TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Mr.Scott]

It is a long story but you need another skt A motherboard that supports the same BIOS provider, AMI or Award.
It has been years since I've done that, and even google search does not pick up on this, but in short it was something like, pluck out the failed BIOS chip
from the motherboard BIOS socket, put it in the known working board, replacing the chip it was on its and use BIOS "force/blind flash" using a DOS FDD(floppy) upon post, then when done, place the chip back in the other motherboard.

It's called 'hot flash', not blind flash.

 

[Fouquin]

ASUS' garbage ESD protection is also why I won't use it - either it's my fault or anything

Hasn't presented itself as a problem for me on any ASUS boards of that era. Still have quite a few in rotation (P5A, TUSL2-C, TUV4X, A7N8X-X, A7N8X, P4T-F, P4C800, PC-DL) that I've run pretty hard over the years and not been particularly dainty with. A few of those boards set some world records without terribly much fuss.

NF7's USB boot issue wouldn't be something of big issue - boards of that era in general weren't really made to boot USB drives yet - even as far as Intel and AMD goes, the earliest I know of that can PROPERLY boot USB drives were early AGP 775 and Skt 754 mobos

A7N8X supports USB boot which is why I mentioned the NF7's lack of. Most boards don't have that feature yet by that point, it's true, but ASUS was forward thinking. I keep my XP bench install on a 1GB flash drive and it's always nice to be able to simply plug in and boot instead of having to dig out the DVD backups.

I'm not even expecting them to live at stock settings any longer than at best a few year tops.

Wait, why not? If you're proactive about keeping the boards free of corrosion and getting new capacitors fitted where applicable there should be no reason why a board can't continue to operate for years on end. Little bit of preventative maintenance goes a long way.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

I still have the box for the A7N8X Deluxe. The board died many years ago when UPS nuked the box and case that contained it. I had put that board in a build for my brother, and when it stopped working after years of faithful service, he shipped the tower back to me to work on. UPS even packed it for him, and they still somehow crushed it! Only issue I've ever really had with UPS in all these years.

 

[MaxiPro800]

It's not the recap (it already has been fully recapped with japanese caps) but the chips slowly degrading. I can't even overclock as much as a standard 2500+ on it without the boards crashing one way or another - the only one I managed to run it stable at 3200+ speeds was the K7N2 Delta-ILSR, much to my surprise. Neither the EPoX nor the ASUS I have could mantain that speed.

 

[Greenslade]

Got a cheap Asus A7N8X-X to play with those CPUs

That is a coincidence I was going to get that on F.M.P. but decided against it As I have the next modal up from that. Do you have 98se on it?

I still have the box for the A7N8X Deluxe. The board died many years ago when UPS nuked the box and case that contained it. I had put that board in a build for my brother, and when it stopped working after years of faithful service, he shipped the tower back to me to work on. UPS even packed it for him, and they still somehow crushed it! Only issue I've ever really had with UPS in all these years.

Only the Athlon core named Thunderbird

You're too young at 36 to have seen Thunderbirds in the 60,s unlike most of us on. here.

 

[Ruru]

That is a coincidence I was going to get that on F.M.P. but decided against it As I have the next modal up from that. Do you have 98se on it?

XP. I have to admit that I used 98SE when I started playing around with computers and I don't miss it at all. Though it was somewhat a good OS, but 2000 and XP were way better.

Got that board and 6800 Ultra for free, had to pay just the postage. And that's a rare card and not a cheap one.

 

[Greenslade]

It is a long story but you need another skt A motherboard that supports the same BIOS provider, AMI or Award.
It has been years since I've done that, and even google search does not pick up on this, but in short it was something like, pluck out the failed BIOS chip
from the motherboard BIOS socket, put it in the known working board, replacing the chip it was on its and use BIOS "force/blind flash" using a DOS FDD(floppy) upon post, then when done, place the chip back in the other motherboard.

There are some guides on the net, maybe even on YT, but did not dig them out now.

I only have one Biostar board so won't be able to do that.
I was wrong in what I said about the Ethernet cable lighting up on the Biostar. The Biostar is in the photo below. It was the 865 Neo ver3 where the Ethernet cable lit up. Both the boards don,t light up on their boards. The Core2Duo MSI P45D3 orange and blue lights flick on and off. the heatsink fan keeps on going on and off with a grinding noise on the Heatsink fan. The thing is when I put the Heatsink fan on the NEO there is no grinding noise on itI don,t suppose anyone has any ideas of getting one of the three boards to work. I have changed the CMOS battery in all of them plus cleaneing the ram and APU and Gpu slots

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

That is a coincidence I was going to get that on F.M.P. but decided against it As I have the next modal up from that. Do you have 98se on it?

You're too young at 36 to have seen Thunderbirds in the 60,s unlike most of us on. here.

That’s dedication. Shame the customer didn’t have some kitty litter or something to throw him a bone!

 

[Ruru]

I only have one Biostar board so won't be able to do that.
I was wrong in what I said about the Ethernet cable lighting up on the Biostar. The Biostar is in the photo below. It was the 865 Neo ver3 where the Ethernet cable lit up. Both the boards don,t light up on their boards. The Core2Duo MSI P45D3 orange and blue lights flick on and off. the heatsink fan keeps on going on and off with a grinding noise on the Heatsink fan. The thing is when I put the Heatsink fan on the NEO there is no grinding noise on itI don,t suppose anyone has any ideas of getting one of the three boards to work. I have changed the CMOS battery in all of them plus cleaneing the ram and APU and Gpu slots

Could be a video card problem. Do you have an another AGP card to test it with?

