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Abit's New Motherboard Lays On The Ports
An enthusiastic reader submits: "Possibly the most innovative motherboard to be released in years, Abit's MAX series intends to dive headfirst into the next generation of computing, leaving legacy ports behind in their dust.
Hardcoreware.net has the first full review of this board, which has support for 10 USB devices and 12 (YES, 12) IDE devices." I wish it had even more built-in USB ports, but six is a good start.
I want SCSI.
And after all these years, i'm just NOW finally finding a need for more than the standard two serial ports! (x10 controller, ups, smartcard device, etc)
With 12 IDE ports, it has nearly as much capacity as my 2-channel SCSI card!
Hope you enjoy IRQ-sharing...
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
"Hardcoreware.net has the first full review of this board, which has support for 10 USB devices" "I wish it had even more built-in USB ports, but six is a good start." Am I missing something?
Now I don't need all 5 of those Promise ATA contollers I've got!
Never has the announcement of a motherboard created as much buzz around the PC hardware enthusiast community as the Abit "MAX" series of motherboards (something tells me they really wanted to call it "Matrix" instead). This line of boards, available on both Athlon and Pentium 4 platforms, is Abit's attempt at taking motherboards one step into the next generation, leaving things like legacy ports in its dust.
Windows 2000/XP/ME only. Win98 users need not apply.
How significant is this step though? If you've been paying attention to the hype surrounding these boards, you might think that it is a giant leap for motherboard kind. We're going to find out if this is the case, or if the MAX series is rather a baby step.
Giant leap or baby step, one thing is for certain, the AT7, Abit's first board in the MAX lineup, is definitely one of the most unique boards you'll see today. The AT7 uses the newest, fastest chipset for the Athlon platform, VIA's KT333. KT333 supports most of the newest features you'll need, such as native ATA/133 hard drives, onboard 5.1 audio with digital output, support for DDR333 SDRAM, and more. Abit takes that one step further, and adds a ton of integrated components intended for the next generation of computing. This includes both FireWire AND USB2.0 controller, a 4 channel ATA/133 RAID adapter (making for an unprecedented support of 10 ATA drives onboard), onboard 10/100 LAN, and MediaXP support. These would all be excellent useful addons for most boards, but that's where the MAX series is different - these aren't just addons for the motherboard, they actually replace all legacy parts on the board. Have a look!
This is definitely the most unique ATX rear panel I've ever seen on a consumer board. Notice the complete lack of legacy ports - this includes PS/2, ATA, serial, parallel, the whole shebang! Instead, we get 4 USB 1.1 ports, 2 USB 2.0 ports, a pair of IEEE1394 FireWire ports, full analog 5.1 audio out, digital audio out, and a LAN connector. This is what really sets the MAX boards apart. It is FINALLY time to get rid of that old Dexxa ball mouse that came with your first SVGA card. While you're at it, toss out that old Dot Matrix printer, and even the $13 keyboard with the ASDFJKL: keys completely rubbed off! Abit steps into a new era of computing with the MAX boards
There are some other noticeable differences in the board layout. First off, you are only going to get 3 PCI slots. This is because most of the peripherals that would use a PCI slot, such as the Ethernet adapter and sound card, are already onboard. Personally I've never used more than 3 PCI slots, and with this board, not a single slot it used. Yep, 3 should definitely be enough.
Despite having all the next-gen high performance capabilities, SCSI is still absent. This proves that while the AT7 is a very high end board, it is still targeted to the consumer market. Thanks, Abit!
Video Game cheats, hints a
What will the usefulness of 12 IDE ports be? Anyone who needs that much hard drives will be using SCSI, and its not Serial ATA, could anyone explain why this is useful to me?
Well Pop quiz hotshot, if I'm the only geek in this area (ie. I don't live in California), where do I find out which board has a good reputation?
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
Most places won't stock cards under 5 bucks.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I't also has two IEE 1394(firewire|ilink) ports. :)
This is very good. As there are 400mb a sec.
Much faster then USB. 1394 is also point to point so logically you could have a DVcam plug directly into your 1394 Harddrive drive.
Looks like I don't need a mac after all
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
6 are built in to the case, there are connectors for 4 more.
Hey that is pretty innovative, you usually don't see motherboards doing dives (although video cards have been known to take dives pretty often). Although I guess that this should have been expected with all the news about CPU water coolers and Underwater power generation.
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.
Got Wisdom?
Wealthiest? Geekiest? While perhaps geeky, I currently have a USB printer, USB mouse, USB keyboard, USB joystick, USB webcam (for conferencing), USB steering wheel (F1 2000 CS is fantastic)...hrmm, that's all I can think of right now. I use a hub to be able to connect all of these, and I actually haven't bought anything new in about a year : This is all pretty old stuff.
I've got plenty of working ISA cards. TRUE geeks don't buy new hardware just because it's new. TRUE geeks keep working shit working. People who buy the latest and greatest the second it comes out are called wannabe's.
