"sdlomi2" said:
I sold a system a year ago using Athlon 2400--unlocked (IIRC). Used
regular PC-133 ram--not DDR, and used a ECS--K7S5A mobo which now is losing
time & cmos settings--quite common with this mobo. The customer wants me to
upgrade his mobo, using same ram. What's a good, inexpensive mobo to
replace with? I like Asus. Others considered. TIA, s
There is an Asrock K7VT2. There is only one company listed in
Pricewatch selling it. KT266A Northbridge, VT8235 Southbridge.
Room for two SDRAM. (Also DDR slots, but you cannot use both
memory types at the same time.)
http://www.asrock.com.tw/product/product_k7vt2.htm
http://castle.pricewatch.com/search/search.idq?qc="K7VT2"*&cr=k7vt2
It is a bit of a strange design, as the VT8235 is a more modern
chip than the KT266A. I guess the V-link on the VT8235 must
be very flexible, to accomodate the slower chipset bus coming
out of the KT266A (266MB/sec). At least the chipset is modern
enough not to use a PCI bus to connect the two chips.
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets/legacy/kt266a/
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets/southbridge/vt8235/
The thing is, boards of that era had problems with their chipsets.
Whether it was problems with Southbridges like the 686A/B,
or problems with Northbridge AGP interfaces not working properly
(ALI), or problems related to the fact that the Northbridge
and Southbridge were connected together by the PCI bus, these
chipsets were dogs. And they used SDRAM. That means if you installed
one of those, your customer will be back to see you soon enough.
I don't think anything Asus currently is shipping, uses SDRAM,
and if you were to find a used A7V or A7V133, you would have
the chipset issues to consider.
So, I think the Asrock board might be an alternative. A quick
search in Google is not too encouraging. There are lots of
people with problems with the K7VT2, and a few successes.
I cannot think of any other supplier that might fit the
requirements. And I don't think your customer would be
prepared to take another K7S5A family board.
Paul
