Alright, I've got some motherboard questions, hope some of you people 
can answer a few of them.

First of all, I have a 430VX motherboard that has a socket 7 place for 
the CPU.  I don't know if the motherboard is made by intel, or some 
clone company.  I don't know what company make the board.  It's a long 
story, but I have the manual for a motherboard with the part number 
"MP064" yet the part number on my motherboard in my computer is 
"MP071A".  (That's what's written on the the motherboard in white text.)

Anyway, the motherboard manual for the MP064 says the motherboard has 4 
ISA slots and 4 PCI slots.  However, the motherboard in my computer has 
4 ISA slots, 3 PCI slots, and one slot that I think is an AGP.  The 
slot in question is the contact density of a PCI slot, however it's 
slightly longer than a PCI slot, and shorter than an ISA slot.  This 
slot is brown in color, opposed to the PCI slots which are white.  Does 
this sound like an AGP slot to you?  Ok, here's another thing about the 
slot.  All my PCI and ISA slots are on the same side of the 
motherboard, near the back of my case, so I can easily plug things in, 
such as the monitor (into the PCI video card) the speakers into the ISA 
sound card, etc.  The thing about the slot (the one I think might be 
AGP) is that it is not not near the PCI and ISA slots.  The AGP slot is 
parallel to the other slots, however, it is on the OTHER SIDE of the 
motherboard, towards the front of the case, and it is really close to 
the CPU.  In addition, the AGP slot is located directly below a hard 
drive and a floppy disk drive.  I couldn't put a card in there if I 
wanted to--at least not with my current case.  Is it standard practice 
for AGP slots to be far away like this?

Now, I mentioned that my motherboard manual does not correspond to the 
motherboard I have.  The manual shows jumpers for things such as clock 
speed and multiplyer.  The jumpers in the manual don't match up to the 
motherboard.  Moreover, the motherboard jumpers seem to have three 
pins, and the thing you put on them to close them, well it's either 
positioned on the two pins on the right, or on the left.  I have no way 
of knowing what setings they are, or which jumpers are for which 
settings.  So, does anybody know a good resource for how I might 
identify exactly who made my motherboard, and where I might get a 
manual for it?  It would be very difficult for me to upgrade my 120mhz 
pentium without knowing what jumpers to change :)

OK, here's one more question, it has to do with an ISA sound card that 
is not PnP.  The sound card's model number is "1831" and it has the ESS 
ES1688 chip on it.  The card was made by some company--I think Audio 
Drive might be the name of it, not entirely sure.  Anyway, I got this 
sound card to work under slackware 3.6 by just typing "modprobe 
sound."  However, when I upgraded from the 2.0.36 kernel to a 2.2.x 
kernel, the sound card would no longer work after modprobe sound.  So I 
did a lot of messing around with compiling kernel modules, and using 
modprobe sb with various settings, including trying the same IO, DMA, 
IRQ settings that windows uses on the same machine.  Still, I couldn't 
get the sound card to work with a 2.2.x kernel.  I started from scratch 
with slackware 4.0, and ran into the same problems as with the slak3.6 
+ kernel 2.2.x.

Anyway, the troubles with the sound card get better.  Remember, it's a 
non PNP card.  The jumper settings for the IRQ of the card do not match 
up with what windows claims is the IRQ that it is using.  And, there 
are no jumpers on the sound card where you are supposed to specify the 
DMA.  The manual doesnt describe a setting for NO jumper in that 
area....  Aren't those two facts extremely strange? or am I missing 
something obvious?  I'm not a hardware expert, but it seems to me, if 
jumpers on a non pnp card say to use an IRQ, shouldn't it use that IRQ 
or give an error about some conflict if it couldn't use that IRQ?  Oh, 
one more thing, there are no IRQ, DMA, IO conflicts listed in the 
windows control panel applet "System."  Everything works great under 
windows, despite the IRQ and DMA confusion with the jumpers.  
Everything works under linux except my WinWriter printer (that's 
understandable) and the soundcard.  The soundcard just won't work with 
2.2.x kernels.  However, I heard of some people who got ES1688 cards to 
work in RH6 using the sndconfig utility.  I'm going to try to get that 
to work soon.  I downloaded RH6 and burned it to a CD, hopefully it 
will work.

Anyway, does anybody know of good motherboard manual resources?  And do 
you know what's up with the soundcard strangeness?  Any input would be 
greatly appreciated :)

44 responses total.

might I suggest a search via Lycoos for "mp071a"?

I'll save you the trouble though, it comes up with 5 sites, 2 of which
are useful, one of those two is only useful because it points t the
other, the other is:

http://www.edom.com/download/mp071.txt

This response has been erased.

I'd guess the mystery slot is for high-speed CPU cache.

This response has been erased.

I know I've seen boards with a slot like the one you describe, but
have never figured out what they were for....  Scott's explaination
sounds good to me. 

