QuickBlog 25 IV 05

  • PezMP3 is going BIG! (via : « I [Phillip Torrone] check the PEZ MP3 blog about once a week to see where the project is at. It’s a fascinating journal of a stay at home Dad who has a dream, the passion and persistence to bring a product to market he thought up. »)
  • Tracker trail.com: « Tinder Fungus is a type of fungus that holds a coal very well for a long period of time, and ignites easily. Actually, there are two types: « True » Tinder Fungus and False Tinder Fungus » (via)
  • Tech:Hack post updated

New life for an old box

Mainboard Asus TX97

This board is some kind of special fellow. It doesn’t bother having SIMM sockets anymore, which is probably the reason why it’s usually shipped with one Asus 32 MB SDRAM DIMM. There is a version (TX97-E) that will allow you to use your old 72 pin SIMM EDO or FPM, but I haven’t received that one for testing, neither the ATX versions. It comes with a nice gimmick, which enables you to monitor the CPU and board temperature, the CPU fan function (that’s why it comes with its own heatsink/fan) and the board’s voltages. You can either check these values in the BIOS setup menu under ‘Power management’ or via the Intel LDCM software from Win95, NT and over the network, that comes with the board on a CD.

The performance of the TX97 is very good, especially since its latest BIOS release 1.04. It’s one of the fastest Socket 7 boards available. However there’s one big let down, it does not support 83 MHz bus speed and rumors say that this is due to Asus close relationship to Intel. My personal opinion is to prefer an board that’s a little slower but offering 83 MHz support and I don’t really understand why Asus went off the 83 MHz idea, which was first introduced by themselves.

The TX97 comes with 4 PCI, 4 ISA, 3 DIMM slots, supporting all current Socket 7 CPUs, for the AMD K6 233 you can jumper 3.1 V, it doesn’t have ECC support, neither does it cache more than 64 MB of RAM, due to the TX chipset. It supports SDRAM, Ultra-DMA and FPM or EDO in case you can get them in form of DIMMs. It has a switching voltage regulator.[X]

BIOS Award v4.51PG

DriverGuide & Wim’s BIOS Page

Silent PC greets newbee

…here are some detailed how-to-assemble-a-PC articles. You can find many more on the web:

All lifted from SPCR Forums, where the following greets the one who clicked on FAQ for Newbies: Please read this first!!

Thanks for reading this, you’re obviously an honest person and not afraid to admit (at least to yourself Wink ) that you’re new at something and maybe need some basic help.