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Motherboard replacement dilemma...
Hi everyones. Thanks a lot to take the time to read...i appreciate.
I'm in a big dilemma here, and i need your comments and ideas. I have an IBM Aptiva with the following configurations: AMD K6-2 400Mhz--256Mb pc100 RAM--80 Gb 7200rpm Maxtor-- integrated ATI Rage Pro 8Mb video--integrated ESS solo chipset. It really served me well since 1999, but since more than about one year i have a stability problem that is getting worse with time: 1-Experiencing some random reboots when opening a program, no matter wich one. 2-Graphics are slow, really slow to update. When closing or opening a window, it is displayed slowly sections by sections instead of instantly as it used to be. When dragging around a window, it leaves trails of it that takes seconds to dissapear. Even the cursor have sometimes difficulties to "follow" the mouse. 3-Computer has crashed a few times during the last months,but when doing CTRL-ALT-DELETE to reboot, i get a strange checkerboard pattern on the screen. Then i have to cold stop the computer by the power switch. 4-A problem i had a few months ago that reappeared yesterday is the clock that is getting late (as worse as 30 mins advance in a period of 3 hours!). This is not caused by Windows because i've checked this issue in details with a few ones here last time and on the sci.electronics.repair newsgroup. As some suggested, i did set back the clock and leaved the computer off for a few hours(leaved off 10 hours) and thereafter when i went in the BIOS at startup, the time was off again by many minutes (35). The only culprit remaining is the BIOS and it's associated circuitry (And Yes, i've replaced the battery also with any results). I'm not shure, but i think that my machine suffers from the bad Taiwanese capacitors syndrome that plagued so many motherboards since a few years.The ones on my board doesn't seems to show any visual indications of a bad capacitor like the ones pictured on Gary Headlee's web site: http://www.motherboardrepair.com/index.php?sec=images Maby it's the problem,maybe something else. A few months ago, what i planned to do was to build this winter a new powerful Pentium IV based "monster" with all the bells and whistles, and use this sick machine for light jobs such as a personnal web and FTP server. But now, even if i'm not ready to build the monster, the situation is urging me to make an anticipated choice because this machine is getting almost useless with time. Even my mother complaints that it's sometimes a pain to just play a basic SpiderSolitaire game on that machine! To do something, my choice has to be between: a) Replace this Aptiva machine with a modest but brand new one...with part of the $$ i saved for the monster and build the later at another time. This would seem a viable solution but i have a big problem: I have many expensive programs that don't run on Windows2000 or XP wich is what is currently distributed with new machines. I don't think that the new machine would work correctly if i remove XP to install an old OS like Window98...do you think so? b) Buy a replacement motherboard wich would be an effective and very cheap solution. But it's about the same problem as in "a)" since i think that new motherboards needs recent versions of Windows to operate as intended. If i could find a motherboard that would operate properly on Win98, then this would solve my problem. Any idea where i can find a place that sell "old" but brand new motherboards and processors ? I've heard that people have multi-boot machines that have Windows 98 and 2000 or XP on it. If this is the case, then don't you think that Win98 would work alone on a new motherboard? TIA for any replies. -- Alain(alias:Kilowatt) Montréal Québec PS: 1000 excuses for errors or omissions, i'm a "pure" french canadian! :-) Come to visit me at: http://kilowatt.camarades.com (If replying also by e-mail, remove "no spam" from the adress.) |
#2
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Oups! A thing i forgot to mention is that Windows
has been reinstalled recently without any improvements for the described problems. It's really a hardware issue. |
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Hi everyones. Thanks a lot to take the time to read...i appreciate.