 

[onemanhitsquad]

Thunderbirds and Fireball XL5!

 

[Greenslade]

Could be a video card problem. Do you have an another AGP card to test it with?

I have tried the one out of my Athlon 2400 PC that works, it spins on the Biostar board , and I all so tried ones without a fan, of course, I have no way of telling if they work.

Thunderbirds and Fireball XL5!

Don't forget Stingray and Joe 90

The Shadows were massive in the Uk but never made it in the USA, you had the Ventures. still going today but I see no original members in the band

the girls are enjoying it cool,

 

[droid-I]

It's called 'hot flash', not blind flash.

otoh, there is nothing "hot" about that, just random luck if it works.

 

[QuietBob]

Recently I've been playing with one of my Win7 min spec systems, which I already presented here. It's a 2004/5 budget build utilizing lowest tier hardware supported by the 64-bit OS. Its motherboard integrated graphics is arguably the weakest component, and it just got an upgrade. I added a low profile OEM HD2400 Pro card (also featured here previously). The card has had a troubled life. I got this passively cooled model used, and even with only 20 W TDP its heatsink was already showing severe temperature discoloration. Repasting the die didn't help, and the GPU would still overheat and crash randomly under heavy load. So I ghettoed on a random 80mm fan, and it has stayed below 53 C since:



The Radeon HD2400 Pro is the slowest representative of the TeraScale 1 family, ATI's first unified shader architecture (apart from the OEM only HD2350, same specs with half the frame buffer and memory bus). With some tinkering in Afterburner I managed to set the clocks to match those of a reference model:



Here are 3DMark scores from 99Max, 00, 01SE, 03 and 06 with driver optimizations enabled:



Compared with the IGP, the results are 30%, 185%, 171%, 232% and 373% higher. Quite a boost eh?
(As always, posting from the actual machine)

 

[MaxiPro800]

Speaking of ASRock, I just dug out another 939 mobo, a 939N68PV-GLAN.

Of course it would be ASRock who'd take an AM2 (AM3+ even!) chipset and just throw 939 in the mix.

Shame it doesn't OC, but that's a bit to be expected from those exotic mainboards. There's a 3200+ onboard and the heatsink is from an Athlon X2 250.

As well as testing the 8800GTX compatibility with my 64 x2 4600+. If anything, it's gonna be a toss between this and the Quadro FX3700.

Don't worry - the PSU used (HKC SZ-430PDR. Reliable unit, though I think the 8800GTX might be pushing its limits) is temporary - once everything sound-wise is sorted out, I will use the Raidmax RX-700AC unit.

 

[Mr.Scott]

otoh, there is nothing "hot" about that, just random luck if it works.

Works fine as long as one's careful. Done it a hundred times. Back then, bios savior's were tough to come by.

I have tried the one out of my Athlon 2400 PC that works, it spins on the Biostar board , and I all so tried ones without a fan, of course, I have no way of telling if they work.

Wait, you powered on without a heatsink on those? They're all dead now. On socket A, a couple seconds without a heatsink is all it takes to fry em.

 

[MaxiPro800]

Wait, you powered on without a heatsink on those? They're all dead now. On socket A, a couple seconds without a heatsink is all it takes to fry em.

+1 on this, my first kill was a 750MHz Duron and exactly that way. Dumb young me thought it was gonna run just as fine as a Celeron Coppermine did at one point. Guess that wasn't the case

 

[droid-I]

yes, if nose notice the faint smell of overheated/burning silicon, might be a gone case for the CPU(same for GPU if heatsink&fan is not there).

 

[stinger608]

Wait, you powered on without a heatsink on those? They're all dead now. On socket A, a couple seconds without a heatsink is all it takes to fry em.

Yep @Greenslade , exactly what Mr.Scott stated, you fried them chips.

 

[Norton]

+1 on this, my first kill was a 750MHz Duron and exactly that way. Dumb young me thought it was gonna run just as fine as a Celeron Coppermine did at one point. Guess that wasn't the case

Lost my XP 1800+ when one of the retention clips for the heatsink broke and the cooler fell off- cpu was dead before the cooler finished falling

Replaced it with an 800 Duron

 

[68Olds]

Guys, I think @Greenslade is talking about VGA cards that are passively cooled, not CPUs. He was answering a question about trying other VGA cards. (that's what I'm hoping anyway ).

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

I started with a Duron 800 that I pencil unlocked and ran at 1.0ghz. Eventually got the Athlon 900 with the extra L2. Then on to a Palomino until I moved to a s754 rig.

 

[Greenslade]

Works fine as long as one's careful. Done it a hundred times. Back then, bios savior's were tough to come by.


Wait, you powered on without a heatsink on those? They're all dead now. On socket A, a couple seconds without a heatsink is all it takes to fry em.

I have seen people on youtube doing it without having a heatsink on the CPU and without having problems. I only did it for a short time.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

I have seen people on youtube doing it without having a heatsink on the CPU and without having problems. I only did it for a short time.

Reminds me of this classic:

 

[lexluthermiester]

Reminds me of this classic:

I've seen that happen. Horrendously nasty smell..

 

[Canned Noodles]

I have seen people on youtube doing it without having a heatsink on the CPU and without having problems. I only did it for a short time.

The CPU in the video is simply not comparable. It has both an IHS and modern throttling technology.