you want to do, is connect the new supply, and verify the
green LED comes on, when you flip the switch on the supply
itself. Now, when you press the front power button (the "soft"
ON button), look at the green LED. Does the green LED remain
steadily lit ? Or does it blink or glitch ? It should remain
steady at all times if the power supply is happy. You need
+5VSB to be present, as otherwise the front power switch won't
be able to do its job. The front power switch is "conditioned"
by motherboard logic, before being sent to the power supply. That
motherboard logic runs from +5VSB. And that is why it is important,
especially with the convenient green LED that Asus provides,
to verify you're getting +5VSB.

HTH,
Paul

Hi,

I downloaded the manuals so that I could learn the width and length
of three ASUS mobos, if one board has the same dimensoins as another,
but it occurred to me that you guys might know already, without having
to check..

Right now I have am A7M266 but it seems to have failed**

A friend who gives me his old hardware has given me
an A8N-SLI Deluxe and an A7V600,

I could put either of these in the case that now holds the A7M266, if
they will fit***, but before I tried, I wanted to measure, or check in
the manuals, or ask you. ????

***I figure tha tif the boards are the same dimensions, the mounting
screw and plastic post holes and slots will also be in the same
places.

Thanks a lot


**I'm not sure the mobo is broken. Feel free to iIgnore this if it
is off topic . I was using the computer when all of a sudden the
screen image turned to black and it started to restart. A second
later it started to restart again, and again and again. I pressed and
held the On button and turned the computer off. The power supply
case seemed hot but not burning hot and there was a bit of a smell.
I let it cool off a couple hours and ran it again. It was fine for a
hour and then stopped without trying to restart. I slept and the next
day, pushing the ON button wouldn't do anything. I removed the power
supply and installed another, brand new one, but still nothing
happens when I push the ON button. I opened the old power supply and
there is definitely heat damage. Could a bad power supply have
ruined the mobo? It's time for an upgrade anyhow, but I'd like
to know. If the mobo can be saved, I'd use it for something else.


Thanks again.

On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:16:34 -0500, Paul wrote:

B wrote:
Hi,

I downloaded the manuals so that I could learn the width and length
of three ASUS mobos, if one board has the same dimensoins as another,
but it occurred to me that you guys might know already, without having
to check..

Right now I have am A7M266 but it seems to have failed**

A friend who gives me his old hardware has given me
an A8N-SLI Deluxe and an A7V600,

I could put either of these in the case that now holds the A7M266, if
they will fit***, but before I tried, I wanted to measure, or check in
the manuals, or ask you. ????

***I figure tha tif the boards are the same dimensions, the mounting
screw and plastic post holes and slots will also be in the same
places.

Thanks a lot

**I'm not sure the mobo is broken. Feel free to iIgnore this if it
is off topic . I was using the computer when all of a sudden the
screen image turned to black and it started to restart. A second
later it started to restart again, and again and again. I pressed and
held the On button and turned the computer off. The power supply
case seemed hot but not burning hot and there was a bit of a smell.
I let it cool off a couple hours and ran it again. It was fine for a
hour and then stopped without trying to restart. I slept and the next
day, pushing the ON button wouldn't do anything. I removed the power
supply and installed another, brand new one, but still nothing
happens when I push the ON button. I opened the old power supply and
there is definitely heat damage. Could a bad power supply have
ruined the mobo? It's time for an upgrade anyhow, but I'd like
to know. If the mobo can be saved, I'd use it for something else.

Thanks again.

Let me say this up front . Thank you for a great answer.

ATX motherboards come in standard sizes. Full size is 12"x9.6", while
microATX is 9.6"x9.6". Now, that being said, the most important thing,
is whether the I/O area lines up, and whether the screw holes are common.
You'll find the microATX holes are a subset of the full size holes.
So generally speaking, you have nothing to worry about there. If
your computer case could take a full sized 12"x9.6" motherboard,
you can use another full or you can use a microATX.

Motherboard makers cheat on the dimensions. The cheaper the motherboard
gets, the less wide it is. An expensive board might be 9.6" wide,
while the cheapest of boards might be 7.0" wide. This can cause a problem,
since the right-most mounting holes would be missing if the motherboard
is only 7.0" wide. If you were to press on the right-most edge of the
narrow motherboard, the motherboard would flex a lot. Some users are
quite irate, when they discover this mechanical shortcoming. To Asus,
every inch of PCB material counts (they'll chisel off pennies worth
of material, because they make millions of motherboard). You can always

I thought ASUS was better than that. Seriously. That's all my friend
uses and I figured he figured it was hot stuff.

make a wedge of some material, to support the weakened area (something
that doesn't conduct obviously).