I'm in a big dilemma here, and i need your comments and ideas. I have an IBM Aptiva with the following configurations: AMD K6-2 400Mhz--256Mb pc100 RAM--80 Gb 7200rpm Maxtor-- integrated ATI Rage Pro 8Mb video--integrated ESS solo chipset. It really served me well since 1999, but since more than about one year i have a stability problem that is getting worse with time: 1-Experiencing some random reboots when opening a program, no matter wich one. 2-Graphics are slow, really slow to update. When closing or opening a window, it is displayed slowly sections by sections instead of instantly as it used to be. When dragging around a window, it leaves trails of it that takes seconds to dissapear. Even the cursor have sometimes difficulties to "follow" the mouse. 3-Computer has crashed a few times during the last months,but when doing CTRL-ALT-DELETE to reboot, i get a strange checkerboard pattern on the screen. Then i have to cold stop the computer by the power switch. 4-A problem i had a few months ago that reappeared yesterday is the clock that is getting late (as worse as 30 mins advance in a period of 3 hours!). This is not caused by Windows because i've checked this issue in details with a few ones here last time and on the sci.electronics.repair newsgroup. As some suggested, i did set back the clock and leaved the computer off for a few hours(leaved off 10 hours) and thereafter when i went in the BIOS at startup, the time was off again by many minutes (35). The only culprit remaining is the BIOS and it's associated circuitry (And Yes, i've replaced the battery also with any results). I'm not shure, but i think that my machine suffers from the bad Taiwanese capacitors syndrome that plagued so many motherboards since a few years.The ones on my board doesn't seems to show any visual indications of a bad capacitor like the ones pictured on Gary Headlee's web site: http://www.motherboardrepair.com/index.php?sec=images Maby it's the problem,maybe something else. A few months ago, what i planned to do was to build this winter a new powerful Pentium IV based "monster" with all the bells and whistles, and use this sick machine for light jobs such as a personnal web and FTP server. But now, even if i'm not ready to build the monster, the situation is urging me to make an anticipated choice because this machine is getting almost useless with time. Even my mother complaints that it's sometimes a pain to just play a basic SpiderSolitaire game on that machine! To do something, my choice has to be between: a) Replace this Aptiva machine with a modest but brand new one...with part of the $$ i saved for the monster and build the later at another time. This would seem a viable solution but i have a big problem: I have many expensive programs that don't run on Windows2000 or XP wich is what is currently distributed with new machines. I don't think that the new machine would work correctly if i remove XP to install an old OS like Window98...do you think so? b) Buy a replacement motherboard wich would be an effective and very cheap solution. But it's about the same problem as in "a)" since i think that new motherboards needs recent versions of Windows to operate as intended. If i could find a motherboard that would operate properly on Win98, then this would solve my problem. Any idea where i can find a place that sell "old" but brand new motherboards and processors ? I've heard that people have multi-boot machines that have Windows 98 and 2000 or XP on it. If this is the case, then don't you think that Win98 would work alone on a new motherboard? TIA for any replies. Windows 98se should operate on most of the newer systems. I am running it on a P4 1.6 gh system that I bult a couple of years ago. About all that you have left of the old machine is the hard drive that you can use on a newer system. You might want to look at one of the all in one computer boards that have a 1 to 1.5 ghz processor and vidio and everything built into one board. You can buy that board , use your memory and hard drive and get a case for it. The boards are under $ 100 and a $ 30 or $ 40 case will get you going with what you have. You will notice a big improvement in what you have. YOu may have a virus on the system. The clock in the computer is actually two types of clocks. When the computer is off there is a clock chip the same battery that holds the cmos memory powers to keep time. Once the computer boots up it will read that clock and then not look at it again. The clock you are then seeing on the screen is being generated by the software in the computer. Some programs will cause the clock to really loose time from the time that was read in from the hardware clock.. This is totally a software problem. |
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On Sun, 7 Sep 2003 08:58:11 -0400, "Ralph Mowery" wrote:
