[ale] Re: [ALE] AMD 450, mobo weirdness, also mp3 decoding

Frank Zamenski fzamenski at voyager.net
Sat Oct 2 08:34:15 EDT 1999


Thanks everyone for your excellent suggestions. I did get the AMD patch for
Win9x, but may not use it as I find 9x very distasteful to use anymore. What
I did was to invest in a decent ASUS mobo which I stuck in a new case, and
with the same AMD K6-2 450 and single 128 pc100 DIMM that was giving me
headaches in the older 'noname' mobo I was griping about in here, I put the
stuff into the new ASUS box and was then able to get NT4 to install the
first time and to actually stay UP (at least, for now  - day two! heh...)
with no more problems other than an occasional Matrox Mystique driver hang.
So I am happy in that regard. I've not yet found an AMD > 300 patch for NT,
I checked M$'s site but not to any great depth yet; maybe I can get by
without it, should it even exist.

Actually, to add insult to previous injury, I was glad I built the new box!
A few days ago I stuck the older AMD 300 and the pair of 64mg SIMMs I used
with it back onto the old mobo, the same combo which had previously worked
quite well with both NT4 and Linux on that board. And immediatly after
powering up, some tiny IC on that *&^%$ piece of junk decided to release its
'blue smoke' -- the power supply did not shut down, so I quickly powered it
off! As the IC was right by the socket 7, I'm conjecturing that it might be
that that chip was some kind of timer that was perhaps going bad all along,
which I suppose could have contributed to my past headaches. Ah, c'est la
vis, I just consider it another 'blessing in disguise' to be rid of that
thing for good, as well as an additional tuition payment toward the 'Don't
Skimp On Hardware 102' course. When I next popped it out, the 300 wasn't hot
nor even warm, so maybe it's still good though I'm now kind of fearful of
using it in another new mobo. I'm still amazed nonetheless at how RH6 would
run on that now dead beast-baord when I had the 450 in it, whereas NT
chronically choked!  :-)

Yet, using NT at the moment, but still love running the Linux on it. It
screams, and the pokey Gnome itself is generally tolerable!  :-)  Now, if I
could only find a Linux 'combine and decode' GUI function for usenet
MP3's....  ;-)

Thanks much again, gents!
Frank






More information about the Ale mailing list