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What he's asking-after, is essentially an ABIT workstation-board, which seems to be not yet on sale in RL. . .

The INTERESTING Abit 'boards.

The Workstation subsection of Abit 'boards.

The Twin-Opteron Workstation 'board that many drool after

What he's asking-after, is essentially an ABIT workstation-board, which seems to be not yet on sale in RL. . .

The INTERESTING Abit 'boards.

The Workstation subsection of Abit 'boards.

The Twin-Opteron Workstation 'board that many drool after

What he's asking-after, is essentially an ABIT workstation-board, which seems to be not yet on sale in RL. . .

The INTERESTING Abit 'boards.

The Workstation subsection of Abit 'boards.

The Twin-Opteron Workstation 'board that many drool after

I think we're assuming that it is inferior because it is made in Taiwan

Yes, because no good technology is produced in Taiwan. Next time you go to a computer store, look at the motherboards section...

Nowadays most motherboard companies have alternative homepages, but I remember 5-6 years ago if you needed bios updates or driver patches, the pages were always at www.motherboardbrand.com.tw

It still seems to be the case:
http://www.abit.com.tw
http://www.asus.com.tw
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw
http://www.msi.com.tw
http://www.epox.com.tw
http://www.tyan.com.tw

Secure IDE from Abit

Nope. You have to click on the article, and click on the "Secur" picture.

That link only shows up if you allow their useless Flash to play...here is the URL to the page that describes how it all goes together.

It looks like something that could be added on to any computer system...it's just a board that sits on the IDE cable between the motherboard and the drive. Plug in the key and your computer boots up; leave it unplugged and you get garbage.

(A quick check of Enova's website indicates they're using triple-DES encryption. They have a PCI IDE controller and a USB 2.0 external drive case that include their encryption hardware.)

It looks like to boot your computer, the key needs to be there. So make sure the police never show up while you are using the computer, never keep the key on you and keep your case open all the time so you can attach/detach it easily?

Look at the illustration here you will see that the key plugs into a pigtail that is obviously meant to be routed through an available slot at the back of the case into the outside world.

So, let us say for the sake of argument, that you are storing something sensitive anought to make it worth this effort. Unless 3rd Echelon is coming for you, you'll have at least a few seconds notice when someone is coming in.

Step 1. Remove key.
Step 2. Crush key between your molars.
Step 3. Depress and release reset button on PC's case.

I mean, because of the nature of the security, it seems to me that one wouldn't want to run the OS or anything from the encrypted drive, just to store any files that need to be kept private.

LK

Not even...

"40-bit DES (US Data Encryption Standard) is adequate for general users"

From their site here...

It reminds me of the AOpen Tube Amp Motherboard. Stuff like this might get my respect if it was hacked together in some guy's basement, but from a major hardware firm it amounts to marketing fluff.

According to ABIT's site it's only 40 bit DES, which they claim "is adequate for general users." I'm sorry, but this is a joke. Hopefully they'll have some sort of update that will move it up to something decently acceptible. DES is old, and is far from adequate for any use where "security" is involved.

Yeah, I just found the manual at ftp://ftp.abit.com.tw/pub/download/fae/secureide_e ng_v100.pdf. I wish they would put all of the information in one spot so mistakes like that aren't made. They just about lost my interest by being badly organized and i'm a geek. imagine how Joe Sixpack feels trying to figure this out. Thanks!

Actually, this page shows the key plugging into a cable outside the box. The encryption device itself is a card that connects between the hdd and motherboard.

according to the installation guide:

40-bit DES (US Data Encryption Standard) is adequate for general users

In much the same way that leaving the data un-encrypted is adequate for general users, I suppose.

Please read the description:
SecureIDE: Protector for Business and personal secret. The encryption key is stored in a USB dongle. From the description: ..Secure IDE is a encryption card that uses the eNOVA X-Wall chipset that ensures confidentiality and privacy of your data through disk encryption. When booting up your system, go to DOS and implement the FDISK instruction. This instruction will make a partition to format the Hard Disk to accept the secure IDE key. After this procedure, there are no more extra steps to perform besides using the IEEE key to "open" the hard disk each time you boot up your system.
It is also a stand-alone product and goes between the IDE connector on the motherboard and the IDE harddisk. So, you need the harddisk, the motherboard AND the dongle with the correct "IEEE key" to access the data.

