[KLUG Members] Re: Well, that does it. -- Dual-Athlon is calling ...

[Bryan J. Smith]

[ Moving to HARDWARE ]

On Thu, 2002-06-06 at 00:02, Adam Bultman wrote:
> Oh, I'm way ahead of you.  I've tried infinite matchings of:
> IDE CDROM drive.
> ATA hard drive

Good.

> PCI Video card

Good.

> 256 MB stick of RAM
> 64 MB stick of ram

Oh yeah, I meant to mention this.  Only _registered_ (4-bit IC widths)
256MB DIMM modules are supported on the i440BX chipset.  Most 256MB
DIMMs sold today are NOT of that type -- the i815/845 take a different
256MB DIMM type (8 or 16-bit ICs, non-registered).

The 64MB DIMM would remove that and you only need 1 since the chipset is
i440BX.

> 1 proc
> dual proc

Good.

> different procs in different slots, one at a time, two at a time, one w/
> the filler card, one w/o fille rcard, etc.
> ...
> Different SCSI settings on the drives.
> I've done about a million things, and spent the last 5 days trying to get
> the correct settings going.  I don't know if you want to call it
> 'sticktoitivness' or 'stupidity'.

No, call it "thoroughness."  You could have missed something, but it's
pretty much something you want to forget about for awhile.  It may be
that you really exhausted all avenues, or that something else will come
to you in a few days.  Either way, you've got the right idea in moving
past it.

> The only thing I haven't tried is different processors. Howver, I know
> those two procs are good (I ran them on another box) so they mustb e OK.
> At this point, I'm going to hang it on my wall so I am reminded never to
> trust Ebay, and 'r8r' especially.

Well, the mainboard's VRM _might_ not be the latest as the processors,
but I _doubt_ it.  A 400MHz Pentium II is VRM8.2 if I remember
correctly, and _all_ i440BX chipset mainboards _at_least_ do VRM8.2, if
not newer.

> IF I come across a single proc mobo that'll hold one/two of those procs,
> or I have a friend with a dead proc, I might use/give it away. Until then,
> on the wall it stays.

I have a ViA 693A/598B (north/south) Slot-1 PC133 mainboard I can send
you.  The thing sucks with a PPGA-to-Slot-1 converter, but a Pentium II
266MHz ran fine in it.  It does 66/100 on the CPU, and 66/100/133 on the
memory.  I'm in Orlando though, but I'm willing to ship for a small fee
-- it's just sitting in my room.

> Anyway, I'm ready to shoot it, but I'm holding out, and I'm gunna go and
> buy me a fast motherboard and processor combo, with some DDR dimms, so I
> have a bloody fast linux machine running beehive linux.  Period.  And I
> will laugh. On into the night.

Tyan Tiger MP (S2460) dual-Athlon dude -- only about $160 nowdays for
the mainboard.  PC2100 (266MHz DDR) memory, registered ECC recommended. 
You'll need to get either older, non-XP Athlons, Durons or Athlon MPs as
the Athlon XP is "locked out" on the package from dual-processor.  I'm
running dual-Athlon 1.4GHz (last speed before XP) -- no issues.  Unlike
the Tyan Thunder K7, which has a special PS, you just need a regular PS
-- but I recommend the Enermax VP465VE (435W) as my Antec PP412X (400W)
didn't cut it (although the new Antec TruePower 430 should).

64-bit PCI, CPUs can operate independently thanx to the Alpha EV6 bus so
one can be accessing memory while the other is doing I/O.  On servers,
equals Intel's dual-memory channels in most operations, kicks Intel P4
butt on workstations -- even 1.26GHz Intel P3 is better than all but the
latest 2GHz+ P4s.

BTW, I recommend the Tyan Tiger MP (S2460) _over_ the Tyan Tiger MPX
(S2466) _unless_all_ of your 64-bit PCI cards _are_66MHz_.  Otherwise, a
33MHz in one of the two 64-bit PCI cards on the MPX will not only result
in slowing the 64-bit PCI cards to 33MHz anyway (like the MP, only the
MP has four 64-bit PCI cards instead of just two) but also slows your
north-to-southbridge link which then has four more PCI cards (can create
a bottleneck with the ATA -- long story).  It's also about $40 cheaper
(for the "cost" of no on-board 10/100 NIC).  See this post for more on
the MP (762+766) v. MPX (762+768): 
http://www.matrixlist.com/pipermail/pc_support/2001-December/000450.html

> However, I still thank you all for the help with this very frustrating
> motherboard/proc issue.  If you wanna take a whack at it, be my guest, but
> I don't take any responsibility if you shoot yourself as a result.

No problem.  Sorry if some of my commentary/posts were "redundant" or
just "rehashes" of what you tried.  You did more "due diligence" than I
probably would have before I got frustrated.  I surrender to you man.

-- Bryan

P.S.  Dual-Opteron (x86-64 Dual-ClawHammer and Quad-to-8-way
SledgeHammer) is not due until 2003H1 -- so figure April/June of 2003. 
This is inspite of the fact that the Athlon "64" (x86-64 uniprocessor
ClawHammer -- still "unnamed," but I suspect "64" will be it) will be
out 2002Q4.  So dual-Athlon is not a bad move for the next 9-12 months.

-- 
The US government could be 100x more effective, and 1/100th the
Constitutional worry, if it dictated its policy to Microsoft as
THE MAJOR CUSTOMER it is, and not THE REGULATOR it fails to be.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Bryan J. Smith, SmithConcepts, Inc.   mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org
Engineers and IT Professionals     http://www.SmithConcepts.com