................................................ ......... 3-Computer has crashed a few times during the last months,but when doing CTRL-ALT-DELETE to reboot, i get a strange checkerboard pattern on the screen. Then i have to cold stop the computer by the power switch. 4-A problem i had a few months ago that reappeared yesterday is the clock that is getting late (as worse as 30 mins advance in a period of 3 hours!). ................................................ ...................... Above problem was same as mine and it looks like the checkerboard pattern is a graphics card problem SUGGESTIONS: 1) Uninstall card drivers and get new ones from the net (NOT from the accompanying MBoard CD) Cheapest !! or 2) Install another card if you have a pci slot free (it must be a PCI if you have an onboard, not AGP - even if you have the slot, it will not play) 3) Clean up the Registry (very carefully - but best solution - if you have all your programmes and data on cd's - "format c: /u" and reinstall TINSTAAFL |
#5
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Hi "TINSTAAFL"...Thanks for the reply. (It's Arabic or German, this name? :-Þ )
1) Uninstall card drivers and get new ones from the net (NOT from the accompanying MBoard CD) Cheapest !! I've already tried different updated drivers, instead of the originals one from the recovery CD. The same problem. Windows have been reinstalled two times since then without any improvements. Take note that the most recent drivers are from 1999. ATI and any other manufacturers, will not pay big bucks for the programmers to write updated drivers for a card or chipset that is many years old. They rather concentrate their efforts on their newer products. I'm considering changing the motherboard, AND the power supply. The wattage of this original one is well under 125 watts when calculating the voltages and currents for the 3.3, 5, and 12 volts! Unfortunately for me it's the microATX format, and it's gonna be a lot more difficult to find replacement mobo and ps. -- Alain(alias:Kilowatt) Montréal Québec PS: 1000 excuses for errors or omissions, i'm a "pure" french canadian! :-) Come to visit me at: http://kilowatt.camarades.com (If replying also by e-mail, remove "no spam" from the adress.) |
#6
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On Sun, 7 Sep 2003 02:01:13 -0400, "KILOWATT" kilowatt"no
wrote: Hi everyones. Thanks a lot to take the time to read...i appreciate. I'm in a big dilemma here, and i need your comments and ideas. I have an IBM Aptiva with the following configurations: AMD K6-2 400Mhz--256Mb pc100 RAM--80 Gb 7200rpm Maxtor-- integrated ATI Rage Pro 8Mb video--integrated ESS solo chipset. It really served me well since 1999, but since more than about one year i have a stability problem that is getting worse with time: After reading ahead, it occurred to me that you may have more than one problem, or perhaps it's been ongoing for long enough that there's persistant data corruption. I would run memtest86 to rule that memory errors, since a new corrupted install would be a real PITA to troubleshoot. 1-Experiencing some random reboots when opening a program, no matter wich one. Since it's not WinXP, it's heat or power. Heat is easily detected, power a bit harder if you don't see any abnormalities in voltage from the power supply. snip I'm not shure, but i think that my machine suffers from the bad Taiwanese capacitors syndrome that plagued so many motherboards since a few years.The ones on my board doesn't seems to show any visual indications of a bad capacitor like the ones pictured on Gary Headlee's web site: http://www.motherboardrepair.com/index.php?sec=images Maby it's the problem,maybe something else. A machine of this age, unless barely ever used, might have low-quality-capacitor issues or even normal aging in conjunction with a cheap or tiny motherboard having minimal over-engineered capacitors, but since the caps have aged at least to the manufacturer's projected lifetime figures, they can't really be considered defective (as if that's any consolation?). A few months ago, what i planned to do was to build this winter a new powerful Pentium IV based "monster" with all the bells and whistles, and use this sick machine for light jobs such as a personnal web and FTP server. But now, even if i'm not ready to build the monster, the situation is urging me to make an anticipated choice because this machine is getting almost useless with time. Even my mother complaints that it's sometimes a pain to just play a basic SpiderSolitaire game on that machine! To do something, my choice has to be between: a) Replace this Aptiva machine with a modest but brand new one...with part of the $$ i saved for the monster and build the later at another