This unit actually uses 40-bit DES as detailed here. Additionally, this system is integrated into this motherboard, but is also available as a IDE "pass-through" device if you will, allowing you to use this technology on any (IDE) system with any OS.

This *does* encrypt the data on the fly, it's not just a physical HD lock. The mention of using DOS's "fdisk" does not imply that this is a M$ only product. The point is that the drive must be re-partitioned once the device is installed, since the original drive presumably is not already DES-40 encrypted. The link posted above in this comment has more information.

Exactly. More information on the Secure IDE feature, with a picture of the dongle, can be found here.

One important point that I've not seen made yet is, how is this going to be of any benefit when you know that most people are just going to leave the dongle connected all the time, and go on happily convinced that their computer is somehow more "secure".

Idiots will, by nature of their existence, destroy any good idea.

No it's not. this page says it's 40 bit DES. Scheez. People still use that?

Also, here's the key.

Not going to stop the RIAA from catching you (although they'd have difficulty decrypted the drive once they did I guess), but looks moderately useful for protecting a harddrive from theft. I'd love one on a laptop. If someone stole it in an airport or somesuch - at least they couldn't get my data without some effort.

As I mentioned here, the key appears to be a USB memory stick put into a proprietary SUB port on some kind of daughter card. There's a diagram here.

ABIT's site shows a little key that contains the decoder.

without a special key, your hard disk cannot be opened by anyone.

Nothing is ever completely secure, but I could see where this would help some. Genuinely a cool idea, but I'll wait a couple of years to see if it matures some first.

There are a few that I've seen, for example, ABIT's MAX series of boards.

That wouuld be the Abit AX5, a Socket 7-based ATX mobo based on the Intel 430TX chipset. I used to have one of these - in fact it was my first server and has performed faithfully until only very recently (may it rest in peace...). The first time I read the manual I nearly fell out of my chair laughing so hard, and my then-roommate literally jumped 10 feet in the air at my sudden outburst.

The manual can be found here, for your viewing pleasure: http://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/download/dlmanual.php?n ame=APTX5&file=aptx5e.pdf.

Oh, and the exact quote is: "You just need to insert the modules, without the help of God. Isn't it great?"

This is my motherboard. It's old, I know, I haven't had much of a reason to upgrade from it. It has 6 PCI slots - One which shares the same hole on the back of the computer with an ISA slot. There's also an AGP slot. Nothing "Built-in" except for the IDE controllor, but that's alright it's ATA-100. As for expansion slots, I'm currently using the AGP slot, and 2 PCI slots (for Sound and LAN). I don't need anything more in my system. But still, I have lots of space for expansion.

This is the full text of the article, unlike an earlier post, but it's going to appear as a series of posts. Bear with me, I'm having issues getting this in as one post, since it's about 90k. I thought the only problem was going to be finally retrieving all the pages after suffering through countless error messages. Unfortunately, slash-friendly HTML eliminates the pictures and tables, but I tried to keep the data in the tables. (Posting AC to avoid Karma wh0ring.) Enjoy.

Introduction

The power to create. Creative souls toil away inside the walls of the design department or I the dark confines of an edit suite in a television station. As the production manager I often see the graphic designers leaning back in their chairs staring at their monitors. When questioned I usually get the response...rendering. I'm often told there's a need for a second or third computer so they can do other work while one system is busy rendering. In the broadcast environment rendering usually means 1-4 hour waits for finished elements. If waiting for one system to finish a piece for use in commercial or promotion it can be hell when there are deadlines to meet. Time is money. Waiting is frustration. Hardware should not dictate creativity.

People often assume that I work with immensely powerful computing power in the television production world. Sometimes I do and those computers can come with price tags that the computer itself couldn't work out. Professional 2D/3D workstations are thought of as expensive and in today's market of shrinking profit margins the saying that you have to spend money to make money takes a back seat come capital request time.

So we here at Icrontic set out to build a bigger, better, badder workstation on a home PC budget.

