RE: [newbie] all-in-one mb thread (kinda rant)
Get the name correct. It is ATHLON not ATH-A-LON. Sorry if this sounds bashing but its not. And to answer if other all-in-one boards have problemsyesthats why they are cheaper so you can deal with the drivers and issues. Plus your running LINUXprobably not tested on the HW your runningyour going to run into problems. Heck, all of us have run into problems with SUPPORTED hardware. Rob -Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of BCSoftSent: Tuesday, February 04, 2003 11:38 PMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: [newbie] all-in-one mb thread (kinda rant) Greetings, Just bought (on impulse -- damn) an Athalon K7SEM mb by some generic vendor at a recent computer show. It's working (dual boot W98/ML9) but not without some trials. I'm wondering if the all-in-one type of board has more problems than the add-a-card. Rich
[newbie] all-in-one mb thread (kinda rant)
Greetings, Just bought (on impulse -- damn) an Athalon K7SEM mb by some generic vendor at a recent computer show. It's working (dual boot W98/ML9) but not without some trials. I'm wondering if the all-in-one type of board has more problems than the add-a-card. Rich
Re: [newbie] all-in-one mb thread (kinda rant)
On Tue, February 4 2003 11:38 pm, BCSoft wrote: : Greetings, : Just bought (on impulse -- damn) an Athalon K7SEM mb by some generic vendor : at a recent computer show. It's working (dual boot W98/ML9) but not without : some trials. I'm wondering if the all-in-one type of board has more : problems than the add-a-card. Rich My friend.. if you bought an all-in-one card, you've just seriously limited your upgradeability. I have almost never seen an all-in-one card with a decent video card, and, not only that, but they almost never have an AGP slot, so if you decide to upgrade the video card, you're buying a whole new motherboard. onboard sound is usually decent, as well as onboard ethernet.. but I try to stay as far away from onboard video, as I can. -- Chuck Burns, Jr [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---===--- Foolproof Operation: No provision for adjustment. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] all-in-one mb thread (kinda rant)
On Tuesday 04 February 2003 06:50 pm, Chuck Burns wrote: On Tue, February 4 2003 11:38 pm, BCSoft wrote: : Greetings, : Just bought (on impulse -- damn) an Athalon K7SEM mb by some generic : vendor at a recent computer show. It's working (dual boot W98/ML9) but : not without some trials. I'm wondering if the all-in-one type of board : has more problems than the add-a-card. Rich My friend.. if you bought an all-in-one card, you've just seriously limited your upgradeability. I have almost never seen an all-in-one card with a decent video card, and, not only that, but they almost never have an AGP slot, so if you decide to upgrade the video card, you're buying a whole new motherboard. onboard sound is usually decent, as well as onboard ethernet.. but I try to stay as far away from onboard video, as I can. for the normal overpowered word processor/ dumb termanal emulator/ office computer/ internet browser, it is fine,,, works good as a print server, or firewall, not bad as a file server. but for those lan parties... you really do need an as/400.. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
RE: [newbie] all-in-one mb thread (kinda rant)
Of course, if you want performance you don't buy an integrated board. There's no problem with those ECS motherboards that I've heard of, and you can upgrade from the integrated components. If you do add an AGP graphics card or sound card some day (and you can) you have to remember to disable the integrated video and sound in the BIOS or you WILL have problems. So what kind of trouble have you been having in Linux with it? -Allan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of et Sent: February 4, 2003 8:05 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [newbie] all-in-one mb thread (kinda rant) On Tuesday 04 February 2003 06:50 pm, Chuck Burns wrote: On Tue, February 4 2003 11:38 pm, BCSoft wrote: : Greetings, : Just bought (on impulse -- damn) an Athalon K7SEM mb by some generic : vendor at a recent computer show. It's working (dual boot W98/ML9) but : not without some trials. I'm wondering if the all-in-one type of board : has more problems than the add-a-card. Rich My friend.. if you bought an all-in-one card, you've just seriously limited your upgradeability. I have almost never seen an all-in-one card with a decent video card, and, not only that, but they almost never have an AGP slot, so if you decide to upgrade the video card, you're buying a whole new motherboard. onboard sound is usually decent, as well as onboard ethernet.. but I try to stay as far away from onboard video, as I can. for the normal overpowered word processor/ dumb termanal emulator/ office computer/ internet browser, it is fine,,, works good as a print server, or firewall, not bad as a file server. but for those lan parties... you really do need an as/400.. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] all-in-one mb thread (kinda rant)
On Tuesday 04 February 2003 08:38 pm, BCSoft wrote: Greetings, Just bought (on impulse -- damn) an Athalon K7SEM mb by some generic vendor at a recent computer show. It's working (dual boot W98/ML9) but not without some trials. I'm wondering if the all-in-one type of board has more problems than the add-a-card. Rich OK I have run the ASUS A7N266-VM with no problems, and full acceleration off a Mandrake Prosuite DVD installation (8.2). I have put together a few computers using 630 and 730 SiS chipsets (both all-in-one) and have had only minor problems (for me) in installation, but no problems at all with 9.0 or 9.1Beta3. I am looking for a K7SEM with a socketed 24-Pin DIP BIOS installed. The one with edge-grip BIOS is useless to me. Why? Well, I have a package adapted from the Linux BIOS project with linux kernel, vi, nano, Python, GTK+ and FramebufferX (not to mention ROX) and I have a 32M DiskOnChip in a 24 pin DIP. Booting once with Linux, loading the build I have, then hotswapping the BIOS chip for the DiskOnChip and Flashing my package into BIOS, I have a useful system that boots in less than 5 seconds and can then bring in whatever else it needs from HD at leisure while I am already looking at a nice desktop. Single-Boards are usually rather proprietary except the ones with SiS chipsets which have been classicly linux-friendly. The manufacturers of distros have not necessarily kept up with recognition of these boards bacause they do not have a huge sales volume, so for example in 8.0 and 8.1 the sound had to be configured post-install cause the ALSA drivers were misconfigured for those boards and the OSS drivers worked better. Also the networking interfaces at times needed special support. Now the NForce Chipset needed help with 9.0, at least for certain boards while others worked out of the box. Single Boards have these obvious PRos -Low cost (relative to the same hardware in several packages) -Compact size (not always) -Higher reliability in the sense of greater MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure). You see Electronics packages have an infant death syndrome but once past that, the failure rate is single digits per hundred thousand device hours. So with fewer, many fewer, devices to fail on the computer, the overall reliability has to be higher. If some manufacturer would remove head from backorifice and put tantalytic Caps on the board, the lifetime would be far greater than the useful life of the technology on the board (but it if does what you bought it to do, you CANNOT consider it obsolete). and these Obvious Cons Limited expandability Not usually the fastest performers Not generally for gaming aficianados (except the Nforce) Proprietary Drivers (Only the Nforce) IF something breaks, then the replacement is the WHOLE board. But I say again--most of the single-boards have excellent manufacturer based linux support with drivers regularly released to kernel.org (except the NForce, which is stuck with proprietary drivers for 3D accel for the on-board Geforce and is a taint on the linux kernel when installed, but even there the drivers for the sound and ethernet are free software) and most distros pay them little attention because single-boards are a low-population item. Intel 810 and 815 chipsets have quite a spotty history, but then Intel treated them almost like poor cousins in its driver releases; however, those chipsets today work like a charm with most linux distros and Mandrake installs without a hiccup and onften without even asdking you if you want to test anything. The 820 should be avoided altogether regardless how low the price is on the surplus market (Intel recalled them). SiS 630, 730, and 740 Chipsets are well supported. Beware of ANY board with the 845 (pentium4) Chipset. Flaky performance and filesystem corruption occurs with Win2K as well as most linux kernels NForce Chipsets offer a single-board (NOT necessarily small) for gamers where additions can be mounted and are often very expandable. The cheapest of them provides a nice experience for gaming folks, and also a relatively inexpensive desktop workstation (and you do NOT have to taint the kernel as the Geforce has perfectly acceptable 2d accel free software drivers which is usually more than needed for a desktop workstation except for a few engineering workstations where something expensive from SGI is likely the first choice. RAID is usually not available on such boards, nor are the cases that surround the Micro-ATX size boards known for a plethora of disk bays. Of course I think IDE RAID is worth the price for the extra IDE interface channels offered and not for the firmware which Linux Software RAID can run circles around anyway. Well that is it for what I know about them, Others can doubtless add issues either pro or con that I have not thought of or do not know. Civileme Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to
Re: [newbie] all-in-one mb thread (kinda rant)
Originally ML wouldn't recognize the built in ethernet. I installed another ethernet card and now ML recognizes both of them - go figure. It's ok though since I use one for internet and one for intranet. Knoppix recognized the card but had to be passed parameters to get the video correct. All in all, not much to configure (although I don't like the fact that I had to use that second ethernet card) but it got me thinking about the 'proper' way to assemble a ML computer. On a short aside, I used to assemble computers back in the dos days. I stopped doing it (and recommending it to my customers) when the installs and end user support on the 'factory' machines reached a certain level of quality. Linux may reach that level but I'm betting that without a dictator like M$ to force things, I'd better learn how to set up a system for my customers. Rich - Original Message - So what kind of trouble have you been having in Linux with it? -Allan Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] all-in-one mb thread (kinda rant)
Hmmm Hmmm My son is having problems with an Intel 850 chipset board. Does it have the same flakey performance and is there any solution (throw dos 6.22 on there and use it to play Xcom UFO Defense?)? Rich - Original Message - -snip- SiS 630, 730, and 740 Chipsets are well supported. Beware of ANY board with the 845 (pentium4) Chipset. Flaky performance and filesystem corruption occurs with Win2K as well as most linux kernels -end snip- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] all-in-one mb thread (kinda rant)
At 04:18 PM 2/4/2003 -0900, you wrote: On Tuesday 04 February 2003 08:38 pm, BCSoft wrote: Greetings, Just bought (on impulse -- damn) an Athalon K7SEM mb by some generic vendor at a recent computer show. It's working (dual boot W98/ML9) but not without some trials. I'm wondering if the all-in-one type of board has more problems than the add-a-card. Rich OK I have run the ASUS A7N266-VM with no problems, and full acceleration off a Mandrake Prosuite DVD installation (8.2). I have put together a few computers using 630 and 730 SiS chipsets (both all-in-one) and have had only minor problems (for me) in installation, but no problems at all with 9.0 or 9.1Beta3. I am looking for a K7SEM with a socketed 24-Pin DIP BIOS installed. The one with edge-grip BIOS is useless to me. Why? Well, I have a package adapted from the Linux BIOS project with linux kernel, vi, nano, Python, GTK+ and FramebufferX (not to mention ROX) and I have a 32M DiskOnChip in a 24 pin DIP. Booting once with Linux, loading the build I have, then hotswapping the BIOS chip for the DiskOnChip and Flashing my package into BIOS, I have a useful system that boots in less than 5 seconds and can then bring in whatever else it needs from HD at leisure while I am already looking at a nice desktop. So thats why you wanted that BIOS Flash page translated! Heh, had I but known. Oh well.. still want it? If yes, just re-email me the link i'll get it done this week. I'll promise that Civilme. I'm just sorry I didn't get to it the first time. I feel so guilty. - FemmeFatale Good Decisions You boss Made: We'll do as you suggest and go with Linux. I've always liked that character from Peanuts. - Source: Dilbert Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