time. This would seem a viable solution but i have a big problem: I have many expensive programs that don't run on Windows2000 or XP wich is what is currently distributed with new machines. I don't think that the new machine would work correctly if i remove XP to install an old OS like Window98...do you think so? Any board will run Win98, but some have drivers poorly developed for Win98. For example, modern onboard sound like nForce or Sis has given me more problems, though it still worked with more recent drivers and/or an OS reinstall. Beyond that, new hardware runs Win98 just fine. The other well-know issue there is if you want use 512MB or more memory, in which case you need edit the System.ini file to limit the vcache (Google search will easily find it). b) Buy a replacement motherboard wich would be an effective and very cheap solution. But it's about the same problem as in "a)" since i think that new motherboards needs recent versions of Windows to operate as intended. If i could find a motherboard that would operate properly on Win98, then this would solve my problem. Any idea where i can find a place that sell "old" but brand new motherboards and processors ? I've heard that people have multi-boot machines that have Windows 98 and 2000 or XP on it. If this is the case, then don't you think that Win98 would work alone on a new motherboard? TIA for any replies. Unfortunately I have no idea where to find gear in Canada. If it were me, I'd try to determine whether the power supply is still funcitonal, and if it is, upgrade the box with a Tualatin Celeron CPU/board. They're low-power, low-heat, use PC100 memory, low cost, etc. Not a high-end machine but a great bang for the buck since you might find (at least here in the US) a mobo & CPU for under $80 delivered. Onboard video on such systems, often Via PLE133T, isn't going to run 3D games very well, but it's about the same speed as your current Rage-Turbo video for 2D except for the level of MPEG hardware acceleration, and providing the memory bus is running at 133Mhz (PLE133T does support async +33MHz memory bus). On the other hand, there may be a few mom-n-pop computer shops in your area that have super-7 boards or Socket 370 PPGA + CPU for quite cheap.... just depends on the particular shop, how inexpensive they are. Some higher-volume shops end up throwing such stuff away, so it's more a matter of how much space they can devote to piles of old low-profit parts, and how effectively they can refuse to provide support for those parts. On the other hand, is this IBM box even standard, or a low-profile w/riser, more similar to LPX form-factor? Dave |
#7
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Hi Kony, Thanks for the reply. I've created the diskette for Memtest86
and gave it a try. But how long exactly this program needs to run? In the README file it's indicated in section 9 that with a Celeron-366 with 64MB of SDRAM the typical time may reach 5 hours 25 minutes! I then leaved the computer running overnight, but forgot to check this morning. When i camed back home late this afternoon, the program was still running, the only things that changed was the PASS that incremented to 23 all that time. :-) I thought that the program would complete the operations (standard test) and stop or exit. Do i only need to let it run one "pass" then exit? Anyway no errors where found. Tomorrow i'll buy a brand new Antec 350watts ATX power supply, then hook it up to this machine just in the case that the actual power supply is defective. I've measured a few days ago the voltages on the 3.3, 5, and 12volts lines when the CD-ROM drives are spinning and the comp operates at maximum CPU usage...and everything seems in-specs. (3.31, 4.85, 11.8V). But if there's drops of a few milliseconds in the outputs when the load changes, my digital multimeter can't detect that. Anyway i will need the power supply so i'll give it a try. If after a few hours or days of testing, the machine is as sluggish as it is now, i'll start shopping for a new motherboard and CPU...and possibly a new ATX case if i can't find something interesting in the microATX form factor. For the CPU, i bet that even the cheapest Intel Celerons currently on the market will outperform by far the Aptiva with a K6-2 400MHz i have actually...even compared to it's better days! -- Alain(alias:Kilowatt) Montréal Québec PS: 1000 excuses for errors or omissions, i'm a "pure" french canadian! :-) Come to visit me at: http://kilowatt.camarades.com (If replying also by e-mail, remove "no spam" from the adress.) |
#8
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You might try opening it up and taking a can of compressed air and