The question of what is the best is not easily answered. Determining what is the best for your needs and expectations is a matter of knowing what your demands are and learning how to fulfill them. What is expected from the PC workstation? Do you want fast renders? Do you want to easily manipulate complex 3D scenes or drawings? Do you need the fastest processor, biggest video card, the most RAM or the fastest hard drives?

Can you do more for less?

That's what every manager wants to hear especially when assembling the yearly departmental budget. I'm in a unique position in my professional life and it allows a look at this problem from many sides; financial, user and builder. I wear one hat as the department manager. I wear a second hat as an active writer/producer/director who works daily with the department on television commercial projects. I wear a third hat as PR manager and a hardware reviewer for Icrontic. It means that I have no one to complain to but myself when it comes to the equipment not being fast enough. It also leaves me frustrated that the IT people dictate that I have to buy overpriced workstations when I know I can build two or even three systems for the same price.

So I unleashed a room full of designers on an affordable system we put together. (The image reminded me of a commercial, now a decade or three old, that features a gorilla doing his best to destroy a piece of luggage.) The designers are rooted in the MAC world and if a PC is required it has to be the hugely expensive and well-known order off the web workstations. (I'm not going to point fingers) Even the art director's personal home system is a three to four thousand USD dual 1.7 GHz Xeon workstation with an nVidia Quadro card.

Did we do it?

Simple answer? There isn't one. What looks good on paper may not perform well in reality. Benchmarks give some information but not the complete experience. More isn't necessarily better.

The best is a matter of debate but the smart consumer knows a lot about what they expect, a little about how it may work together and enough to choose the right combination of hardware. The following pages are just that; a guide to determine your expectations, answers to how it all works and a little bit of knowledge to make the right choices. Armed with this information you can more easily navigate the world of what's best for you through the ever-changing landscape of computer technology.

The big picture

The majority of PC consumers buy pre-built systems based on assumptions and budget. Today's PC consumer has more information at hand to select or build a PC that is better suited for their needs. Choosing or configuring the particular components is often based on how much, how fast and how big can it get while staying within a budget. The MHz rating of the processor is often the first consideration in this equation. The PC consumer looks for simple answers. Compromises are often made in order to divert budget to obtain a faster processor. The trap is the assumption that more megahertz is better could short-change other components in a system and the consumer ends up frustrated by a lack of desired performance to suit their needs.

The goal of this article was to build a PC, on an acceptable home buyer's budget, to function as a workstation capable of taking on 2D and 3D jobs in a broadcast television station. The hopeful conclusion will be to teach you that what you expect from the PC is the first question that must be answered before choosing the parts.

Defining broadcast industry standard in a PC has some grey area depending on where it is in the production chain. Broadcast video has to meet a set of parameters that can only be measured by a video waveform monitor. Expect to shovel out approximately $4000 USD to add this option for home use.

This PC will be used to output work that will eventually find its way to a non-linear editing system that assembles and outputs it to tape. While the display image is extremely important for the graphic designer it is the finished file itself that is eventually transferred to a format for playback to air. The video card will not be used to output a signal that will be recorded or used straight to air.

The work produced is either a completed piece or a collection of elements that are to be used in a completed piece. These elements may be produced solely or through the combination of 2D and 3D software applications such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects and Softimage. For example, Photoshop files may be used as name supers or background elements. On a larger scale, After Effects may be employed to composite Photoshop, Illustrator and Softimage elements plus internally generated elements and effects to build a complex timeline that is rendered producing a finished piece or pieces. A waveform monitor is referenced at certain stages to ensure the output does not exceed acceptable levels.

The PC workstation needed to be the right balance of components that have the power to manipulate complicated 2D and 3D applications real time then render at an acceptable rate. Image quality was important to display sharp, true images. This combination would be easy to obtain if money was no object...

But money is the object.

Is it possible to build a workstation on a budget then have it stand up against a room full of graphic designers? Broadcast production requires expensive specialty hardware but technology is making some leaps and bounds at the consumer level. Is it possible for the home PC buyer to have an affordable system that stands up to professional expectations?

As the old saying goes time is money and in the time it took to click a mouse a few times the price tag of a popular retail pre-configured workstation rocketed up to just over $11,000 Canadian or nearly $7,000 USD! That's not a typical home PC buyer's budget. Dude...we didn't have to get one!

So this is what we got.