Well, that's what my work PC has, a big slot close to the CPU for a fast
external cache.

Whoo-hoo!  I just pulled a Pentium Pro board out of storage, that I
picked up cheap last fall, & got online today & got myself a processor
for it!  <jshafer is easily amused today>

HI, I run Linux on my laptop, and I was wondering if any of you guys, konw
what the best setup is for it.i.e. all the hardware specs., Ram sizes, Memory,
HDD, And , help me cos I'm clueless, what does the motherboard do for a
computer? cheers.

http://www.linux.org

will answer just about all of your silly questions, except for "what
does the motherboard do for a computer?" which has to be the bost god
awfull silly freaking question I"ve ever heard

Um, Ronaldo, the motherboard is the main board, onto which plug the 
CPU (processor), the memory, and pretty much everything else.
Some motherboards have onboard sound & video, some don't.

 that was a stupid question, cool, but you don't have to be an ass about it.
If I'm too much of a newbie for the advanced discussion of this conference,
could somone be kind enough to direct me to a more suitable conference,
please. And thanx again jshafer, it's nice to know some ppl aren't too full
of themselves to answer "stupid" questions.

I remember when motherboards had no real intelligence, just a bunch of
100 pin connectors, and a power connector that went to a mother of a
supply.

This response has been erased.

The slot is a cache slot as scott(?) said.  I think there are ess modules that
can be used under linux to make the sound work.  You might check the sound
howto.  I would expect the card to insist on whatever is jumpered.  Maybe the
jumpers set a default, but it really uses software settings.  That would
account for windows meing able to push it somewhere other than the jumpers
say.  As to upgrading, it may be hard to find a CPU that will work on that
board.  The new stuff uses different bus speeds and more importantly different
voltages than were supported at the time that board was made.  You'll be
limited in what CPU you can use, or you can upgrade the motherbaord as well
as the CPU.  This will, conveniently for the companies, require a RAM upgrade
as well.

As to 'stupid questions' the only ones that might be stupid would be the ones
you already have the answer to if you think.  If you don't know, how will you
know if you don't ask?  I remember a time when I knew pretty much nothing.
I just barely spoke English.  I used that little bit to ask questions that
built on each other to learn what I know today.

This response has been erased.

does anyone know about CompaqPCI stuff?

I also need information on SCSI bus

Well, there is quite a lot of info about SCSI.  What do you need to know?

If you are looking for info on boards try using google advanced search.
motherboards.org, users.iafrica.com/g/gl/glynhall/hohweb/manuals.htm
or try www.wimsbios.com.  I find google is the best search engine on the
planet!

I have a lot to learn about boards.  Especially upgrading the Cpu.

I build Pentium I 233 computres complete with 15" monitor for $250.

I call myself Dr Internet because I help people solve Internet problems.

I work with Windows, hispeed and dialup standalone PCs.

I would like to teach myself more about networking computers.

btw there are diagnostic tools which will identify the motherboard and the
manufacturer.

Happy to hear you solved your sound problem....good show!

I live in Toronto, Canada.

Things I always buy:
1. hardware ISA modems 28.8 Kbps or faster
2. ISA SB16 or vibra 16 sound cards
3. 2GB hard drives
4. CD Roms
5. 72 pin FP and EDO RAM
6. PCI video cards that give High 16 800 by 600 color display
7. 15" Monitors that can take above color setting (1996 or later)
8. NIC 
9. ATX power supply
10 Pentium I 233 motherboards with cpu + fan
11 tower cases

I fix computers and install 50 computer games and 30 tutorials

Why is ryan, or others, scribbling these completely innocuous responses?

It is ryan, and "who knows?" - maybe tod taught him too well.

I just recently started looking for a mainboard that might
do for a light file server or application server.  I have
yet to decide on a chip, but it might be Sempron 64 or
perhaps Intel Core Solo or even Duo (I'll decide based on
cost, power and heat).  SATA or SAS would be a definite
advantage, as would a 1000baseT port and perhaps PCI-express
to add things that haven't been thought of yet.  I expect to
run NetBSD.  The board would probably be microATX, but full
ATX isn't out of the question.  It's a server, so I don't
care about graphics (MDA would suffice!)

What brands of mainboard have worked well for you?  Which do
you avoid?  What features do you look for in a server main-
board and why?

Most boards will have SATA, now, so you'll be in good shape there. I've
seen ones with both two and four connectors; obviously four is better
for a server.  Since you're looking at running NetBSD, don't pay
attention to "on-board RAID" schemes.  They aren't really hardware
RAIDs, they're software RAIDs with special BIOSes to make them bootable,
and the rest of the logic residing in the Windows driver.  NetBSD will
just see them as individual disks.

Intel makes some really nice motherboards, in my experience.  If that's
too rich for your blood, I've had good luck with Shuttle, and I've heard
Asus is pretty good, too.

