...but for a while it looked like it might not.

Let me tell you a story. A month or more back I bought a bunch of stuff to put together a new machine:
- ABit KG-7-RAID MB
- AMD Athlon 1.4GHz
- 4x256MB registered DDR SDRAM
- 30GB ATA100 EIDE HD
- Pioneer DVD-116 ATA66 EIDE DVD-ROM
- IOmega 250MB EIDE ZIP drive
- Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live!5.1 w/ Live!Drive IR
- 3Com PCI 10/100 Etherlink
- nVidia GeForce2 Ultra 64MB AGP video
- Full tower case with 300W power supply
- WinME
- Red Hat 7.1 Deluxe Workstation

To add to this I had some bits from previous machines
- 30GB ATA100 EIDE HD
- 6GB EIDE HD (old, probably ATA33, maybe ATA66)
- Adaptec Fast/Wide SCSI card
- IOmega 2GB SCSI internal Jaz drive
- Dell P1110 21" Trinitron
- Altec Lansing 3 speaker (L/R/sub) system
- 104 key keyboard
- Logitech TrackMan Marble+

My plan was to create a dual-boot box to play games on (WinME) and to develop on (Linux). But before I got around to putting it all together I got busy with a couple of small jobs - being unemployed any money is good money. But that occupied me for most of three weeks, four counting the week after which was spent catching up on email, news, forums, etc., that had stacked up while I was busy away from the net.

But Monday I decided to get on with it, in part to get on with updating the forums. So I spent Monday night putting the box together, which wasn't too hard.

Tuesday was the day I'd wire it into my work area and install things. Well, it didn't work that way. When powered on it just beeped. No POST. Nothing but BEEP-BEEP-BEEP... That's not a good sign. So I worked on it for a while and it just wasn't happening. So I started pulling things out of it to see if it was a card or something. I got it down to MB, CPU, RAM, and video and it still had the same beep. Just MB, RAM, and CPU - same beep. So I decided to pull the heatsink and CPU. No beep. Ok. Then I did something very, very dumb.

I put the CPU back in and turned the box on.

Note I did not say I put the CPU *AND HEATSINK* back in.

Do you know how fast a 1.4GHz T-Bird core Athlon will fry itself without a heatsink? Here's a hint: Don't blink, you'll miss it.

Of course, I realized what I was doing as I did it - which was too late. After that even with the CPU in, no beeps.

Ok, I figured the CPU was dead - but I had no way to know for sure if it was the CPU or the MB.

Then my buddy Jer volunteered to play 'swap the CPU' with his 1.4Ghz box. So I trucked my box from Waltham to Worcester. We took my CPU and put it in his box - nothing. Pretty much confirming my CPU was fried.

Then we put his CPU in my box - and it beeped again. Ok, so back to where we started. We couldn't figure it out, so I decided I'd give up and take it to a small repair shop a few blocks from my house. So we put my CPU back in my box.

Then we put Jer's CPU back in his box - and nothing happened. After many attempts to sort it out, it was still dead. I seemed to have a killer touch.

I, of course, felt like a total asshole for managing to fry a good friend's box while he was trying to help me. I hate breaking other people's stuff. Jer was cool about it, he just wants it fixed. But I still felt lame. And, of course I was already stressed out and a bit depressed over my box being broken in a mysterious way.

So now I trucked both boxes back to Waltham with me. On Wednesday I took them into the local repair shop. They called me up shortly after I brought them in to tell me *both* CPUs were dead - mine was fried, as expected, and Jer's was physically cracked. It must have happened when getting his heatsink back on - it was a real pain to get latched. They said it wasn't too unusual to happen with the Athlon, they'd done it themselves building systems.

Great.

Well, they had a new Athlon XP 1600+ (that's the Palomino core @ 1.4GHz for the non-chipheads) that my MB would handle with a BIOS upgrade. And they turned up a Thunderbird core 1.4GHz chip for Jer's box - which is the same as it had been running. Ok, so I had them go ahead and install them.