I did that once. (I had only assembled one before my friend started
giving me stuff, and I think I used an AT case that I already had with
a smaller mobo.) I put some styrofoam, or maybe the harder stuff is
called something else, under the board. It worked fine for years.

*******

Before installing the new motherboard, pop out the old I/O plate on
the computer case. If your friend has given you both the motherboard
and its accompanying I/O plate, you can snap the new plate in, before
installing the motherboard. There is no excuse for holding on to the
I/O plate, since the next new motherboard will have its own custom
I/O plate.

Yes, but despite that, he didnt' give it to me. He's funny that way.
I'd only built one computer and was very uneasy at first. He wouldn't
give me the CDs or the manuals for any of the hardware he gave me,
even when I asked. (I've stopped asking.) Even when he gave me two of
something so he would have one even if he gave me one. He would say I
can download everything, but I don't think that's really true. Drivers
are usually there but some of the special software to do fancy things
isn't on the web, I'm pretty sure.

For example, I don't think the ASUS probe software that says how hot
the mobo is was on the web when I put the current computer together,
but that might have been the one time he gave me the CD that came with
the mobo. I stopped using it, but I'm going to try to install it now,
because i'm a trifle worried about mroe overheating. (The longer I
waited to post back, the less worried I am.)

The I/O plate touches some of the connector bodies and
attempts to drain static discharge or electrical noise that might
cause emissions to the outside world.

If I can't buy an i/o plate, maybe I could make something to duplicate
that part of it. Not pretty so much but at least touching the
connector body. Does it have to touch them all, or are they all
grounded together?

Once the I/O plate is there,
you can then drop the motherboard into place.

******

The power supply could have failed. Some supplies are notorious for
damaging the motherboard they're connected to (Bestec 250W). At the
first sign of trouble, you should stop using the supply. Attempting

Yes, I shoudl have done that. I also should have gone to the doctor
when I first noticed my hiatal hernia, but I waited 2 years until I
had to go to the emergency room. It seems I haven't learned much from
that experience.

to beat on the power button, until all signs of life have disappeared,
is taking a chance.

A board like the A7M266 probably leans heavily on the 5V rail. It
could be that the 5V rail died on the power supply. Since that is
a relatively old board, it sounds like you did get some good use
from it.

I'm surprised that a new supply didn't give some response. On

I too. I thought even damaged it would do a little.

some motherboards, if you pushed the power button, the fans
will "twitch" a little bit. That is a sign that the supply
started for about 50 milliseconds, and then something shut off
on overload. No twitching at all implies a different problem.

Asus motherboards usually have a green LED on the surface of
the motherboard, and that is tied to +5VSB. The first thing
you want to do, is connect the new supply, and verify the
green LED comes on, when you flip the switch on the supply
itself. Now, when you press the front power button (the "soft"
ON button), look at the green LED. Does the green LED remain

The green light was on with the old power supply, but after I read
this, I coudlnt' remember if it was on with the new power supply. I'd
already fully connected, then fully disconnected it, so I just plugged
in the power cord, and yes, the green light was on. Then I noticed
the breeeze coming from the fan, and then I noticed that the lights in
the front were on or blinking!!!!

So I unplugged it, took it upstairs and fully connected it and it
works!!!! At first I attributed this to one of those flukes that I
can't account for, but after a few minutes I started to account for
it. I think earlier in the day I connected everything but the power
cord. It's the shortest cord, so I save it for last.

In practice, I almost certainly would have checked one more time
before starting to take apart the computer, either to replace the mobo
or to move the harddrive to another setup. My normal, long-time habit
is to check one more time before disassembling anything. But I've
made a lot of mistakes lately, and you kept me from making this one.

steadily lit ? Or does it blink or glitch ? It should remain
steady at all times if the power supply is happy. You need
+5VSB to be present, as otherwise the front power switch won't
be able to do its job. The front power switch is "conditioned"
by motherboard logic, before being sent to the power supply. That
motherboard logic runs from +5VSB. And that is why it is important,
especially with the convenient green LED that Asus provides,
to verify you're getting +5VSB.

HTH,

It helps a lot. Who knows what I really would have done if you hadn't
reminded me of the green light.

Paul

The only remaining quetion is: The case came with a 450 watt power
supply, but the largest one I had last night was 275 watts. Is it
possible everything could work but the CPU fan, or the power supply
fan or that other little fan? Because the capacity of the pwer
supply is too low?

So far everything seems fine, but I haven't used a CD drive, or upped
the RAM from 1gig to 1.5 gig, which I plan to do if I can get win98SE
to run with 1.5 gig.

