improve old PC (P5A). Please help!!

[Jaja]

Hi, i need to extend the life of my old PC, which currently has the
following components:

MB Asus P5A rev 1.06 (ALI 1541 rev G) 512KB L2 cache
CPU K6-2 550 MHz
Memory 256 MB PC100 (2 x 128)
HD Western digital 20 GB ATA 100
CDRW Plextor 121032A
Video Card SiS 6326 PCI 8MB Ram
Sound Card Sound Blaster Live! Value
Modem US Robotics 5687-03 ISA (V. 90)

OS: Dual boot with Windows 98 SE and Fedora Core 1.

Considerations:

1) I bought a new 40 GB HD, but the last stable BIOS (1007A) does not
support disks larger than 32 GB. I know that the newest beta BIOS (1011.005)
does support larger disks and that it is considered stable by those who have
used it, but it changes the power management as it is ACPI compliant. I'm
afraid that the sound card and modem will cause problem with this, is it
important? I might as well disable ACPI if it's not. On the same issue,
another possibility is to buy a Promise Ultra TX2 card which will also bring
the speed up to ATA 100. I'm not sure how this will affect the CDRW though.
Any suggestions?

2) Obviously, the video card is not very good, so i was thinking about
getting a GeForce 2, 32 or 64 MB, but my previous experience with AGP cards
was awful. I bought an ATI Xpert 2000 which made my system hang. At that
time i remember sarching the web and finding a lot of issues with AGP cards
and the P5A. Can anybody tell me which ones work?

3) As my P5A revision can cache up to 512 MB i plan to but a 256 MB Dimm.
Which one are appropriate for this MB?

4) I bought my P5A from tccomputers, a mb bundle with cpu + hs + fan. I've
had heat problems so i tried to remove the heatsink to check the thermal
grease/pad, but i couldn't! I took the whole cpu-hs-fan out, and the cpu
seemed to be glued to the heatsink. I don't know wheter to just to replace
the fan (maybe one with higher CPM) or the whole fan+heatsink. The last
option would involve trying to use a sharp knife or razor blade to separate
the heatsing and then acetone or another strong solvent to clean up. Which
fans or fan/heatsinks would you recommend?

I'd appreciate your help

Regards

Jaja

 

[Paul]

Hi, i need to extend the life of my old PC, which currently has the
following components:

MB Asus P5A rev 1.06 (ALI 1541 rev G) 512KB L2 cache
CPU K6-2 550 MHz
Memory 256 MB PC100 (2 x 128)
HD Western digital 20 GB ATA 100
CDRW Plextor 121032A
Video Card SiS 6326 PCI 8MB Ram
Sound Card Sound Blaster Live! Value
Modem US Robotics 5687-03 ISA (V. 90)

OS: Dual boot with Windows 98 SE and Fedora Core 1.

Considerations:

1) I bought a new 40 GB HD, but the last stable BIOS (1007A) does not
support disks larger than 32 GB. I know that the newest beta BIOS (1011.005)
does support larger disks and that it is considered stable by those who have
used it, but it changes the power management as it is ACPI compliant. I'm
afraid that the sound card and modem will cause problem with this, is it
important? I might as well disable ACPI if it's not. On the same issue,
another possibility is to buy a Promise Ultra TX2 card which will also bring
the speed up to ATA 100. I'm not sure how this will affect the CDRW though.
Any suggestions?

The least aggravation would be to check the disk documentation for
the location of the "limit jumper". When you use that jumper, it
limits or clips the disk size to 32GB, for compatibility with older
motherboards. This avoids the risks of flashing the BIOS or the
cost of trying to get a separate controller that works.

2) Obviously, the video card is not very good, so i was thinking about
getting a GeForce 2, 32 or 64 MB, but my previous experience with AGP cards
was awful. I bought an ATI Xpert 2000 which made my system hang. At that
time i remember sarching the web and finding a lot of issues with AGP cards
and the P5A. Can anybody tell me which ones work?