completely blowing all the dust off of the CPU. This is sometimes the problem. "KILOWATT" kilowatt"no wrote in message .. . Hi everyones. Thanks a lot to take the time to read...i appreciate. I'm in a big dilemma here, and i need your comments and ideas. I have an IBM Aptiva with the following configurations: AMD K6-2 400Mhz--256Mb pc100 RAM--80 Gb 7200rpm Maxtor-- integrated ATI Rage Pro 8Mb video--integrated ESS solo chipset. It really served me well since 1999, but since more than about one year i have a stability problem that is getting worse with time: 1-Experiencing some random reboots when opening a program, no matter wich one. 2-Graphics are slow, really slow to update. When closing or opening a window, it is displayed slowly sections by sections instead of instantly as it used to be. When dragging around a window, it leaves trails of it that takes seconds to dissapear. Even the cursor have sometimes difficulties to "follow" the mouse. 3-Computer has crashed a few times during the last months,but when doing CTRL-ALT-DELETE to reboot, i get a strange checkerboard pattern on the screen. Then i have to cold stop the computer by the power switch. 4-A problem i had a few months ago that reappeared yesterday is the clock that is getting late (as worse as 30 mins advance in a period of 3 hours!). This is not caused by Windows because i've checked this issue in details with a few ones here last time and on the sci.electronics.repair newsgroup. As some suggested, i did set back the clock and leaved the computer off for a few hours(leaved off 10 hours) and thereafter when i went in the BIOS at startup, the time was off again by many minutes (35). The only culprit remaining is the BIOS and it's associated circuitry (And Yes, i've replaced the battery also with any results). I'm not shure, but i think that my machine suffers from the bad Taiwanese capacitors syndrome that plagued so many motherboards since a few years.The ones on my board doesn't seems to show any visual indications of a bad capacitor like the ones pictured on Gary Headlee's web site: http://www.motherboardrepair.com/index.php?sec=images Maby it's the problem,maybe something else. A few months ago, what i planned to do was to build this winter a new powerful Pentium IV based "monster" with all the bells and whistles, and use this sick machine for light jobs such as a personnal web and FTP server. But now, even if i'm not ready to build the monster, the situation is urging me to make an anticipated choice because this machine is getting almost useless with time. Even my mother complaints that it's sometimes a pain to just play a basic SpiderSolitaire game on that machine! To do something, my choice has to be between: a) Replace this Aptiva machine with a modest but brand new one...with part of the $$ i saved for the monster and build the later at another time. This would seem a viable solution but i have a big problem: I have many expensive programs that don't run on Windows2000 or XP wich is what is currently distributed with new machines. I don't think that the new machine would work correctly if i remove XP to install an old OS like Window98...do you think so? b) Buy a replacement motherboard wich would be an effective and very cheap solution. But it's about the same problem as in "a)" since i think that new motherboards needs recent versions of Windows to operate as intended. If i could find a motherboard that would operate properly on Win98, then this would solve my problem. Any idea where i can find a place that sell "old" but brand new motherboards and processors ? I've heard that people have multi-boot machines that have Windows 98 and 2000 or XP on it. If this is the case, then don't you think that Win98 would work alone on a new motherboard? TIA for any replies. -- Alain(alias:Kilowatt) Montréal Québec PS: 1000 excuses for errors or omissions, i'm a "pure" french canadian! :-) Come to visit me at: http://kilowatt.camarades.com (If replying also by e-mail, remove "no spam" from the adress.) |
#9
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If it says IBM on it, I say strip it for parts and dig a hole in the back
yard and thow it in and cover it up with dirt and forget about it. Use it for Target Practice, or whatever else you can think of. Maybe it will make a good boat anchor? Most IBM Motherboards are proprietary and can not be reused or fit into a normal computer case. So often, you can not just go out and buy a new motherboard and have it fit into the old case, so be careful. You can try it and see if it will fit. If not just get another case. I would go out and look for either an Asus A7N8X, A7N8X-VM or A7N8X Deuluxe if you want an AMD Computer. There are some variations. For Intel look for a motherboard with the Intel 865 or 875 Chipset. Asus and Intel motherboards are nice. If you do not like Asus or Intel Motherboards try the motherboards with higher