Wednesday night I schlepped Jer's box back to Worcester. We connected it and turned it on, and it booted fine. Great.

Except that it would hang after a random period of time, in both Linux and Win2K. After much consternation it remained broken. So I hauled it back to Waltham. The repair center has been closed for the holidays, but it'll go back once they're open again. And I feel lame for not having it fixed yet...

So, onto my box. After I got home I was nervous about it - afterall, we thought Jer's box was ok. So I tried to do my install.

I installed WinME and it went ok. Then I tried to install the video drivers that came with the card. Reboot - and suddenly WinME was broken. Out of memory errors, and other bizarreness. Ok, I redid the install, and tried again. Now Windows would start - but NOTHING was running. Ctrl-Alt-Del would bring up the program manager box - which was empty. I tried this several more times with no luck. I tried installing the drivers from the CD, I tried letting WinME look for them (it would find them online), and I tried downloading the latest from nVidia. No luck.

I tried it with first installing the AMD AGP miniport drivers that came with the system, and without. I tried it with the current version downloaded from AMD's website. I tried it with, and without, installing the PCI-to-AGP bridge drivers. Basically I tried every combination I could think of, working all night, growing increasingly frustrated, and not getting anywhere.

Halfway through this I tossed in the RH7.1 disks and did a generic workstation install - which went perfectly, recognized the card, and let me set things as high as 1600x1200. So it didn't seem to be the HW.

After posting this on a private news server I share with friends, a few of them replied that WinME had driver problems and that was probably it. Ok, I gave up in disgust and frustration and went to bed.

Thanksgiving wasn't a fun day. I spent most of it home alone, but that's not pertinent here. I don't care for the holiday mainly due to personal history. I did make attempts at the install again, but it was just as fruitless as before. My friend Rat emailed me to volunteer to come over Friday with various Windows install media to try.

So Friday he showed up with Win98SE and Win2K Pro install discs.

First we tried Win98SE - and we got the same results. Everything was fine, until you tried to install the video drivers. At that point we figured the 98/ME AGP miniport of PCI-AGP bridge driver must be broken.

So we tried Win2K.

It worked.

Let me say that again.

It worked.

It recognized the hardware and the drivers worked. Larger resolutions and true color worked. Golden.

Emboldened by this we (Rat, Gryphon, and I) decided to head out for dinner - and to buy a copy of WinXP Home Edition for my box. Yes, I actually do buy software and don't use warez. (Ok, ok, *most* of the time... nearly all.) I also decided to bag a copy of Norton AntiVirus for XP - remember folks, don't run a machine without it.

So, after feasting at California Pizza Kitchen (*plug*), we returned home and did the final install. WinXP on one HD, RH7.1 on the other - with the small HD mounter under RH as a kind of sratch space. Dual booting is working. Both OSes have been updated. And I'm posting this from NS4.79 under WinXP.

I am very, very relieved to finally have this damn thing working. It has meant spending several hundred dollars, which I don't really have to spend, though it does mean I have a slightly faster CPU than I started with. And a lot of time wasted. But now I can actually try to get some work done.

I'm not fully relieved, since Jer's box remains to be fixed, but at least something has gone right. (Knock on wood.)

And that has been my week...

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay

>And that has been my week...
>

I didn't understand the technical details of it, but that sounds like one hell of a week.

Tempted to ask if you sell Jem tape copies...

>Tempted to ask if you sell Jem tape copies...

Nope. I might copy the 'taped from TV' tapes I have - but they're nth generation already and I don't know that the copies would be viewable.

I haven't gotten around to watching all, um, 65 I think, episodes of those tapes myself...

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay

>>Tempted to ask if you sell Jem tape copies...
>
>Nope. I might copy the 'taped from TV' tapes I have - but they're nth
>generation already and I don't know that the copies would be viewable.
>
>I haven't gotten around to watching all, um, 65 I think, episodes of
>those tapes myself...
>

Hnh, which band did you prefer: Holograms, Misfits or Stingers?

"I've Got The Last Laugh" is stuck in my head

>Hnh, which band did you prefer: Holograms, Misfits or Stingers?

Kimber and Stormer's side project. ;-)

Of the three, um, probably the Holograms - but the Stingers we ok. Mainly they were introduced in the last season and never had many songs since the show was dropped.

>"I've Got The Last Laugh" is stuck in my head

The one SotS story got "Twilight in Paris" stuck in my head.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay

>>Hnh, which band did you prefer: Holograms, Misfits or Stingers?
>
>Kimber and Stormer's side project. ;-)
>
>Of the three, um, probably the Holograms - but the Stingers we ok.
>Mainly they were introduced in the last season and never had many
>songs since the show was dropped.

A pity on that, for some bizarre reason I really like the originality of the show. Very creative for something that was blatantly made to sell toys (such was the eighties). When it was cancelled, I think the writers were gonna start portraying Jem as more of an actress in Hollywood or something.

>>"I've Got The Last Laugh" is stuck in my head
>
>The one SotS story got "Twilight in Paris" stuck in my head.
>

Same here.

Was tempted to post the lyrics...

Whew!

Glad to hear you got it all fixed/working!

Hope you have luck with Jer's machine.

I can relate to heisenbug-type hardware problems. I think I mentionned it elsewhere, but my current board (A7A266) has issues with DDR memory...but only some brands, and only if you have 2 sticks in...

Don't'cha just love technology?

I had an AMD K6-2. It had problems with Win95. they were fixed with Win98.

I couldn't play Thief on the AMD -- graphics problems due to 3DNow (?)technology.

WinME is the worst Windows ever, according to the local Microsoftie.

No, I don't know how this helps.

you should get the "worst week since 1944" award! And I though going a week with no sleep working on homework and craming for exams was bad(yes, last year I went one whole week with only two< 2 > hours of sleep, dont ask me HOW, I just did)!

Xervis
AKA
The Chrono Shifting Trigger

If death is only the begining, then
what is the end?

Me

What's her name?

Static-Pulse
- the most impulsive post alive
DarkBeast.com

>What's her name?

The machine? Actually it is Gendou Mk.II - the last workstation I had was Gendou.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay

>>What's her name?
>
>The machine? Actually it is Gendou Mk.II - the last workstation I had
>was Gendou.

....

Any wonder the thing hates you? ;P

>I am very, very relieved to finally have this damn thing working. It
>has meant spending several hundred dollars, which I don't really have
>to spend, though it does mean I have a slightly faster CPU than I
>started with. And a lot of time wasted. But now I can actually try to
>get some work done.
>

I gotta ask... how much Won did this much Wang set you back? I'm wondering because my two machines are now so far behind the curve that Its now to the point of replacing, rathter than upgrading. Right now the specs I'm looking at are:

ATX case W/300 watts
Slot 1 or A motherboard ATX formfactor
800 - 1.4 gig clockspeed on the CPU
256k ram
AGP, 3 PCI, 1 ISA slots minimum
EIDE

In order to save money I'm looking at transplanting the Disks, monitors and keyboards I'm using now.... and I don't want to loose the data I've got. I need to put together 2 of them, too, on a very limited budget.

___________________

Jer told Vaughn about me. I am once again a victim of Murphy's law...

>256k ram

Hmm... I think I have a spare XT motherboard around here, but it's got at least 512k onboard, probably 640k. Might be a little too expensive for your taste... :)

(Sorry, I have people do that to me all the time and it's a reflex by now...)

Offsides

#include <prefix.h>

>I gotta ask... how much Won did this much Wang set you back? I'm
>wondering because my two machines are now so far behind the curve that
>Its now to the point of replacing, rathter than upgrading. Right now
>the specs I'm looking at are:
>
>ATX case W/300 watts
>Slot 1 or A motherboard ATX formfactor
>800 - 1.4 gig clockspeed on the CPU
>256k ram
>AGP, 3 PCI, 1 ISA slots minimum
>EIDE

I got my Abit KT7A and Tbird 1.2 from B-Z-Boyz for a very reasonable price- with the latest BIOS, you can get the 1.2 up to a 1.4 very easily (the Abit SoftBIOS III is very easy to use for overclocking. Be sure to get a good HS/F though; the standard one is a bit on the weak side). If you decide to go with the KT7A, be sure to get the 1.3 series or later boards; they'll support up to the AthlonXP 1600. Also, the KT7A doesn't like you to use all 3 DIMM slots; 2 in any combination of the 3 slots will be fine, but 3 will crash the system on boot.

For about $700 (including shipping)I put the following box together:
Cyclone Case (with 350 watt Fortran power supply)
T-Bird 1.2 (overclocked to only 1.333 because I've been too lazy to flash my BIOS)
Abit KT7A (1.2 series, no RAID support) (AGP, 6 PCI, 1 ISA)
1- 256 MB, PC133
WinCAK copper HSF combo (basically, 1 lb. of copper and a great big fan.)

Note that my case was almost as expensive as the mobo/CPU combo; I knew I was going to overclock and use the case for my next several main gaming boxes.

About the T-Bird CPU: I've had several friends crack their cores when putting on the HSF; that sucker is fragile and seating the HSF can be tricky without a flathead screwdriver or similiar tool. The CPU itself will also burst into flames at the slightest provocation, so a good HSF is a definite must. (My WinCAK is about 4 times the size of the aluminum one that came with my combo).

T.H.

>AthlonXP 1600. Also, the KT7A doesn't like you to use all 3 DIMM
>slots; 2 in any combination of the 3 slots will be fine, but 3 will
>crash the system on boot.

I think this is only with certain types of RAM - like with my ABit KG-7, it has 4 DIMM slots but you can only use 2 with unregistered DIMMs. You need registered DIMMs to use all 4.

>T-Bird 1.2 (overclocked to only 1.333 because I've been too lazy to
>flash my BIOS)

With the speed of processors today I don't really see the need to overclock. I did it with an old K6-2 system I had.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay

>>T-Bird 1.2 (overclocked to only 1.333 because I've been too lazy to
>>flash my BIOS)
>
>With the speed of processors today I don't really see the need to
>overclock. I did it with an old K6-2 system I had.

I agree- I overclocked it mainly because the option was available and didn't really cost anything extra in either time or resources. I had to set the multiplier anyway when I reset the CMOS jumper. It was also a good excuse to play around with the SoftBIOS. (It's not like I was expecting a huge performance increase going from 1.2~1.33 anyway :-)

T.H.

>I gotta ask... how much Won did this much Wang set you back? I'm
>wondering because my two machines are now so far behind the curve that
>Its now to the point of replacing, rathter than upgrading. Right now
>the specs I'm looking at are:
>
>ATX case W/300 watts
>Slot 1 or A motherboard ATX formfactor
>800 - 1.4 gig clockspeed on the CPU
>256k ram
>AGP, 3 PCI, 1 ISA slots minimum
>EIDE
>
>In order to save money I'm looking at transplanting the Disks,
>monitors and keyboards I'm using now.... and I don't want to loose the
>data I've got. I need to put together 2 of them, too, on a very
>limited budget.

well, other people are suggestion, so I'll chime in too...
United Micro is very nice. Their configurator lets you mix'n'match (and leave out) parts as you like. Personally, I'd recommend the "INWIN Q500" case...it's a full tower (don't know if you go for that, but I hate anything smaller) that is really nice (both sides and the top come off independantly, and the backplane slides out with 2 screws, for easy assembly...assuming your heatsink isn't too tall :)

The two beefiest machines I have currently (me and SO) are both in this case...

>Personally, I'd recommend the "INWIN Q500" case...it's a full tower
>(don't know if you go for that, but I hate anything smaller) that is
>really nice (both sides and the top come off independantly, and
>the backplane slides out with 2 screws, for easy assembly...assuming
>your heatsink isn't too tall :)

The case I picked up locally is like that. A full tower, 300W PS - floppy bay (well, 3.5" bay which invariably is used for a floppy) and 5 5.25" bays in front, 4 3.5" HD bays internally. Both sides come off with 2 screws each (I'm thinking of getting thumb screws to make it easy). The MB is on a slide-out subassembly held in my two screws. Makes it easy to work on it - mount the CPU, HS/Fan, cards, etc without having to work inside the case. It also has mounts for 3 case fans (plus the PS fan) - which I filled.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay

>I gotta ask... how much Won did this much Wang set you back? I'm

Well, if I hadn't fscked up, I think it came in less than $1K. And costs have dropped a bit - look at http://www.pricewatch.com/

>ATX case W/300 watts
>Slot 1 or A motherboard ATX formfactor
>800 - 1.4 gig clockspeed on the CPU

If you're going Athlon it'll be Socket A - they don't do Slot A anymore. Though there are still some old Slot A chips out there - 700-750-800MHz. 850MHz-1.6Ghz are all Socket A. At this point you'd probably want an Athlon XP. I'd recommend that instead of an older Athlon - the XP has the Palomino core which performs a bit better for a given clock speed, runs a bit cooler, and has an extended instruction set.

If you went with Intel (why?), it wouldn't be Slot 1. The P4 has a new Socket (Socket 4-something-or-other), and the PIII went to sockets too.

>256k ram

My advice - with the price of RAM right now, buy as much as you can afford. If you're going with an Athlon you'll get better performance if you buy a MB that uses DDR SDRAM instead of SDRAM, especially with a 266MHz FSB instead of 200MHz. You'll pay a bit more for DDR, but not that much - and, in any case, RAM prices are WAY down right now. My board will take up to 4GB of RAM, but the price curve swings sharply after 256MB DIMMs, so it wasn't worth it. Besides, like I'm going to do anything that would use more than 1GB anyway.

>AGP, 3 PCI, 1 ISA slots minimum

ISA? Why? Most of the better boards these days don't have ISA anymore. Better to just get all PCI unless you have an old ISA card you just can't give up. My board has 1 AGP and 6 PCI, a lot of them have 1 AGP and 5 PCI.

>EIDE

Pretty much any MB will have that - look for ATA/100 and get drives that are ATA/100 if possible.

>In order to save money I'm looking at transplanting the Disks,
>monitors and keyboards I'm using now.... and I don't want to loose the
>data I've got. I need to put together 2 of them, too, on a very
>limited budget.

Well, monitors, keyboards, mice, etc should be no problem. Well, as long as the KB and mouse is PS/2 - pretty much all systems have those connectors.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay

I built a very similiar box recently myself, MZ. WinME, Athlon 1.4 T-Bird, same mobo, not nearly as much RAM B-P
I got the dreaded beeps myself, though mine actually ran at first. Then it would slowly destabilize and whether or not it would reboot was random chance. Eventually, it stopped rebooting at all. Beep, beep, ad nauseaum.
Turns out I didn't stuff my RAM in the slot tight enough. DUH.
Another difference is I'm also running a GeForce 3, rather than a 2. It's been giving me fits. It's a blazing hot card, but incompatabilities and crash bugs with some older games are apparent. After your post, and several hours of tweaking trying to unscrew Half-Life, I'm pretty convinced it's ME. ME was all I had when I was putting it together, though. So I dealt with it. Now I have a copy of 2K Pro, but I'm loather to either install it over ME (bad bad karma to install Windows over Windows) or to suck the 12 gigs of crap that's already accumulated on my HDDs out and reformat them. (Where does it all come from?) Anyway, like the rest, I'm glad you got it straight. Headaches aside, it beats buying some crap generi-box from Best Try, that if you want to not suck you'll have to dump a grand into anyway and hope the fucking proprietary case design doesn't screw you.

