Brian Frank

Well, I hate to break it to you, but if youre gonna upgrade, you'll have to buy a new case-mainly because boards are being made in ATX or micro-ATX formfactor. All the high performance boards I know of come in the ATX size. AT along w baby AT have been abandon it appears. If you want to put in tons of memory with an Intel, you'll have to go with a VIA Apollo Pro 133A. I suggest the Tyan Trinity cause its got slot 1 & socket 370 and can support up to 1Ghz P3s. Its not meant for overclocking, but I have had no problems with it whatsoever. On the AMD side, skip DDR because: 1. Its expensive 2. Right now most everything cant use the bandwith so your just throwing money away; and 3. The VIA KT133A chipset supposedly provides nearly all the perfomance or all of it WITHOUT DDR, so they say. The FIC AZ11e is nothing special, but it does the job. If you're willing to spend a little more, go with the Asus A7V133 or the Abit KT7A board, both have an extra ATA100 controller, but the Abit provides Raid 0,1,&0+1 on the controller. Since you'll have to get a new case, get something with a 300 Watt PS. 250 Watt is good but with the juice the T-Bird requires, its best to be on the safe side. Also get a good cooler, if you havent heard, the current Athlon and Duron chips have some heat issues and will fry in seconds with no heatsink/fan combo, while Intel's chips have some sensor right on the die to tell you. You can go with Intel's shoddy 820 chipset or the 840, but both require extremely expensive RDRAM. I would say go with a board with a VIA chipset if you go with an Intel processor just because you can load them up with at least 768 megs of ram. If you go AMD, VIA is the only choice, because SiS chipsets suck compared with the VIA KT133/133A chipset, well SiS sucks in general. As far as nVidia and Win2k are concered, I'm no help, I use a card from the company formerly know as 3dfx called the Voodoo 4 4500 AGP. Dont laugh, cause I havent heard of problems concerning them. I do believe nVidia drivers for Win2k work just fine, though When you upgrade you're gonna have to get a new case,because unless Im wrong there arent any AT boards that support P3s or Athlons. Im pretty sure AT is dead. If you do find one, you can bet its not from a major manufacturer like Intel, Asus, Abit, or any others that are mentioned on this forum. Good luck. ------------------ Whaazzzupppppppppp! Asus A7V Duron 600@680 384 MB SDRAM PC133@113MHz Samsung 48x CD-ROM Toshiba 12x DVD-ROM Zip CD650 USB 4/4/6 Zip 100 USB Maxtor 20.4 GB ATA100 Voodoo 4 4500 AGP Guillemot Maxi Sound Fortissimo SIIG 3 port 1394 PCI Adapter D-Link DFE-530 10/100 NIC Creative Cambridge Soundworks FPS1000 MS Intellimouse Optical Kleer 17-inch @ 85Hz 1152x864x32 desktop

So you guys get blue screens too? Well, my problem was kinda like that, Toshiba 12x DVD but it was something with this UdfReadr.SYS that didnt like it when i would put in another disk after playing a DVD, so blue screens come. I ended up finding out that file was touchy about stuff and just needed to be updated. ------------------ Whaazzzupppppppppp! Asus A7V Duron 600@680 384 MB SDRAM PC133@113MHz Samsung 48x CD-ROM Toshiba 12x DVD-ROM Zip CD650 USB 4/4/6 Zip 100 USB Maxtor 20.4 GB ATA100 Voodoo 4 4500 AGP Guillemot Maxi Sound Fortissimo SIIG 3 port 1394 PCI Adapter D-Link DFE-530 10/100 NIC Creative Cambridge Soundworks FPS1000 MS Intellimouse Optical Kleer 17-inch @ 85Hz 1152x864x32 desktop

Ive underclocked RAM in a PC133 P3 667 and had PC100 and PC133 in my Duron system and it worked fine. You only need to worry if youre overclocking. That memory is probably bad or that generic ram could be your problem and not like the Kingston. Take out your old memory and see how things go. If that fixes it, your DIMMs dont like each other. I had some generic memory in one of my systems but it went screwy on me,but this was just one stick. Ive had other sticks of generic memory with no problems. There's a very small chance the RAM is actually bad, especially if its coming from a manufacturer like Kingston. Its probably due to some differences in the specs of the chips themselves-but not the speed.

Make sure youve got DMA enabled first. Then get a hold of X-setup. Once youve installed it, look under Hardware/Misc/Windows 2000 UDMA/66 option. It will give you a warning that this pluging could screw up your system...blah,blah. click ok and enable UDMA/66. Then restart. You should get the performance you want.

Okay, heres my problem, after I take out a dvd and put in any other, or put the SAME disk back in I get this stop message: STOP: 0x00000027 (0xBAAD09C, 0xBA9AF4AC, 0xBA9AF104, 0xBB8889AA) RDR_FILE_SYSTEM Address BB8889AA base at BB8881000 Date stamp 38b356c - UdfReadr.SYS Here's the important stuff Asus A7V (KT133) Maxtor 20.4 GB on primary ATA100 controller Samsung 48x CD-ROM on primary ATA66 controller as Master DMA/PIO modes set in BIOS to 4 Toshiba 12x DVD-ROM on secondary ATA66 controller as Master DMA/PIO modes set in BIOS to 4. Voodoo 4 4500 AGP 384 MB SDRAM I dont know if this is something I need to just change in BIOS or if somethings really just my bad luck. Its also pulled this with a different brand of DVD-ROM. I have reinstalled (clean) at least 2 times since I've taken that one out. Im also using a ATA66/100 ribbons on all the drives. I do overclock, but this has happened before I ever started to do it.

Hey, thanx nam ng. I upgraded the UdfReadr.SYS file and no more blue screen. Man that DVD thing wuz driving me nuts

Well, I have the original Asus A7V rev.1.02, and Ive heard that Abit's boards are pretty good, but Ive heard that MSI's boards are the most stable ever. Just be warned that they are really pricey, and may not be available. I havent seen any in my city. FIC has some board out, while not big on features it is very good and its performance is comparable with the Asus and Abit boards. I belive it is the FIC AZ11e. The Asus A7V & Abit KT7 feature 2 extra IDE controllers with ATA100 plus raid, plus some overclocking features. Ive had some issues with my Asus A7V that are annoying,so you might not be interested in. It is very stable,and some things couldve been error on my part too. Really, look at boards with features you want. You may not need 4 IDE controllers or overclocking features. The FIC board isnt really anything special, but its supposed to be very stable and relatively inexpensive (~$130) for an AMD processor based board. But do find out what features you want first.

Make sure youve got enough cooling on your T-Bird and that youve got a 300 Watt PS. If youre overclocking, take it down a little. This is the best i can do with the info given.

Make sure youve got enough cooling on your T-Bird and that youve got a 300 Watt PS. If youre overclocking, take it down a little. This is the best i can do with the info given.

Try this, run the C: Prompt console and type in chkdsk c:/r where c is any drive partition you want to check for corruption. Also, try the repair disk option. If worst comes to worst, you may just have to reinstall. Your hard drives may also be going bad. Have you cleaned your cd drives (except for your cd burner) out with some cleaning disk?

First thing, get a patch off AMD's site for T-Birds and Durons under Win2k. There's supposed to be some issue with these processors and games. Try that, the patch is only a few hundred K.

Okay, Ive got UT Game of the Year Edition. I install the first cd, and everythings okay. Whenever I install the second cds stuff, it takes a little while to close everything and I may get an error message. This last fiasco, i had to unistall UT and then reinstall it. So far, Ive just put in the 1st CD. Im afraid to put in the second one just because it might screw stuff up again.

Yup, Thats what you gotta do for AMD procs under Win2k.

ilya, Win2k should run HL just fine with your Voodoo. Make sure you've got the latest drivers. Also, if youve upgraded to your voodoo from another voodoo, you may have to reinstall Win2k. Do you have a Gigabyte board by any chance. Im only asking because one of my friends has a Gigabyte board, and a Voodoo3 3000 PCI and Radeon 32 DDR board have gone nuts-even with an reinstall under both boards. Maybe its just a bad board--its a Socket 7 Gigabyte GA-5AX. Cypress, I do believe that the latest drivers for the GeForce 2's are in the 6.xx, not the 7.xx-nVidia hasnt released them this high yet. Or your computer is trippin on some 'shrooms...

Windows 2000 does support ATA100 with the hot fix or SP2 when it comes out, but you still will be able to use the ATA100. If youre gonna use the ATA100 right from the start, you should copy the drivers onto a start up disk and press F6 when its loading stuff in the beginning of the install. Of course its just as easy to install the OS on the regular IDE controllers, then go ahead and install the drivers for the ATA100 controller. I'd highly recommend doing a clean install, but if you really dont want to, remove all the hardware that your removing in Device Manager. Its best to do a clean install, because Win2k is a lot more sensative to hardware changes.

If you go with the T-Bird, make sure you get some good cooling, cuz right now AMD's chips dont have some diode or some heat sensor on the chip to tell if its getting too hot. What it comes down to with KT133A boards is if you need an AMR slot or not. Abit doesn't have one on theirs but the Asus A7V133 does. These two are the only ones that you want if your going for the best performance...unless you gotta have DDR. You should be able to use your memory with the T-Bird with no problems. Unless you want to go with an SMP system you probably want to dump your P3. I think Intel has better made chips, but on a clock for clock basis AMD is thumping Intel over the head. Unless your worried about heat or want SMP systems, go with AMD. Nothings wrong with Intel, but the chips just arent as speedy or cheap as AMD.

Have you installed the latest drivers for the ATA100 controllers in Win2K? Also Microsoft has a Pre SP2 hot fix on there site. Make sure you get both of those and you should be okay. Win2k is a bit more sensative to hardware than Win9x.

I forgot to mention you might also want to get the latest drivers for your Voodoo. Dont forget to install the 3dfx tools!

Yeah, the Voodoo 3 3000s tend to run dark in open gl. Under 3dfx Tools crank up the brightness in open gl, and try hl again. Play around with the settings until you like the look. Also, if your monitor is a dark one, you might just want to get a new one.

No you shouldn't have that much cpu usage. I barely have any usage when I look, but even on heavy usage it should suck that much of your cpu. Also, if you dont have the latest drivers for the ATA100 controller get them off the manufacturers website. If you've got the Asus A7V go to Asus site and download them from there. Oh, and since your using your drive under the ATA100 controller, Win2k thinks its a SCSI device not an IDE device.

Is this a decent score? 2894 in 3D Mark 2000 on this sytem Asus A7V Maxtor 20.4 GB ATA100 384MB SDRAM Voodoo 4 4500 AGP 4x core clock at 177MHz Duron600@680 Toshiba 12x DVD Samsung 48x CD Zip650 4x4x6x USB CDRW Zip100 USB Scanner USB 17-inch Kleer monitor I know some guy with a T-Bird@1GHz with a GeForce 2 that scores like 4500 or around there in 3DMark under Win98. Lets here it for overclocking.

Ive got the A7V and heres my advice: If things start going nuts so you cant get into windows reset BIOS to the defaults. Also if your gonna use the ATA100 controllers, copy all the files to a floppy disk off the ASUS CD for the controllers and push F6 when its setting up in the beginning. Win2k will ask you for the manufacturers drivers and then you wont have to fiddle around with setting it up later. You can just use the regular ATA66 controllers and then intall the ATA100 drivers later and then hook up your hard drive to that controller. I hate ME. It sux hard so when i found out Win2k could run all my games and apps, i dumped ME. ME is the worst Windows ever. Hopefully you can take off Movie Maker with Whistler...Win2K rules. Just move anything importat over to D: if you're just gonna format C:. If not use that MaxBlast utility you got with your Maxtor (you do have that still dont you) and make your partitions but have Win98 startup disk, not an ME one you can only set FAT16 partitions so youd have 15 partitions. Then you can format your drive to NTFS or leave it as FAT32 (i did but its a personal preference). IF your gonna format the whole drive use the MaxBlast. I dont think you can convert FAT32 to NTFS without reformatting the drive, but dont quote me on this one. Good luck TLL

Its probably best to leave your hard drives on the same IDE channel, and your CD-ROMS on another. If you put Win2k on just one drive, and not anything else, youve wasted one drive. A better thing to do is make a separate partition for your SWAP FILE and that ought to speed things up a bit. Ive got a Voodoo 4 AGP and when I put the swap file separately things flew. If you do use both hard drives, find out which is the faster one, probably your 30GB hdd, and put the swap file partition on that one.

I've got a question on overclocking my Duron 600 with PC133 SDRAM. Im using the Asus A7V KT133 chipset mobo revision 1.02. In BIOS, Ive already overclocked the FSB to 113 the highest that it'll run stable. Ive done that lead pencil trick on the L1 bridges but when i try to OC by using the 6.5 and up multiplier, itll fire up, but not boot up. Im leaving the default settings with the jumper for the voltage. Do I need to increase the voltage? and if so by how much. And how high can i OC the chip. I use a cooler master and it works pretty good-I havent hit past 40 C/102 or 103 F with it at 680 MHz. Also, I was advised to put some thermal compound on the hsf and scrape off the pad with a razor beforehand. Now it's gone up a few degrees before I'd seen the temp as low as 27 C. I dont think I put too much on-just enough to cover the die.

Well, I tried increasing the voltage, but no go. AMD might have found a way to stop overclocking Durons and T-Birds now. I bought it early in Nov.2000. At least I know I've reached the limit for OCing. I did find an OC utility to overclock Voodoo4/5's. Thanx