The broadcast box:

• AMD 2100+ Thoroughbred Processor
  
• ABIT AT7 motherboard
  
• Matrox Parhelia 512 triple head video card
  
• 2 x 512 MB Micron PC2100 RAM
  
• Sony 52x CD
  
• LG 32x10x40x CDRW
  
• 40 GB Maxtor ATA133 Hard Drive
  
• 60 GB Maxtor ATA133 Hard Drive
  
• 2 x Samsung 950p 19 Monitors
  
• USB Keyboard and Logitech USB wireless Optical Mouse
  
• Globalwin CAK4-76T HSF
  
• AMK SX1000 modded PC case (window, fans, cables, loom)
  
• Enermax 465 Watt FC PSU
  
• Windows XP Professional
  
• Digital Doc5
  
  

The price tag came in just over $3500 Canadian or approximately $2200 USD.* That's 70% less than the well known pre-configured workstations priced out initially. It may still be expensive for family use but it had to do a little more. The crucial step in choosing a system is determining what is expected of it. If it is there to surf the Internet, write the occasional school essay and send/receive e-mail then a very economically priced computer can be built.

It's just that e-mail was the last of the concerns in a workstation.

*prices including monitors and OS as of September 1, 02 currency converted from CNDto USD. Source: www.atic.ca

Choosing Chips Pt. 1

Choosing a system does begin with the processor as it determines choice of RAM and motherboard. This may lead to price differences that greatly affect the end product performance especially where a budget is concerned.

Choosing a processor used to be as simple as the most MHz for your money then add the other components to fit the budget. Intel has exploited public perception by raising the MHz bar ever higher. The question remains; is more...better?

AMD or INTEL: which to choose? These two companies play a rival game akin to David and Goliath where Intel's market share and marketing capital seemingly overwhelm AMD. Meanwhile AMD is the enthusiast's choice and many of these enthusiasts vehemently defend AMD for performance and where the smart money is. It's a lively discussion on whether the tables have turned and if INTEL is on the defense while AMD is on the offense. One cannot ignore the fact that the balance of power is shifting with AMD clawing away at INTEL market share. Why AMD is gaining chips away at the very foundation of INTEL claims that faster is better.

The introduction of the highest-performing PC processor in the world is a victory for application performance and a resounding defeat for the 'megahertz myth,' said Ed Ellett, vice president of marketing for AMD's Computation Products Group. As the performance leader, the AMD Athlon XP processor 2600+ reigns as the superior choice and delivers outstanding application performance for richer, high-powered digital computing.

The chip wars float around catch phrases to attract consumer attention. The most common is the megahertz or gigahertz rating. The buying public believes more is better. INTEL proudly trumpets this fact and AMD challenges it squarely. In side by side comparisons between INTEL and AMD processors the difference in the performance line between the two can be very thin. To some the choice is quite simple but if it's not then you need to know a little bit about what is coming to market and why to at least help in the decision process between models of processors.

The latest advancement is the recent move from 0.18-micron technology to 0.13-micron technology by both INTEL and AMD.

What's a micron and how big is it?

A micron is pretty darn small. There are twenty-five thousand four hundred microns to one inch. A human hair can be anywhere from about 40 to 300 microns wide. A powerful microscope is needed to see an object that is one micron wide. An object that is one micron wide is smaller than most bacteria. That's how small a micron is.

AMD and INTEL have reduced processor manufacturing to the 0.13-micron scale. That means the smallest circuit in the processor is only 13 microns wide. It's not like you could use your soldering iron to fix a broken connection. This is pretty close to the nanotechnology scale that is so often bantered around in the science fiction shows we watch.

Why is smaller better? Processor chips are etched onto wafers of silicon. If the overall size of the chip is reduced then more chips can be etched onto a single wafer of silicon. This increase in the number of chips per wafer reduces the cost of manufacture which, we hope, will be passed on to the consumer.

Processor manufacturers aim for a balance between reducing size and increasing processor capability. If a 0.18-micron processor is made using 0.13-micron technology then the overall space taken up by the circuitry is reduced. Let's put this on a scale that is easier to visualize. If a home theater system is shrunk in size by 50% and the bulky 33 TV is replaced by a flat panel TV then there would be a lot of room left over in that wall unit of yours for more stuff. You may choose to buy a smaller wall unit or cram more stuff into it. Perhaps a compromise could be reached between adding more stuff and reducing the size of the wall unit.