I looked online at power supplies and one afaict didn't have any of
the four-pin molex connectors. Is that possible? Maybe they just
didn't put a picture of them, even though they did have individual
pictures of a SATA connector and 4 and 8 and 24 pin connectors.)

Is any 450 or 500 watt ATX power supply going to work for me?

I"m going to go back to win98 where the ASUS probe works. I had
stopped running it but will again for a while. I'm looking for the
installation program, which wasn't on the ASUS download page and is
probalby on the CD my friend gave me once. I was going to say that it
probably has a version for XP, but otoh, maybe XP didn't exist then.
Maybe win2000 did.

So again, thanks a lot.

The computer ran very slow when I started it the first time with the
new power supply. That started me thinking some vottage/maximum
amperage was too low. The inactive desktop had changed to active for
some reason, or vice versa, and just changing windows took 2 seconds.
I restarted and it was just as slow, but restarting again put it back
to normal. Go figure.

mm wrote:


It helps a lot. Who knows what I really would have done if you hadn't
reminded me of the green light.

The only remaining quetion is: The case came with a 450 watt power
supply, but the largest one I had last night was 275 watts. Is it
possible everything could work but the CPU fan, or the power supply
fan or that other little fan? Because the capacity of the pwer
supply is too low?

So far everything seems fine, but I haven't used a CD drive, or upped
the RAM from 1gig to 1.5 gig, which I plan to do if I can get win98SE
to run with 1.5 gig.

I looked online at power supplies and one afaict didn't have any of
the four-pin molex connectors. Is that possible? Maybe they just
didn't put a picture of them, even though they did have individual
pictures of a SATA connector and 4 and 8 and 24 pin connectors.)

Is any 450 or 500 watt ATX power supply going to work for me?

I"m going to go back to win98 where the ASUS probe works. I had
stopped running it but will again for a while. I'm looking for the
installation program, which wasn't on the ASUS download page and is
probalby on the CD my friend gave me once. I was going to say that it
probably has a version for XP, but otoh, maybe XP didn't exist then.
Maybe win2000 did.

So again, thanks a lot.

The computer ran very slow when I started it the first time with the
new power supply. That started me thinking some vottage/maximum
amperage was too low. The inactive desktop had changed to active for
some reason, or vice versa, and just changing windows took 2 seconds.
I restarted and it was just as slow, but restarting again put it back
to normal. Go figure.

Computers were meant to be mysterious. I don't know why the speed would
change after a couple reboots.

Well, tonight I'm on ADSL again, instead of dialup. So I can take a
look at an A7M266 manual.

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/asus/mb/so...a7m266-104.pdf

You'd probably need 65W for the processor. I have a table of power
numbers for S462 processors, but that is a nice round number to start
with.

The board has two RAM slots, and this example of DDR is rated at
4.4W per stick.

http://www.valueram.com/datasheets/KVR266X64C25_512.pdf

The picture of the A7M266 shows very little in the way of heatsinks
on the chipset, so the motherboard itself probably doesn't draw
much power. My guesstimate for system power is about 120W + video_card,
and a non-gamer video card of that generation would be in the 35W range.

Most of your power consumption will be from the lower voltage
rails of the power supply. +12V won't have much of a load on it.
(2.6A minimum.) If we take 65W from the 5V rail for the processor,
that is 5V at 13A. Again, not a problem for most power supplies
today. Where the load would become more significant, would be
if you had the A7M266-D (dual S462) board, as then the load is
up to the limits of the main power cable amperage rating.

So, take a look again at the 275W supply. Chances are, it has
enough total watts for the job. You'd need to check the
ratings of each rail, like seeing whether the 5V rail has at
least 13A. The 3.3V and 5V have a "combined power rating", but
I don't have a number I'd trust for the 3.3V load. The video
card might use 6A from 3.3V, and the chipset on the motherboard
probably uses a bit. And the power for the DIMMs has to come
from somewhere (that could be another 3 amps). I think there
is a fair chance the 275W could work.

If you know the make and model of the supply, or ideally,
if you can find a picture of the label with the ratings printed
on it, I could take a look at it. All the numbers on the label
mean something, which is why it is easier to just find a picture,
rather than you wasting a lot of time copying all that info into
a post.

Your AGP slot goes up to AGP 4X, so I suppose you could have added
a very hot video card to the system. That could make some difference
to the power picture.

If you want to move up to a 400W or 500W supply, there should be
no problem. What you want to do though, is search for something
with better 3.3V and 5V ratings, as those are going to be doing the
work for you. The thing is, modern systems load 12V a lot more than
anything else. There are some high efficiency modern supplies with
anemic 3.3V and 5V ratings. So I'd look for something with a little
more beef in that area.