A recent thread in this group, mentions that FX5200, Radeon 9200,
Radeon 9000 have PCI versions. It is possible using one of those
will work better than trying to fit an AGP card. There are older
PCI bus based video cards that might work as well, but may only
be found on Ebay.

3) As my P5A revision can cache up to 512 MB i plan to but a 256 MB Dimm.
Which one are appropriate for this MB?

Check www.crucial.com and the search engine. Kingston also has a
search engine, but I think they've removed the entry for the P5A
and I cannot find the P5A in their "archive". Crucial's modules
are presumably the correct, so-called "low density" module.

Using my favorite search engine, I can see there were some issues
with cacheable memory size versus FSB speed. I trust you've verified
those issues first, before attempting the memory upgrade. There are
people in this news group who are more familiar with the details than
I am:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=...v=/groups?q=p5a+cacheable&ie=ISO-8859-1&hl=en

4) I bought my P5A from tccomputers, a mb bundle with cpu + hs + fan. I've
had heat problems so i tried to remove the heatsink to check the thermal
grease/pad, but i couldn't! I took the whole cpu-hs-fan out, and the cpu
seemed to be glued to the heatsink. I don't know wheter to just to replace
the fan (maybe one with higher CPM) or the whole fan+heatsink. The last
option would involve trying to use a sharp knife or razor blade to separate
the heatsing and then acetone or another strong solvent to clean up. Which
fans or fan/heatsinks would you recommend?

I'd appreciate your help

Regards

Jaja

To separate the HSF from the CPU, some people recommend gentle warmth,
to make the thermal interface material more mallable. That is the
only hint I can think of. Both the twisting motion and the use of
a razor blade will have some risks associated with them. If using
solvents, try to keep the solvent off the pins - it is not the solvent
I am worried about, rather the residue the solvent will carry to the
pins that could gum up the contacts in the socket. For the most part,
a solvent is better applied to a cloth and the cloth used to clean the
top of the CPU, rather than pouring solvent directly on the CPU. You
can do whatever you want to the heatsink.

There is a small chance, that tccomputers might have used thermal
epoxy to join the two items, but only an idiot would do that. If
the razor blade can easily enter the material, it is most likely
grease.

I get the impression from these pages, that Socket7 and Socket370
can use the same HSF ?

http://www.tennmax.com/cooler.htm
http://startech.com/ststore/itemlist.cfm?product_desc=cooling&topbar=topbara.htm
http://www.cables4computer.com/products/individualItem.asp?groupcode=I2286

HTH,
Paul

 

[Gene Puhl]

Hi, i need to extend the life of my old PC, which currently has the
following components:

MB Asus P5A rev 1.06 (ALI 1541 rev G) 512KB L2 cache
CPU K6-2 550 MHz
Memory 256 MB PC100 (2 x 128)
HD Western digital 20 GB ATA 100
CDRW Plextor 121032A
Video Card SiS 6326 PCI 8MB Ram
Sound Card Sound Blaster Live! Value
Modem US Robotics 5687-03 ISA (V. 90)

OS: Dual boot with Windows 98 SE and Fedora Core 1.

Considerations:

1) I bought a new 40 GB HD, but the last stable BIOS (1007A) does not
support disks larger than 32 GB. I know that the newest beta BIOS
(1011.005) does support larger disks and that it is considered stable by
those who have used it, but it changes the power management as it is
ACPI compliant. I'm afraid that the sound card and modem will cause
problem with this, is it important? I might as well disable ACPI if it's
not. On the same issue, another possibility is to buy a Promise Ultra
TX2 card which will also bring the speed up to ATA 100. I'm not sure how
this will affect the CDRW though. Any suggestions?

I have a P5A-B running the 1011.005 Bios.
Amd K6-2-500
40 gig Seagate
GeForce2 MX200
Sound Blaster Live Value
Realtek RTL8029 LAN card
128 MB ram
Panasonic CD-ROM
Windows Millennium.

It runs fine.

Why not back up your BIOS, install the beta BIOS and try it, you can always
revert to the old BIOS if things don't work out...

 

[Nikolaos Tampakis]

Hi, i need to extend the life of my old PC, which currently has the
following components:

MB Asus P5A rev 1.06 (ALI 1541 rev G) 512KB L2 cache
CPU K6-2 550 MHz
Memory 256 MB PC100 (2 x 128)
HD Western digital 20 GB ATA 100
CDRW Plextor 121032A
Video Card SiS 6326 PCI 8MB Ram
Sound Card Sound Blaster Live! Value
Modem US Robotics 5687-03 ISA (V. 90)

OS: Dual boot with Windows 98 SE and Fedora Core 1.

Considerations:

1) I bought a new 40 GB HD, but the last stable BIOS (1007A) does not
support disks larger than 32 GB. I know that the newest beta BIOS (1011.005)
does support larger disks and that it is considered stable by those who have
used it, but it changes the power management as it is ACPI compliant. I'm
afraid that the sound card and modem will cause problem with this, is it
important? I might as well disable ACPI if it's not. On the same issue,
another possibility is to buy a Promise Ultra TX2 card which will also bring
the speed up to ATA 100. I'm not sure how this will affect the CDRW though.
Any suggestions?

Judging from my experience with a GA-5AX rev 4.1a mainboard (same
chipset as the P5A) you should be fine even in ACPI mode. The live works
fine for sure, I've only used a tornado winmodem once and it was
troublefree but I can't tell for your modem. Chances are it'll work fine
too though.
BUT:
even if you flash to the latest ACPI beta BIOS, the actual PM scheme for
win98se will still be APM. ACPI will only be activated via a special
registry modification procedure, or during a reinstall of win98se (and
only if win98se is convinced that it's a valid ACPI BIOS, too. Some ACPI
BIOSes are rejected and you have to force ACPI-type installation via the
setup /p j command option. Alternatively with setup /p i (I think) you
can force win98se to ignore a valid ACPI BIOS and use plain old APM
instead).
In short: you can flash the latest BETA to obtain large HD support and
need not worry about ACPI implications. The extra steps would be needed
to HAVE ACPI, not to avoid it.
The CDRW uses ATAPI and therefore is unlikely to be supported on the
Promise card. It is technically possible and with some BIOS/drivers
combinations it has existed in the past, but I don't think it's offered
anymore. There might be hacked versions circulating around though.

2) Obviously, the video card is not very good, so i was thinking about
getting a GeForce 2, 32 or 64 MB, but my previous experience with AGP cards
was awful. I bought an ATI Xpert 2000 which made my system hang. At that
time i remember sarching the web and finding a lot of issues with AGP cards
and the P5A. Can anybody tell me which ones work?

Actually I was using that ATI card with my GA-5AX without issues, so I
doubt it was a chipset issue. I doubt it was a power issue since my
GA-5AX was already notorious for underpowering the AGP slot. I always
used AGP 1x though.
At a later stage a Voodoo3 3000 AGP was also tried, this is a safe bet
as it's just a PCI card in an AGP slot. Then a Matrox G450 was installed
which worked fine, and the final one (currently in use) was a GeForce2
MX 64 MB card which also works fine. AGP settings are kept to a minimum
though, Ali has a utility to help with it, you can even set the AGP slot
to PCI-only mode.

3) As my P5A revision can cache up to 512 MB i plan to but a 256 MB Dimm.
Which one are appropriate for this MB?

The same ones appropriate for the BX chipset, typically double-sided
PC100 (or PC133) 256 MB DIMMs. ECC ones though are overkill IIRC since
the chipset drops ECC support at 100+ MHz (don't know if this was also
fixed with a later revision).

Regards
Nikos