Processor manufactures do the same striving to reduce the overall size but still pack on more stuff.

Choosing Pt. 2

Good things in small packages.

Smaller is better and the additional stuff is notably an increase in L2 Cache. This may be a term that is familiar but not quite understood. Cache is small, fast memory located on the CPU. CPU Cache holds the most recently accessed code or data. This SRAM is accessed much faster than your main system memory because it's located right on the processor core. Processor manufacturers started to increase the amount of L2 Cache due to demands that software was making on the CPU. Manufacturers are also looking to increase the speed of this cache. The more data or code the L2 cache can contain and the faster it can process should mean an increase in system performance.

Voltage x resistance = bad.

The more that is packed onto a processor and the more it can do takes electrical power or voltage. This simply translates into an increase in thermal heat as MHz and technology increases. Reducing the scale or die size of the processor reduces the required voltage for the processor to properly function. An electrical signal traveling through a circuit meets resistance along the pathways. This resistance becomes heat similar to heat friction when you vigorously rub your hands together. If the distance the signal needs to traverse is reduced then the signal requires less energy to get around and thus encounters less resistance. Less voltage and less resistance equal less heat.

If the die size has been reduced then why the increase in heat as MHz increases? Quite simply no matter how small an engine is made it will get hotter as it runs faster. An important point to note is that faster processors do require more voltage at certain stages but they always generate more heat as the MHz climbs. By building processors on a smaller scale the heat curve has effectively been bumped down from previous, larger processor dies. AMD has also engineered other design and manufacturing tweaks to assist in the challenge of reducing thermal output and increasing speed. We all know heat is the enemy of any processor. Heat is a hot subject of discussion. Consider the following equation.

(Faster + voltage) = temperature - (fans x dBA)

This equation was just made up for this article but it states that faster requires more voltage and where temperature is the variable the number of fans or dBA of those fans must increase to provide balance to the equation in an air-cooled system. The faster you want to go means you need more cooling which could mean more fans to provide that cooling and thus more noise. There are solutions later on in this article.

Get on the bus.

The Front Side Bus speed is the MHz rating at which data is transferred to and from the processor to the rest of the system. Theoretically higher the FSB results in a faster processor. The goal is to maximize the processor speed to perform tasks quickly and efficiently. Currently the Front Side Bus with AMD processors it is at 266 MHz with speculation that AMD has a 333 MHz FSB processor in the works.

Lastly is the inner working of the processor circuitry. This cannot be easily explained but it is safe to say that each of the rivals in the chip wars are constantly developing, refining and perfecting their processors to crunch numbers faster and in greater gulps.

Now you know everything....not a chance.

This little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing when it comes to determining which processor is better. A consumer may come to the conclusion that INTEL processors are faster than AMD processors on the details that were just explained that:

• The higher the MHz the better
  
• The higher Front Side Bus Speed the better
  
• The more L2 Cache the better
  
• The lower the voltage the better
  

INTEL

AMD

Processor Frequency

2.8 GHz

2600+ (2.133GHz)

Thermal Design Power

68.4W

62 W

Bus Speed

533 MHz

133MHz (266MHz DDR)

Core Voltage

1.50 V

1.65 V

L1Cache Size

8K

128K

L2 Cache Size

512K

256K

L2 Cache Speed

2.53 GHz

2.13 GHz

Die Size

0.13 micron

0.13 micron

It's easy to see that assumptions may lead a consumer to believe that the INTEL product is a better processor. These basics may have some validity on paper but not so in the real world. Why the lesson on MHz, die size, bus speeds and cache? The lesson is not which processor is better. The lesson is to not make performance assumptions based in the belief that bigger numbers are better.

...with a VIA KT400 chipset mobo(tho its not out yet)...

Check out the ABit AT7-MAX2... Unless there is something I am missing (quite possible!), then the KT400 is shipping already, as are mobo's based around it.

...anything made by Via is junk...