My current supply, is a bridge between the old and the new.
(You can't buy it now by the way, so there is no point in naming it.)
It has 3.3V @ 30A, 5V @ 30A, 12V1 @ 22A, 12V2 @ 20A. If you were to
total up all the volts times amps, it comes out to more than
the 460W total rating. The idea behind supplies like that, is
usually only one rail is heavily loaded. That supply can be
used with older systems (like my A7N8X S462 board), as it has
good strong 3.3V and 5V. And it also works on my current
Core2 system, where the 12V rail is the one that gets loaded.
I could probably even handle a high end PCI Express
video card on that power supply, without too much complaint.
But that supply isn't typical of what is on the market today.
You might find 3.3V @ 20A and 5V @ 20A, which doesn't leave
quite as much margin. You know you're using maybe 13A on
5V for the processor, 1A for hard drive, 1.5A for CDROM,
and perhaps an unknown amount for the motherboard. That is
getting pretty close to the 20A number.

As an example, the specs on this one are good (as specs go),
but there are a few too many DOAs reported in the customer
reviews. +3.3V @ 32A, +5V @ 34A, +12V1 @ 16A, +12V2 @ 17A.
That makes it a nice multi-generation supply. If you're on a
budget, you could play "wheel of fortune" and see if they
ship you a dead one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817339019

This one is a lot more expensive, but I bet this will be working
next year. +3.3V @ 30A, +5V @ 30A, +12V1 @ 18A, +12V2 @ 18A
Reviews look better. The only thing to watch with Fortron FSP
supplies, is to check the cables it comes with are long
enough. On their cheaper supplies, they skimp on wire.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817104034

*******

With regard to the I/O plate, you don't absolutely need it.
It isn't worth the time to try to fake one either, as you
won't be able to get the right "springy" metal to make one.
I wouldn't worry about it.

When I was using Win98SE, the limit I heard was 1GB total. There are
two settings you can use, to tune for a stable system. The first
one, fixed an address space limitation in Windows. Limiting
the vcache, prevents the system from running out of address
space. Units are bytes and the number is decimal. The second
one, is when there is too much RAM physically installed
in the computer. I used that on my current computer, which
has 2GB total RAM. By setting MaxPhysPage to a hexadecimal
number, you limit the visible memory. If you stay at 1GB,
you probably don't need to add that setting to "system.ini".

[vcache]
MaxFileCache=524288 (or a lesser number if you want)

[386enh]
MaxPhysPage=40000 (limits physical RAM reported to Win98 to 1GB.
The last time I tried this, I used 20000 just
to remain safe.)

Paul

On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:21:33 -0500, Paul wrote:


As an example, the specs on this one are good (as specs go),
but there are a few too many DOAs reported in the customer
reviews. +3.3V @ 32A, +5V @ 34A, +12V1 @ 16A, +12V2 @ 17A.
That makes it a nice multi-generation supply. If you're on a
budget, you could play "wheel of fortune" and see if they
ship you a dead one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817339019

This one is a lot more expensive, but I bet this will be working
next year. +3.3V @ 30A, +5V @ 30A, +12V1 @ 18A, +12V2 @ 18A
Reviews look better. The only thing to watch with Fortron FSP
supplies, is to check the cables it comes with are long
enough. On their cheaper supplies, they skimp on wire.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817104034

I notice that my PSU that burned out and all the others I have has a
-5v output.

And one of the pins on my A7M266 currently in use expects -5v. Also
the A7V600 and A8N-SLI Deluxe that I plan to use.

But there is no -5v listed on either of these new ones.
Does that mean it's really not there? Or it doesn't really matter if
it's there or not?

Here, next to -5 V, it says n/a
http://hecgroupusa.com/products/swit...tx-12v/hp485d/

Is this a problem?

I guess you would have noticed, it it were, but....

mm wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:21:33 -0500, Paul wrote:

As an example, the specs on this one are good (as specs go),
but there are a few too many DOAs reported in the customer
reviews. +3.3V @ 32A, +5V @ 34A, +12V1 @ 16A, +12V2 @ 17A.
That makes it a nice multi-generation supply. If you're on a
budget, you could play "wheel of fortune" and see if they
ship you a dead one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817339019

This one is a lot more expensive, but I bet this will be working
next year. +3.3V @ 30A, +5V @ 30A, +12V1 @ 18A, +12V2 @ 18A
Reviews look better. The only thing to watch with Fortron FSP
supplies, is to check the cables it comes with are long
enough. On their cheaper supplies, they skimp on wire.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817104034

I notice that my PSU that burned out and all the others I have has a
-5v output.

