On Tue, Feb 16, 1999 at 07:19:01PM -0800, Paul Newhouse wrote:
> I'm splitting this out of the UDMA thread.
> 
> Thor Lancelot Simon <tls@rek.tjls.com> wrote:
> > I wrote:
> >> If can ever get my test machine backon line (have just determined the 4th  
> >> ASUS P5A is broken) I'll have an full time test machine available for this.
> >
> >Ooh -- I have one in a Windows box, but I *don't* particularly like the
> >P5A motherboards.  The design is fine, and the 5 PCI slots are nice, but
> >the chipset... that Acer Labs chipset is kinda sleazy.  For one thing,
> 
> Acer?  Does Acer make the ALI (Aladdin) chipsets?

ALI stands for Acer Labs, Inc, AFAIK.

> >it claims to support ECC memory, but it turns out that that Just Doesn't
> >Work if you run the memory clock past 83MHz.  Since most people buy those
> >boards to run with "Super 7" CPUs at 100MHz, the ECC support is more or
> >less a lie.  
>  
> I'm running a P100 in it right now.  I was going to upgrade to a K6-2 400 
> when I got it working.  Which is sounding more and more unlikely.  *8^(

I'm running a K6-2 300 in mine.  But it's basically a television, DVD
player, and occasionally it runs Photoshop or Word.  It hardly runs
mission-critical applications -- so I didn't even bother to buy ECC memory.

I will note that 83 x 5 is 415, which is probably quite feasible for a
K6-2 400.  OTOH memory latency is bad enough at 4X... and the bandwidth
loss can't help any either.

> >If you don't need the extra PCI slot or the onboard sound,
> 
> I've been trying the "without audio" boards.

Me, too.  But it did occur to me that that might be a mistake.  I've been
using a PCI audio card, which eats a slot; if I used the onboard sound,
one of my PCI devices couldn't do bus-master DMA (in slot 5).  But I have
PCI devices that don't do DMA, so that might not be such a lose...

I find that with the AGP slot that pretty much *all* Super 7 boards
have, I can often get away with one less PCi slot than I expected.  And
when I can't, I can replace two ethernet cards with a dual, or two
SCSI cards with a 3940, or (if I cared to shell out for one) three
devices with one of those DEC dual-qlogic plus 21140 cards.

> >try the FIC VA-503+.  It uses the VIA MVP3 chipset, has 1MB (as opposed
> >to the ASUS board's 512K) of cache, and generally seems to be very solid
> >(I have several).
> 
> I guess I'll have to consider less than 5 PCI slots. I'd really like to have 
> 5 BUT ...  with the bad luck I'm having (and a former colleague has has a bad 
> P5A also) I think I'll have to change direction a bit.  I'm a bit disappointed 
> having heard good things about ASUS in the past.

Well, most of the problems I've had with mine have appeared to be PCI
IRQ routing issues which actually went away after I juggled enough
IRQs in the BIOS configuration.  But if that's not your issue, I dunno
what to say...

I think some of the FIC ATX form-factor boards have more slots.  You might
also consider one of the Bit3 PCI expansion chassis.  They're often much
more economical than one would expect...

-- 
Thor Lancelot Simon	                                      tls@rek.tjls.com
	"And where do all these highways go, now that we are free?"