[ale] [Fwd: AMD 450, mobo weirdness, also mp3 decoding]

[Jeff Hubbs]

Frank -

One line of inquiry I would take would be to put the original memory back in.
I know from personal experience that some mobos and some RAM just do not
cooperate even though the specs appear to be OK and a bad SIMM/DIMM can't be
isolated.  There may be something else wrong, mind you, but I'd try putting
the original two 64MB SIMMs back in just to see if the problem persists.  If
not, then I'd recommend either leaving it like that or seeing out a 128MB DIMM
of
different origin.

I had a situation once with a dual Pentium Pro/200 I had built that was like
that.  I had four 32MB SIMMs and the computer would boot NT and run for a
while, then freeze or BSOD after just a few minutes.  I could stick in any two
of the four (at 64MB) and have no problem - but using all four simply would
not work.  The vendor who sold me the mobo, RAM, and CPUs offered to trade out
the RAM for some from a different manufacturer, and I never had the problem
again.

- Jeff

fzamenski wrote:

> Hi group.
>
> I recently upgraded an odd mobo from an AMD K6 3D 300 to an AMD  K6-2
> 450 and swapped out the (2) 64mg SIMMs with a single pc100 128mg DIMM
> (whew, have those DIMM prices gone up or what?!), and afterwards, the
> WinNT4 that I used to primarily run on that box BSOD'd forever more.
> Refused to run, refuses to reload, also. Tried six or so times to reload
> -- hey, never say die! -- all to no avail . So I finally gave up and
> died. :-) Wouldn't have likely even bothered except job direction is
> going NT and it requires my being very familair with it. Tsk... so onto
> the home machine it went several months ago. But enough of that,  and
> for whatever reason it won't  load anymore, I consider it actually a
> blessing in disguise, as I popped in my RH6.0 drive and  RH runs very
> nicely on that 'upgraded' PC, and I get to play around with Linx some
> more and hopefully start honing some general Unix skills again. Also
> using Gnome, primarily. Kinda nice.
>
> Right now I'm rediscovering and playing around with the Netscape 4.51
> that comes with RH6.0, and so far I've not yet discovered a convenient
> way to occasionally decode an mp3 from usenet. I have to admit IE5 and
> Outlook Express makes it very easy to combine and decode a series of
> files, and I have to beleive that Netscape under RH6 also has this
> capability, but I've not found it yet nor does their help stuff describe
> this capability. Any suggestions short of doing the uudecode bit at the
> cmnd line?
>
> As for the bargain basement motherboard: it's called an M590 super
> socket 7 pc100 with 1mb onboard cache. CPU parameters are set in BIOS
> either automatically or manually. Thing is, setting the AMD 450 to specs
> 2.4v core, base freq 100, x4.5 displays an AMD K6-2 400 on boot up.
> Setting the 450 manually at 2.4v, base freq 100, x5.0 displays the
> proper AMD K6-2 450 at boot. So I don't know in reality what it's really
> running at, but I'm not surpirsed NT phreaked. Does this all sound like
> some timing or sync issue? Might the 1mb cache be a problem? And, might
> I sooner or later expect RH6 to bite it, too?  :-O
>
> TIA.
> Frank
>
>   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject: AMD 450, mobo weirdness, also mp3 decoding
> Date: Sun, 26 Sep 1999 08:13:37 -0400
> From: fzamenski <fzamenski at voyager.net>
> To: mdlug at collie.net
>
> Hi group.
>
> I recently upgraded an odd mobo from an AMD K6 3D 300 to an AMD  K6-2
> 450 and swapped out the (2) 64mg SIMMs with a single pc100 128mg DIMM
> (whew, have those DIMM prices gone up or what?!), and afterwards, the
> WinNT4 that I used to primarily run on that box BSOD'd forever more.
> Refused to run, refuses to reload, also. Tried six or so times to reload
> -- hey, never say die! -- all to no avail . So I finally gave up and
> died. :-) Wouldn't have likely even bothered except job direction is
> going NT and it requires my being very familair with it. Tsk... so onto
> the home machine it went several months ago. But enough of that,  and
> for whatever reason it won't  load anymore, I consider it actually a
> blessing in disguise, as I popped in my RH6.0 drive and  RH runs very
> nicely on that 'upgraded' PC, and I get to play around with Linx some
> more and hopefully start honing some general Unix skills again. Also
> using Gnome, primarily. Kinda nice.
>
> Right now I'm rediscovering and playing around with the Netscape 4.51
> that comes with RH6.0, and so far I've not yet discovered a convenient
> way to occasionally decode an mp3 from usenet. I have to admit IE5 and
> Outlook Express makes it very easy to combine and decode a series of
> files, and I have to beleive that Netscape under RH6 also has this
> capability, but I've not found it yet nor does their help stuff describe
> this capability. Any suggestions short of doing the uudecode bit at the
> cmnd line?
>
> As for the bargain basement motherboard: it's called an M590 super
> socket 7 pc100 with 1mb onboard cache. CPU parameters are set in BIOS
> either automatically or manually. Thing is, setting the AMD 450 to specs
> 2.4v core, base freq 100, x4.5 displays an AMD K6-2 400 on boot up.
> Setting the 450 manually at 2.4v, base freq 100, x5.0 displays the
> proper AMD K6-2 450 at boot. So I don't know in reality what it's really
> running at, but I'm not surpirsed NT phreaked. Does this all sound like
> some timing or sync issue? Might the 1mb cache be a problem? And, might
> I sooner or later expect RH6 to bite it, too?  :-O
>
> TIA.
> Frank