And one of the pins on my A7M266 currently in use expects -5v. Also
the A7V600 and A8N-SLI Deluxe that I plan to use.

But there is no -5v listed on either of these new ones.
Does that mean it's really not there? Or it doesn't really matter if
it's there or not?

Here, next to -5 V, it says n/a
http://hecgroupusa.com/products/swit...tx-12v/hp485d/

Is this a problem?

I guess you would have noticed, it it were, but....

Ouch. I missed that.

The standards removed that some time ago. The first link, is from about
the year 2000, and the -5V is still present there. The second is Apr.2003
and they removed -5V in that one. The A7M266 could be from 2001 or so, so
it is in between those two dates.

http://web.archive.org/web/200304240...12V_PS_1_1.pdf (page 27)

http://www.formfactors.org/developer...X12V_1_3dg.pdf (page 30)

http://www.formfactors.org/developer...public_br2.pdf (page 37)

I don't know of a good way to predict what will happen, if you connect
a supply with no -5V on it. It is possible the board won't start.

Even if you had a working setup, and attempted to measure the current flow
on -5V, it might not be conclusive as to whether the board was actually
using it or not. For example, a board not using it, may still choose to
connect the voltage monitor chip to -5V and take readings from it. The
current flow in that case would be a tiny one, and you wouldn't know,
short of testing it, whether the board would actually gate off POWER_GOOD
using the status of that signal or not.

If you purchased a 20 pin extension cable, opened the -5V wire by cutting
it in two, you'd have a way to convert your existing power supply with -5V,
into a newer supply without -5V. But that would likely cost you $10, to buy
a power supply extension cable for testing purposes.

There is no indication in the vip.asus.com forum, that the board has a
-5V dependency. One person asks the question, but nobody answered. And
there is no account of someone buying a new power supply, and their
A7M266 didn't start or anything.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx...Language=en-us

You can still find power supplies with -5V, but the reviews on this one
aren't the best. +3.3 @ 35A, +5V @ 46A, +12 @ 26A, -12V @ 0.8A, -5 @ 1A, +5VSB @ 2A
The specs look nice. The power rating obviously isn't 630W, as it is only $26.
It is just a 350/400W with imaginative overall power rating.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817165004

It is also possible for a person to add a -5V signal to the connector.
You can get a 7905 regulator, and use that to create a -5V regulated
power signal. The hardest part would be finding a crimp pin to add
to the main ATX power connector. This chip can take -12V and make
-5V from it. You wouldn't want to actually supply a lot of current
with this idea. It would be for a motherboard that wouldn't start,
unless it got a few milliamps on -5V. For serious power output,
the TO220 case should have a heatsink added to it. The heatsink
will cost a lot more than the 7905 will.

http://www.national.com/ds/LM/LM7905.pdf

Motherboards shouldn't really be relying on that signal, but you
will find cases of certain models that won't start unless -5V
is present. And there is no single web page, with a list
of what boards have that dependency.

Paul

On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:21:33 -0500, Paul wrote:

mm wrote:


It helps a lot. Who knows what I really would have done if you hadn't
reminded me of the green light.

The only remaining quetion is: The case came with a 450 watt power
supply, but the largest one I had last night was 275 watts. Is it
possible everything could work but the CPU fan, or the power supply
fan or that other little fan? Because the capacity of the pwer
supply is too low?

So far everything seems fine, but I haven't used a CD drive, or upped
the RAM from 1gig to 1.5 gig, which I plan to do if I can get win98SE
to run with 1.5 gig.

I looked online at power supplies and one afaict didn't have any of
the four-pin molex connectors. Is that possible? Maybe they just
didn't put a picture of them, even though they did have individual
pictures of a SATA connector and 4 and 8 and 24 pin connectors.)

Is any 450 or 500 watt ATX power supply going to work for me?

I"m going to go back to win98 where the ASUS probe works. I had
stopped running it but will again for a while. I'm looking for the
installation program, which wasn't on the ASUS download page and is
probalby on the CD my friend gave me once. I was going to say that it
probably has a version for XP, but otoh, maybe XP didn't exist then.
Maybe win2000 did.

So again, thanks a lot.

The computer ran very slow when I started it the first time with the
new power supply. That started me thinking some vottage/maximum
amperage was too low. The inactive desktop had changed to active for
some reason, or vice versa, and just changing windows took 2 seconds.
I restarted and it was just as slow, but restarting again put it back
to normal. Go figure.

Computers were meant to be mysterious. I don't know why the speed would
change after a couple reboots.



Well, tonight I'm on ADSL again, instead of dialup. So I can take a
look at an A7M266 manual.

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/asus/mb/so...a7m266-104.pdf

You'd probably need 65W for the processor. I have a table of power
numbers for S462 processors, but that is a nice round number to start
with.

The board has two RAM slots, and this example of DDR is rated at
4.4W per stick.

http://www.valueram.com/datasheets/KVR266X64C25_512.pdf

The picture of the A7M266 shows very little in the way of heatsinks
on the chipset,

That's right, not much in the way of heatsinks..

so the motherboard itself probably doesn't draw
much power.

Aha, that makes sense.

My guesstimate for system power is about 120W + video_card,
and a non-gamer video card of that generation would be in the 35W range.

Yes, I'm a non-gamer.

Most of your power consumption will be from the lower voltage
rails of the power supply. +12V won't have much of a load on it.
(2.6A minimum.) If we take 65W from the 5V rail for the processor,
that is 5V at 13A. Again, not a problem for most power supplies
today. Where the load would become more significant, would be
if you had the A7M266-D (dual S462) board, as then the load is
up to the limits of the main power cable amperage rating.

No, no dual.

So, take a look again at the 275W supply. Chances are, it has
enough total watts for the job. You'd need to check the
ratings of each rail, like seeing whether the 5V rail has at
least 13A. The 3.3V and 5V have a "combined power rating", but

[Do this.]

I don't have a number I'd trust for the 3.3V load. The video
card might use 6A from 3.3V, and the chipset on the motherboard
probably uses a bit. And the power for the DIMMs has to come
from somewhere (that could be another 3 amps). I think there
is a fair chance the 275W could work.

If you know the make and model of the supply, or ideally,
if you can find a picture of the label with the ratings printed
on it, I could take a look at it. All the numbers on the label
mean something, which is why it is easier to just find a picture,
rather than you wasting a lot of time copying all that info into
a post.

Your AGP slot goes up to AGP 4X, so I suppose you could have added
a very hot video card to the system. That could make some difference
to the power picture.

I just got a newer card. In order to run Google Earth, which requires
3D. A Radeon 7000 AGP with 64 meg. (Also, now I can use standby and
hibernate.)

If you want to move up to a 400W or 500W supply, there should be
no problem. What you want to do though, is search for something
with better 3.3V and 5V ratings, as those are going to be doing the
work for you. The thing is, modern systems load 12V a lot more than
anything else. There are some high efficiency modern supplies with
anemic 3.3V and 5V ratings. So I'd look for something with a little
more beef in that area.

My current supply, is a bridge between the old and the new.
(You can't buy it now by the way, so there is no point in naming it.)
It has 3.3V @ 30A, 5V @ 30A, 12V1 @ 22A, 12V2 @ 20A. If you were to
total up all the volts times amps, it comes out to more than
the 460W total rating. The idea behind supplies like that, is
usually only one rail is heavily loaded. That supply can be
used with older systems (like my A7N8X S462 board), as it has
good strong 3.3V and 5V. And it also works on my current
Core2 system, where the 12V rail is the one that gets loaded.
I could probably even handle a high end PCI Express
video card on that power supply, without too much complaint.
But that supply isn't typical of what is on the market today.
You might find 3.3V @ 20A and 5V @ 20A, which doesn't leave
quite as much margin. You know you're using maybe 13A on
5V for the processor, 1A for hard drive, 1.5A for CDROM,
and perhaps an unknown amount for the motherboard. That is
getting pretty close to the 20A number.

Very interesting. This is all starting to make sense.

As an example, the specs on this one are good (as specs go),
but there are a few too many DOAs reported in the customer
reviews. +3.3V @ 32A, +5V @ 34A, +12V1 @ 16A, +12V2 @ 17A.
That makes it a nice multi-generation supply. If you're on a
budget, you could play "wheel of fortune" and see if they
ship you a dead one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817339019

That is cheap. They say the sale ends today.

Oh, I only read the overview and it sounded good. Then I clicked on
Customer Reviews and 2 out of 3 were terrible, one star out of 5.

But they says 69% of 121 gave it 5 stars. And only 14% gave it 1, 2,
or 3 stars. I'm always optimistic about stuff like this. I think
I got burned once in the last couple years but I can't remember.

Interesting place. Apparently it was once 20 dollars but now it is up
to 27. That's fine. That's the right way to do business.

I bought one. Less for this mobo and more for the newer one that
requires a 24 pin connector. I don't have a power supply with that.

I'll see about the 5 volts later. Thanks for the link.