I was looking at Asus boards earlier today.  The ones I
looked at use nVidia chipsets and I really don't know enough
to distinguish them.  I'll google for the Intel boards,
thanks.

One caution when buying Intel boards -- check the Intel website to make 
sure the processor you're planning on using has the specific 
motherboard you're using in its compatibility list.  There were a 
couple different generations of P4 chips, and a chip that appears to 
have FSB and voltage specs that are compatible with a given motherboard 
may not actually be compatible with it.

That kind of incompatibility happened to me and I had a hard time 
figuring it out.  The processor and motherboard had been bundled 
together by TigerDirect, but the system just wouldn't boot.  I 
exchanged the processor, then the motherboard, with no luck.  It wasn't 
until I switched to a motherboard that was on the processor's 
compatibility list that things started working for me.

Thanks for the tip.  I've become used to buying mainboards
with soldered microprocessors, so it will be a novelty to
deal with sockets, heatsinks etc. again.  Do Core Solo and
Duo come in socketed versions?

I don't know.  I haven't dealt with them yet.  The P4s mostly come in 
BGA (ball grid array) form, which is a weird pinless socket setup.  It 
wouldn't surprise me if the Core Duo and Core Solo chips are the same.

The last Pentium 4 I installed was a Northwood in a Socket
478 (PGA) board.  I have just read on Wikipedia that later
Pentiums came in LGA (land grid array), where the pins are
on the board rather than the chip.  Perhaps that's Intel's
response to Motorola's BGA.

Yeah, that's the one.  There's a grid of little protruding doodads in 
the socket, that press against contact pads on the chip.  I was 
somewhat surprised at the amount of clamping force involved.

Well the tighter they squeeze it, the faster the data
squirts through... ;-)

I started looking at mainboards because of this application
server thing that I hope to build.  So far the front-runner
for my project is the Asus P5B, which I can get for $170, or
perhaps less if I shop around.  I've no idea yet how much a
Core Duo would cost me, but hopefully they'll come down in
price with the launch of the 64-bit Core-2 Duo.

I have no valid excuse, but I find myself looking at Socket
370 mainboards.  I'm the sort of geek that would find it
interesting to compare Pentium III Tualatin against VIA C3
in the same machine.  The TDP-miser in me leans towards the
C3, but a Pentium III (especially a III-S) should beat it up
in terms of bang/MHz.  I don't think it makes any sense for
me to buy one of these boards because the chips top out
around 1.4 GHz (may as well buy a mITX) and it will have an
expansion bus too slow for the things I want to try.  Why am
I still reading spec sheets for them?!

The VIA chips are known for having slow floating point performance.  
Everything else is adequate, although the small cache makes them really 
slow for stuff that does a lot of widely-spaced memory accesses.  (gcc 
is a prime example.)

I imagine the C3 earned that reputation back in the days of
the Ezra core, when the FPU ran at half speed.  Nehemiah is
bound to be better, although probably not as fast per MHz as
Pentium III just because it throws less transistors at the
problem (wasting less power as heat). Your comment regarding
cache makes a lot of sense and is the attraction of a
Pentium III-S (with 512 Kbytes of secondary cache on chip).

I use a 1 GHz Nehemiah in my MythTV box, and it performs pretty well.  
I'm using an MPEG2 hardware encoder for recording, so the CPU doesn't 
really have to get involved there.  480x480 MPEG2 playback, with the 
VIA miniITX board's on-board acceleration, uses about 50% CPU.

I would eventually like to build something similar.  Out of
interest, what video capture card do you use, and which
operating system?

I used SuSE Linux, and an Adaptec AVC-2410.  It's packaged, in 
Adaptec's breathless marketing-speak, as the "Adaptec VIDEOh! DVD Media 
Center PCI Edition."  There are several cards like this supported by 
the ivtv project.  They're really trick, because they offload all the 
encoding duties from the CPU.  You can literally do "cat /dev/video0 
>file.mpg" and get an MPEG2 file.

My TV tuner (and hopefully capture) card arrived yesterday. I have yet
to try it, but it's a safe bet that it's more simple than the Adaptec
card you describe. Offloading the encoding is a Good Thing, so I shall
definitely have a look for one of those cards too!

You'll need a *lot* more CPU if you don't offload the encoding.  My 
desktop machine has a regular frame grabber card like that in it.  A 
2.0 GHz Celeron can encode one MPEG stream (at 480x480 and 30 fps), but 
without enough CPU left over to play back a stream at the same time, 
which I consider an essential feature for a DVR.  You'll probably need 
at least a P4 for that.  My goal was a small, quiet media PC for the 
living room, and I considered the P4's cooling requirements 
counterproductive to that goal.

Some Pentium 4 chips run cooler than others, and a Core Solo
(or even Duo) probably runs cooler still.  I like the VIA C3
for cool, quiet machines, and it's probably fair to say that
would require proper hardware encoding of the type that you
describe.  Any idea whether NetBSD drivers exist for that
card?

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss