On 4 Mar 98 at 20:13, Kevin Guest wrote:
> Currently I have:-
> Very Cheap TXpro Mobo recently swop for an old Chaintec HX, Big mistake !!!
> Max HD transfer 5.5Mb/Sec with latest ALi driver, better with osr2 standard
> driver upto 10MB/Sec
> Intel P133
> 32MB SDRAM
> UDMA 3.2GB Quantum HD
> STB Volocity 128 G.Card
> Creative SB S.Card
> HP7100i CD Writter
> Mitsumi *8 CD-ROM
> HSP 33.6 Modem
> 17" Hansol Monitor .26dpi
> 1) I would like to go Intel P2 (233 or 266), would like to be able to play
> quake II in hi-res!.
>
> 2) Is there any advice you can give, I don't want to buy another dummy
> motherboard.
"quake II in hi-res" calls out for some kind of 3D accelerator
card. The VoodooII cards have just begun to come out, so that
first-generation Voodoo cards can be found "slightly used" or on
inventory clearance, for about $70-90. This could be the right week
to buy one. You may not need a new motherboard for this particular
goal.
> 3) Will my SDRAM, G.Card, ect be OK ? As I see it I just lose the old mobo
> and CPU.
Should be fine. Most 440LX motherboards lose one PCI slot in
favour of an AGP video slot, and so without an AGP video card, you
may find things a little cramped.
> 4) Also I had bad problems with that TX mobo and my CD Writter. Basically
> if I use the osr2 std Driver, the software said that there was no suitable
> IDE channel. If I used the driver that came with the board, when ever I put
> a CD into the writer the system totally crashed (screen black!). And using
> the latest driver I only got Xfer rate (AmiDiagnostics) 5.5MB/Sec. And at
> this speed I get constant buffer under-runs and/or ASPI failure errors. Any
> Ideas here ?
Although some people report success with EIDE CD writers, many
people who've been doing CD-R for a while don't trust them[*]. I
suspect they may work better on a channel by themselves -- that could
be what the std driver is trying to tell you.
[*] - The people I hear talk about it prefer SCSI, and that's how
I'm going. SCSI places much less load on the CPU, so it can more
reliably handle both reading from the source drive and writing to the
CD. It's possible that those who report success with an EIDE writer
are using 200+ MHz CPUs.
> 5) If I stick to a board built around the Intel (440LX ?) chipset should I
> get reasonable performance ? Local stockest has Tiger Cat 440LX, Stingray
> 440LX, Intel P2 AL440LX, Intel P2 AL440LXA in my price range, are they any
> good, is there a best one, or perhaps I should look else where for a
> different one ?
I know of no PII boards built around any but the 440FX and 440LX
sets, and the 440FX doesn't support SDRAM (and AGP). 440LX is your
obvious choice.
Of these four, the AL440LX is the only one I'm familiar with. I
expect that the LXA is similar but with audio built in on the
motherboard; losing a slot to AGP, this could be helpful.
David G
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