Just like AMD Themselves with their old performance issues with Floating Point Math, VIA have had some poor chipsets in the past, however, the KT333 as used on the ABit AT7 Motherboard is exceptionally stable - I have a Linux Server with 8x80GB Maxtor IDE Disks arrayed to one 640GB disk which (aside from a driver problem for the Highpoint 374 controller, which is nothing to do with the KT333 or the AMD CPU) runs perfectly.

I'm actually quite keen to get my hands on the new A Bit KT7-MAX2, which has the KT400 chipset, and a host of extra features not present on the original AT7

I can think of a number of other VIA / AMD motherboards which I have used, and found to be exceptionally stable, most notable of which is the ABit KT7A and ABit KT7A-RAID.

In short, if you put aside the past of both AMD and VIA, and look again at the technical specs, and real-world performance of these CPU's and Chipsets, you will find that they are both now a viable, low-cost, alternative to the traditional Intel Only way of thinking and working.

...anything made by Via is junk...

Just like AMD Themselves with their old performance issues with Floating Point Math, VIA have had some poor chipsets in the past, however, the KT333 as used on the ABit AT7 Motherboard is exceptionally stable - I have a Linux Server with 8x80GB Maxtor IDE Disks arrayed to one 640GB disk which (aside from a driver problem for the Highpoint 374 controller, which is nothing to do with the KT333 or the AMD CPU) runs perfectly.

I'm actually quite keen to get my hands on the new A Bit KT7-MAX2, which has the KT400 chipset, and a host of extra features not present on the original AT7

I can think of a number of other VIA / AMD motherboards which I have used, and found to be exceptionally stable, most notable of which is the ABit KT7A and ABit KT7A-RAID.

In short, if you put aside the past of both AMD and VIA, and look again at the technical specs, and real-world performance of these CPU's and Chipsets, you will find that they are both now a viable, low-cost, alternative to the traditional Intel Only way of thinking and working.

...anything made by Via is junk...

Just like AMD Themselves with their old performance issues with Floating Point Math, VIA have had some poor chipsets in the past, however, the KT333 as used on the ABit AT7 Motherboard is exceptionally stable - I have a Linux Server with 8x80GB Maxtor IDE Disks arrayed to one 640GB disk which (aside from a driver problem for the Highpoint 374 controller, which is nothing to do with the KT333 or the AMD CPU) runs perfectly.

I'm actually quite keen to get my hands on the new A Bit KT7-MAX2, which has the KT400 chipset, and a host of extra features not present on the original AT7

I can think of a number of other VIA / AMD motherboards which I have used, and found to be exceptionally stable, most notable of which is the ABit KT7A and ABit KT7A-RAID.

In short, if you put aside the past of both AMD and VIA, and look again at the technical specs, and real-world performance of these CPU's and Chipsets, you will find that they are both now a viable, low-cost, alternative to the traditional Intel Only way of thinking and working.

...anything made by Via is junk...

Just like AMD Themselves with their old performance issues with Floating Point Math, VIA have had some poor chipsets in the past, however, the KT333 as used on the ABit AT7 Motherboard is exceptionally stable - I have a Linux Server with 8x80GB Maxtor IDE Disks arrayed to one 640GB disk which (aside from a driver problem for the Highpoint 374 controller, which is nothing to do with the KT333 or the AMD CPU) runs perfectly.

I'm actually quite keen to get my hands on the new A Bit KT7-MAX2, which has the KT400 chipset, and a host of extra features not present on the original AT7

I can think of a number of other VIA / AMD motherboards which I have used, and found to be exceptionally stable, most notable of which is the ABit KT7A and ABit KT7A-RAID.

In short, if you put aside the past of both AMD and VIA, and look again at the technical specs, and real-world performance of these CPU's and Chipsets, you will find that they are both now a viable, low-cost, alternative to the traditional Intel Only way of thinking and working.

Since the drivers for Micorsoft's shiny, new OS don't include IDE drivers for the Abit AT7 Motherboard on the CD, you need to install them from a floppy disk before installation.

However, I'm not getting one because my GPS and PalmV both need serial ports, and a USBSerial adapter is an extra $45 or so! Why can't someone make a super-cheap $10 USBserial adapter?

-- SilentTristero

For the record, XP does not natively support 137GB+ Drives -- see this knowledge base article and accompanying registry hack for how to enable it: Okay, as I went to find that article.. I found it had been deleted.. here is a Deja reference Another search produced this similar link

i think the only thing that matters now is how many drives you need.

ide is now faster, but has been limited to the amount of ide cards/motherboard you have...

granted, with the new abit max boards coming out, with 12 ide devices, that's not a problem...

if you need more than 12 hard drives, when you're building a perfectly NEW system, i would use SCSI... if not, just go with the 'new level' of motherboards coming out, and smack some IDE drives into the case....

now if i could only get a better power supply for all of them.

Click here for abit's info on the motherboard.

• 2 Channels of Bus Master IDE Ports supporting up to 4 Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 devices
• 4 Channels of Bus Master IDE Ports supporting up to 8 Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 (RAID 0/1/1+0) devices

There's also:

• 4 USB 1.1 Connectors
  
• On board VIA VT6202 USB 2.0 header for four extra USB channels
• Three 1394a fully compliant cable ports at 100/200/400 megabits per second

Here's a link to ABIT's media sheet on the motherboard, which gives a good rundown of the new features of the board, as well as what they were thinking when designing it.

ABIT MAX Media Sheet

For those who are unaware, the Abit website is NOT www.abit.com; that reroutes you to motherboards.com. The site you want is www.abit-usa.com or www.abit.com.twinstead.

Who the hell are Kbit?, you mean Abit?

I missed of the on-board Firewire and also the onboard Quad-IDE-RAID, i.e., the motherboard can control 12 IDE devices at ATA-133 speeds. ABit Press Release (Tongue in Cheek) Here

You're going to also need to make an HTML site for those who don't have (and/or don't want) Flash installed in their browser

According to the Macromedia site, 98.3% of all browsers have the Flash player installed. I have no clue how/where they get this statistic from, but if it's close to correct, you're not alienating a very large number of users. I think most companies would agree that leaving 1.7% of users with a prompt to download the plugin would be OK. Maybe not, and I just have no business acumen.

Be willing to alienate a large number of potential viewers

Same as above applies.

Remember, just because you're using Flash doesn't mean it has to be all blinky and shit. Macromedia's site is usually very tasteful. Abit's site uses Flash for the menu bar, which I think is nicely done and by no means intrudes on the usability of the site. Flash is like all other software packages designed for development : it's just a tool, and how that tool is used determines whether or not a site is easy to use.

greg

There was even a fansite dedicated to the Abit BP6

That mobo sure was sweet. And back in Nov/1999 the Celerons 366 were only $35 !! (Which could quite easily be o/c to 550 ;-)

One of my favorite uses for the dual celerons, was to start up a quake server on one cpu, and a quake client on the 2nd cpu.

Too bad the stupid SB Live driver's don't work under SMP mode.

After a little bit of digging around, I found that VIA is planning to introduce a Socket A chipset which includes SMP support (but only two-way). This chipset will be called the Apollo Pro KX266, and their roadmap has a little schpeil about it. That takes care of the processor (AMD) the chipset (VIA) and I really hope that somebody makes a motherboard to work with this chipset. Also, VIA says that the motherboards which will be based on this should support FireWire - sweet! I'm betting on Asus, Biostar, or Abit to come out with a mobo for the KX266, they currently make mobos for VIA's KX133. I expect to see this!

You are killing me. FireWire's not on YOUR motherboard, so it's not successful? Who cares about YOUR motherboard, other than you, exactly?

Abit, who made my motherboard. If FireWire was important enough to them (and other motherboard manufacturers) then it'd be on every motherboard. At this point, it's not. Something must be done to make it important enough.

What could be more successful than being 1) the IEEE standard, 2) the ONLY method? EVERYBODY who is doing anything with DV has at least one FireWire device, and probably two or three, and that includes everybody from the first-time iMac DV buyer to George Lucas working on Episode II.

Did I mention that I don't do anything related to DV? This is the point. While FireWire has had success in the DV arena, there are many more potential FireWire applications completely unrelated to DV that aren't being realized by anyone. I do want FireWire, but I want to be able to do more with it than DV. DV is a drop in the bucket when absolutely everything and anything connected to a computer could be running through FireWire.

I'm not saying this to diminish the success that FireWire has had with DV applications, but we really, really, need FireWire for more applications. Think about it. External hard drives running full speed on FireWire. Internal hard drives running full speed on FireWire (one of several suggestions to replace IDE). Without FireWire, what do we have for component connectivity? USB. At 12Mbps.

We need FireWire for more than just DV, and we're not going to get it unless companies realize they can use it for things other than DV.

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As for mainboards, the Abit KA7-100 is out and new chipsets will support ATA/100 as well (like the SiS730s).

As for mainboards, the Abit KA7-100 is out and new chipsets will support ATA/100 as well (like the SiS730s).

Abit's USA site still hasn't been updated, but their Taiwanese site has. Check it out here.

I have built lots of PC's using Abit parts and I haven't had much problems with their hardware and Linux (RH 5.2). The only issue I ever encountered is with the intel 740 card they made, and I had to hunt around for those drivers. I noticed that in RH 6.1, they have that card listed under the video drivers. Looks like this distribution is for people who want a complete Abit solution (mobo, video card, DMA66 card, etc.). At least they are making an effort to have their hardware be compatible with an OS besides something made by Microsoft. 3 cheers for Abit! (Even though I am a Mac person at heart ;)
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hmmm... is it possible to make a dual 486? that might speed things up at the low end how about a group of 5 386 chips? what would a computer with a dual pentium setup cost?

At college we had a Sequent Symmetry that started with 8 386-16MHz processors and slowly migrated up to either 16 or 32 (I forget how many) 486-33MHz processors. It was the fastest machine on campus for _years_. Pity it had to be decomissioned because we couldn't get any more hard drives for it. Needless to say, it was _not_ cheap, but at least it did _not_ run anything from Redmond.

Even wierder, I think there used to be an architecture out there called a 'Hypercube' that was anywhere up to 256 '286 processors in parallel. That's right, 2^8 Intel 80286 CPU's. If I remember correctly, though, it had _no_ '287's and so it's floating point performance was still pretty sucky. Even so, I wish I could get my hands on one of these today. I'd put it right next to my NeXT.

In short, just about _any_ processor, no matter how weak, can be used in a powerful parallel system _if_ you are prepared to create an appropriate architecture and OS to support that many CPU's. The machine you come up with _could_ be relatively inexpensive to manufacture, but the development costs would enormous.

Stuff like SMP Linux and parallel computing standardizations have made parallel computers MUCH simpler and cheaper in recent history. But that's only if you use those standards etc., and I don't think you're going to find any older/cheaper architectures that follow the standards. Besides, the Dual Celeron board from Abit (the BP6) is _really_cool_ and _really_cheap_.

If you _really_ want to play with a cheap parallel system using older technology, don't think 'parallel computer'. Think 'cluster computer'. Think Beowulf. You won't be disappointed (and you won't have to take all those old processors out of their current cases).

Now, if Loki is offering something like a Beowulf cluster in return for 48 hours worth of hacking on their game, I might enter. Realistically, though, I would probably be more interested in their contest more if they offered the winner a job instead of the computer (at least a job better than the one I currently have).

It might be interesting to enter their contest for just the chance to look at their current game code, which I beleive is not open source. But that brings up an entirely different subject. Since the contestants have to be able to look at their current closed source, they will probably reqire the contestants to sign all sorts of 'Non-Disclosure - Non-Compete' forms. And trust me, NO computer or contest (or job for that matter) is worth all that.

Perhaps I should put the previous paragraph up as a post on its own.

Abit seems to have a separate ATA66 controller for sale called "Hot Rod 66".
Take a look at their site: Abit.

Does that QDI board have an APIC chip?

Abit Dual Socket 370

Picture of Motherboard

Computex piece both of these were listed

ABIT Announces the Release of the BP6, The World's First Dual Socket370 Motherboard!

Taipei, Taiwan, May 31th 1999--ABIT announces the release of the World's First Dual Socket 370 motherboard, the BP6. The ABIT BP6 doubly defies conventional limitations by offering both Dual Socket 370 and UDMA/66 on a BX chipset board, once again proving that with ABIT, "Yes, It's possible". The BP6 is based on the award winning design of ABIT's BX line of motherboards. All the great features of our flagship models have been kept, and a lot of amazing new features have been added.