This one is a lot more expensive, but I bet this will be working
next year. +3.3V @ 30A, +5V @ 30A, +12V1 @ 18A, +12V2 @ 18A
Reviews look better. The only thing to watch with Fortron FSP
supplies, is to check the cables it comes with are long
enough. On their cheaper supplies, they skimp on wire.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817104034

No rush to spend this amount of money

I don't have to assemble the new computer today, like I thought I
might.

But last night I went back to win98 and tried out Asus Probe, and it
was still working. There was no setup file for winXP so I googled for
it and found it on Softpedia. So I installed it in XP and it looks
the same and gives the same readings. It shows

12 volts = 12.038 volts
5 volts = 4.999 volts
3.3 volts = 3.312 volts
Vcore = 1.776 volts

Not sure about the last one but the first three seem good to me. They
don't vary at all over the last 10 minutes.

It shows the CPU fan at 3924 something or other. Its speed varies a
little bit.

The power fan and chassis fan are listed as "Monitor Paused!" with
values listed of zero. I know the power supply fan is blowing air.
Not sure what the chassis fan is, but there is a thin fan a little
over 1 inch by 1 inch, 3/8" thick, that is spinning nicely. Other
than that, I have a 4" fan in the front of the case, but it's plugged
straight into the power supply and I don't think it can be monitored.

It says the CPU temperature is 150F and calls that OK.
It says the Mobo temperature is 84F and calls that OK.
These temps don't vary over 90 minutes.

*******

With regard to the I/O plate, you don't absolutely need it.
It isn't worth the time to try to fake one either, as you
won't be able to get the right "springy" metal to make one.
I wouldn't worry about it.

Okay.

When I was using Win98SE, the limit I heard was 1GB total. There are

Right. That's what I meant. I have 1.5, but I've only plugged 1`gig
in. Actually it's less important now that I'm mostly in XP, which
seems to use RAM a lot more efficiently. I run all the same programs
I ran before, but never have problems like I did in win98SE, where if
I opened too many tabs in firefox, the text would get bold, and then
would change alphabets!

This means I can run Asus Probe too without running out of RAM.

I didn't find the setup program on my harddrive, but I did find it on
the web. You all probably know about it, but I'll post it separately,
for newbies who look at thread names.

two settings you can use, to tune for a stable system. The first
one, fixed an address space limitation in Windows. Limiting
the vcache, prevents the system from running out of address
space. Units are bytes and the number is decimal. The second
one, is when there is too much RAM physically installed
in the computer. I used that on my current computer, which
has 2GB total RAM. By setting MaxPhysPage to a hexadecimal
number, you limit the visible memory. If you stay at 1GB,
you probably don't need to add that setting to "system.ini".

[vcache]
MaxFileCache=524288 (or a lesser number if you want)

[386enh]
MaxPhysPage=40000 (limits physical RAM reported to Win98 to 1GB.
The last time I tried this, I used 20000 just
to remain safe.)

Your words remind me. I tried these very settings, I think, but maybe
I did something wrong. I'll try again, unencumbered maybe by something
that might have led me astray several years ago.

Paul

Thanks again.

"Paul" wrote in message
...
mm wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:21:33 -0500, Paul wrote:

As an example, the specs on this one are good (as specs go),
but there are a few too many DOAs reported in the customer
reviews. +3.3V @ 32A, +5V @ 34A, +12V1 @ 16A, +12V2 @ 17A.
That makes it a nice multi-generation supply. If you're on a
budget, you could play "wheel of fortune" and see if they
ship you a dead one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817339019

This one is a lot more expensive, but I bet this will be working
next year. +3.3V @ 30A, +5V @ 30A, +12V1 @ 18A, +12V2 @ 18A
Reviews look better. The only thing to watch with Fortron FSP
supplies, is to check the cables it comes with are long
enough. On their cheaper supplies, they skimp on wire.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817104034

I notice that my PSU that burned out and all the others I have has a
-5v output.

And one of the pins on my A7M266 currently in use expects -5v. Also
the A7V600 and A8N-SLI Deluxe that I plan to use.

But there is no -5v listed on either of these new ones.
Does that mean it's really not there? Or it doesn't really matter if
it's there or not?

Here, next to -5 V, it says n/a
http://hecgroupusa.com/products/swit...tx-12v/hp485d/

Is this a problem?

I guess you would have noticed, it it were, but....

Ouch. I missed that.

The standards removed that some time ago. The first link, is from about
the year 2000, and the -5V is still present there. The second is Apr.2003
and they removed -5V in that one. The A7M266 could be from 2001 or so, so
it is in between those two dates.

http://web.archive.org/web/200304240...12V_PS_1_1.pdf
(page 27)

http://www.formfactors.org/developer...X12V_1_3dg.pdf (page 30)

http://www.formfactors.org/developer...public_br2.pdf
(page 37)

I don't know of a good way to predict what will happen, if you connect
a supply with no -5V on it. It is possible the board won't start.

Even if you had a working setup, and attempted to measure the current flow
on -5V, it might not be conclusive as to whether the board was actually
using it or not. For example, a board not using it, may still choose to
connect the voltage monitor chip to -5V and take readings from it. The
current flow in that case would be a tiny one, and you wouldn't know,
short of testing it, whether the board would actually gate off POWER_GOOD
using the status of that signal or not.

If you purchased a 20 pin extension cable, opened the -5V wire by cutting
it in two, you'd have a way to convert your existing power supply
with -5V,
into a newer supply without -5V. But that would likely cost you $10, to
buy
a power supply extension cable for testing purposes.

There is no indication in the vip.asus.com forum, that the board has a
-5V dependency. One person asks the question, but nobody answered. And
there is no account of someone buying a new power supply, and their
A7M266 didn't start or anything.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx...Language=en-us

You can still find power supplies with -5V, but the reviews on this one
aren't the best. +3.3 @ 35A, +5V @ 46A, +12 @ 26A, -12V @ 0.8A, -5 @ 1A,
+5VSB @ 2A
The specs look nice. The power rating obviously isn't 630W, as it is only
$26.
It is just a 350/400W with imaginative overall power rating.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817165004

It is also possible for a person to add a -5V signal to the connector.
You can get a 7905 regulator, and use that to create a -5V regulated
power signal. The hardest part would be finding a crimp pin to add
to the main ATX power connector. This chip can take -12V and make
-5V from it. You wouldn't want to actually supply a lot of current
with this idea. It would be for a motherboard that wouldn't start,
unless it got a few milliamps on -5V. For serious power output,
the TO220 case should have a heatsink added to it. The heatsink
will cost a lot more than the 7905 will.

http://www.national.com/ds/LM/LM7905.pdf

Motherboards shouldn't really be relying on that signal, but you
will find cases of certain models that won't start unless -5V
is present. And there is no single web page, with a list
of what boards have that dependency.

Paul

the -5V rail was only required as a bias for ISA slots.
as no boards since around 2000 have these it is considered obsolete.
All new boards will start up fine without it
HTH

On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:10:03 -0500, Paul wrote:


As an example, the specs on this one are good (as specs go),
but there are a few too many DOAs reported in the customer
reviews. +3.3V @ 32A, +5V @ 34A, +12V1 @ 16A, +12V2 @ 17A.
That makes it a nice multi-generation supply. If you're on a
budget, you could play "wheel of fortune" and see if they
ship you a dead one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817339019

Wow. I ordered this one yesterday at 1 PM ET and it's not here yet
but it's out for deliver since 6AM. The company is in California, and
I'm in Baltimore so I figured it would take a few days, but they
shipped it from Edison, New Jersey, which is less than 3 hours away.

OTOH, they said the sale ended yesterday and maybe it did. Today it's
a dollar cheaper. 26 instead of 27 dollars. People who rated it
paid from 18 to 20 dollars, but I'm just amused, not complaining.

I'm really happy it came in a day, with the slowest and free shipping.
Next time, I will look at what they have first.

(Those guys work longer than 8 hours I think if they have to, but it's
7 hours since he got into his truck, so it's bound to be here soon.)


2 other little thiings. The delivery info is on their own page and
doesn't say if UPS or Fedex, etc. is doing the delivering.

It says the billing info was received at 06:06 yesterday, just after
midnight, but you didn't post about this product until 4:21 yesterday,
4 hours later, and I didn't actually look at the webpage until 11
hours later and didn't order anything until 14 hours later. They're
psychic!! Is this a glitch or do they have some reason for pretending
they started on my order before they did? With one-day service, why
would they have to lie, and wouldn't a lot of people notice like I
just did.

mm wrote:

2 other little thiings. The delivery info is on their own page and
doesn't say if UPS or Fedex, etc. is doing the delivering.

It says the billing info was received at 06:06 yesterday, just after
midnight, but you didn't post about this product until 4:21 yesterday,
4 hours later, and I didn't actually look at the webpage until 11
hours later and didn't order anything until 14 hours later. They're
psychic!! Is this a glitch or do they have some reason for pretending
they started on my order before they did? With one-day service, why
would they have to lie, and wouldn't a lot of people notice like I
just did.


Maybe they weren't very good in math in school :-) Or it could
be the brand of time machine they're using.

Paul