quality like Abit, Gigabyte, and maybe Soyo. There are a lot of options when it comes to motherboards. Shuttle makes som nice bare-bones kits with either the Nforce2 Chipsets or the Intel 865 Chipset. Try looking at www.newegg.com and see what people make good comments on. Go and read some reviews at places like www.tomshardware.com and www.anandtech.com Then go to forums like the one at www.pcmech.com and see what they think of your ideas of what to buy. You will want to buy some DDR SDRAM and a New CPU probably. Look for free shipping on parts you want to buy. A good power supply will also be needed most likely. A fairly good video card can be found from about $50-$150, depending on what you want. You could easily spend $400.00 or more on a new video card but you can get by with a lot less. "KILOWATT" kilowatt"no wrote in message .. . Hi everyones. Thanks a lot to take the time to read...i appreciate. I'm in a big dilemma here, and i need your comments and ideas. I have an IBM Aptiva with the following configurations: AMD K6-2 400Mhz--256Mb pc100 RAM--80 Gb 7200rpm Maxtor-- integrated ATI Rage Pro 8Mb video--integrated ESS solo chipset. It really served me well since 1999, but since more than about one year i have a stability problem that is getting worse with time: 1-Experiencing some random reboots when opening a program, no matter wich one. 2-Graphics are slow, really slow to update. When closing or opening a window, it is displayed slowly sections by sections instead of instantly as it used to be. When dragging around a window, it leaves trails of it that takes seconds to dissapear. Even the cursor have sometimes difficulties to "follow" the mouse. 3-Computer has crashed a few times during the last months,but when doing CTRL-ALT-DELETE to reboot, i get a strange checkerboard pattern on the screen. Then i have to cold stop the computer by the power switch. 4-A problem i had a few months ago that reappeared yesterday is the clock that is getting late (as worse as 30 mins advance in a period of 3 hours!). This is not caused by Windows because i've checked this issue in details with a few ones here last time and on the sci.electronics.repair newsgroup. As some suggested, i did set back the clock and leaved the computer off for a few hours(leaved off 10 hours) and thereafter when i went in the BIOS at startup, the time was off again by many minutes (35). The only culprit remaining is the BIOS and it's associated circuitry (And Yes, i've replaced the battery also with any results). I'm not shure, but i think that my machine suffers from the bad Taiwanese capacitors syndrome that plagued so many motherboards since a few years.The ones on my board doesn't seems to show any visual indications of a bad capacitor like the ones pictured on Gary Headlee's web site: http://www.motherboardrepair.com/index.php?sec=images Maby it's the problem,maybe something else. A few months ago, what i planned to do was to build this winter a new powerful Pentium IV based "monster" with all the bells and whistles, and use this sick machine for light jobs such as a personnal web and FTP server. But now, even if i'm not ready to build the monster, the situation is urging me to make an anticipated choice because this machine is getting almost useless with time. Even my mother complaints that it's sometimes a pain to just play a basic SpiderSolitaire game on that machine! To do something, my choice has to be between: a) Replace this Aptiva machine with a modest but brand new one...with part of the $$ i saved for the monster and build the later at another time. This would seem a viable solution but i have a big problem: I have many expensive programs that don't run on Windows2000 or XP wich is what is currently distributed with new machines. I don't think that the new machine would work correctly if i remove XP to install an old OS like Window98...do you think so? b) Buy a replacement motherboard wich would be an effective and very cheap solution. But it's about the same problem as in "a)" since i think that new motherboards needs recent versions of Windows to operate as intended. If i could find a motherboard that would operate properly on Win98, then this would solve my problem. Any idea where i can find a place that sell "old" but brand new motherboards and processors ? I've heard that people have multi-boot machines that have Windows 98 and 2000 or XP on it. If this is the case, then don't you think that Win98 would work alone on a new motherboard? TIA for any replies. -- Alain(alias:Kilowatt) Montréal Québec PS: 1000 excuses for errors or omissions, i'm a "pure" french canadian! :-) Come to visit me at: http://kilowatt.camarades.com (If replying also by e-mail, remove "no spam" from the adress.) |
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