TRB

"You are... what you do... when it counts." -The Masao

>Half-Life, I'm pretty convinced it's ME. ME was all I had when I was

Some other folks have suggested that ME doesn't like more than 384KB, maybe 512KB, or RAM either. I don't know for sure. Maybe that, or maybe just busted drivers.

>install Windows over Windows) or to suck the 12 gigs of crap that's
>already accumulated on my HDDs out and reformat them. (Where does it

You could pick up something like Partition Commander, create a new partition and move the stuff you want to keep there - then reformat the C: drive and reinstall.

12GB? Geez, collect MP3s?

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay

>Some other folks have suggested that ME doesn't like more than 384KB,
>maybe 512KB, or RAM either. I don't know for sure. Maybe that, or
>maybe just busted drivers.

I don't know about the RAM issue. I'm thinking you meant Megabytes, not Kilos, but in that case I've only got 256M so. New reference drivers from Nvidia got HL unscrewed, but the Ghost Recon demo still acted funny. Bad breakup when I'd first start a game, when/if it settled out the guys on my squad were invisible men, floating guns and helmets and webgear with no bodies holding them up. Kinda funny, actually. Alt-Tab to desktop and come back in straightens is out in 32bit color, but there's no workaround in 16bit.

>You could pick up something like Partition Commander, create a new
>partition and move the stuff you want to keep there - then reformat
>the C: drive and reinstall.

Good idea. Thanks.

>12GB? Geez, collect MP3s?

Well, I have to get the music for the cues in Eyrie works somewhere B-)
But seriously, that's only circa 1.5 gigs of it. I think most of it is various sundry utilities, my roommate's raw .wav and .bmp remixes and artworks, anime music videos (downloaded a lot of those since I got my cable in way back whenever)and, big surprise, games. Game installs are ludicrous nowadays. Add in mods, maps, utils, and whatnot, it adds up. Sierra has the oh-so-endearing habit of sticking mods I don't want or play in with required upgrades, too. I've lost track of the times I've deleted the TeamFortress Classic folder.

TRB

"You are... what you do... when it counts." -The Masao

>>12GB? Geez, collect MP3s?
>
>Well, I have to get the music for the cues in Eyrie works somewhere
>B-)

Try Kazaa, you can find a lot of things on it, it's free.

Still thinking...

>I'm not fully relieved, since Jer's box remains to be fixed, but at
>least something has gone right. (Knock on wood.)

Sri-Syadasti is up and running . although I did have to underclock
it to make it stay up stably. I can deal with a 1GHz CPU (10.5 * 100MHz)
that won't crash..
t'ain't perfect, but it'll do. Gweeping from bed rocks.

--
jer@gweep.net
Ceci n'est pas une .signature

>Sri-Syadasti is up and running . although I did have to underclock
>it to make it stay up stably. I can deal with a 1GHz CPU (10.5 *
>100MHz)
>that won't crash..
>t'ain't perfect, but it'll do. Gweeping from bed rocks.

I wonder if it is that CPU they put in there then...

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
eBay listings - updated 12/05/01

>I wonder if it is that CPU they put in there then...

mm.. it's possible it's a borderline CPU .. *shrug*

--
jer@gweep.net
Ceci n'est pas une .signature

>>I wonder if it is that CPU they put in there then...
>mm.. it's possible it's a borderline CPU .. *shrug*

I suxx0r.

Hmm, Gryph is talking about building a new box. I could order a new CPU for you to try - if it works for Sri you keep it, if not, Gryph could buy it since he's thinking of that anyway.

Hmm, I don't know if they flashed your BIOS or not in the end now that I think about it. Maybe check that - if they did FLASH the BIOS, maybe something changed. If not you'd probably need to FLASH it to support an XP properly.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
eBay listings - updated 12/05/01