Will it accept a SoundBlaster sound card without locking up at startup when the SB16 Emulation driver is loaded?
check out this site for some pretty pictures of abits new board http://www.ocworkbench.com/2002/abit/at7/at7previe w1.htm
What the fuck are you talking about? ISA cards? Bleeding edge? You are comparing two extremes there - I bet you still have an AST RAMpage, don't you....
This mainboard is virtually useless only if you're tighter than a fish's asshole.
12 * 160 GB = is almost 2 TB!!!
And the sound of a 747 taking of comes @ no extra charge!
How long has it been since USB came out and I STILL have problems not being able to get good driver support for it and they want to make it ALL USB? What about us Linux folks who don't use much USB because the drivers haven't been written yet? A lot of the bleeding edge people out there that they are marketing this to are using Linux, so they've effectively cut out that portion of their userbase already.
quod me nutrit me destruit
I don't even know what an AST Rampage is... All I know is I'm running a PII 250, and it works just fine. If you have to buy new parts because you can't make your old stuff work, sounds like you got some learning to do.
Its 10: "...a 4 channel ATA/133 RAID adapter (making for an unprecedented support of 10 ATA drives onboard)..."
Just curious but where do you get ISA cards so cheaply?
He should tell that to people who bitch about Apple towers only having 4 PCI slots considering Apple's had ethernet, firewire and usb built-in for years.
The site is now officially slashdoted!
TRUE geeks have better things to do than watch their X Windows redraw. TRUE geeks like cool new stuff and it is high on their list of priorities to get it. Most people think of people who buy the latest and greatest lucky.
People who bitch about people who get the latest and greatest and try and make a virtue out of their own poverty are called jealous.
my fav MB is still the tyan thunder K7 with onboard dual scsi ultra 160. it has all the pins for more USB if you want, and the nature of USB itselfs lets you add on as you need it... there is no need to START with 10 ports.
as for IDE, i thought they were getting rid of legacy support?!
this seems worthless to me. in fact, i think i'll go get another thunder K7 on pricewatch just to show abit where they should be heading.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
It only has 2 firewire ports, which actually many motherboardss have these days.
Not only is it the standard for digital video and still cameras nowadays, IEEE 1394 aka Firewire/iLink is rapidly eclipsing SCSI as the standard for high-speed external storage devices like hard drives and burners.
Also, USB 2.0 is still not supported in Windows, but Firewire is.
USB is nice, but more Firewire ports -- that would be appealing to me!
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
P-II 250? What the heck is that? Do you mean a P2 266? Or was this some bastardized version of a Pentium Pro (though a PPro isn't a P2).
Most people buy new parts because their old parts are, by comparison, junk. I have a big box full of old crap that never actually stopped working, but I think I'd rather have a nice new video card than a Trident 9440 just because it hasn't burned out yet.
actually it was JUST /.ed !
IDE slots? 12? Please tell me this is a typo... or that there are 24 PCI slots. WTF would you use 12 IDE slots for that you wouldn't want to do with something a little more *ahem* modern?
What is music when you despise all sound?
Given that it throws away all legacy ports, I'd say it's pretty short in USB ports.
One ofr the keyboard. One for the mouse. One for the printer.
So, that leaves you with exactly one USB port (I'm discounting the two USB 2.0 ones).
When you throw away your old keyboard and mouse, keep around that old USB hub. You might need it.
As for the three PCI slots: Video capture card, decent sound card, SCSI ports. There goes my scalability, I guess....
Wrong. TRUE geeks buy hardware 'cause it's new and 'cause it lets you do more things faster. Maybe you wanna play Everquest on a machine with an ISA video card, but I'll keep my GeForce for fun gaming, thank you. And I don't feel like compiling my code and a 286, so my shiny new Pentium 4 will do nicely.
People who hang onto stuff that's old and crusty and then sneer at people who want something modern are called packrats and old codgers.
The last time I bought one of their motherboards my man friend and I accidentally got it wet during a rousing round of watersports and it never worked correctly.
mass mounds of mctasty manchowder
[Page 2 is also pretty interesting ... then it delves into BIOS screen shots and benchmarks]
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Got Storage?
Have a look at the vast number of ATA connectors - 6 channels! The yellow connectors are for the Highpoint ATA/133 RAID controller (which works perfectly fine in non-RAID mode). The two higher up on the board are the natively controlled IDE channels, also supporting ATA/133. This makes for an amazing 12 possible drives without the use of a single PCI slot!
Below the RAID channels you'll see a floppy adapter, one of the lingering legacy ports still found on this generation of MAX boards... I personally don't use a floppy drive anymore, but it will be necessary to use a floppy if you plan on installing Windows XP on a drive controlled by the Highpoint IDE. How ironic!
Besides what I've mentioned, and the fact that there are 4 RAM slots (up to three 1GB sticks may be used at a time with non-registered RAM, four if you are using registered), the layout is pretty much standard ATX fare. There are a couple nasty layout problems though, which I'll get to later in the review.
In addition to the 6 USB ports on the ATX rear panel (4 USB1.1 and 2 USB2.0), there are onboard connectors for 4 more USB 2.0 connectors, for a total of 10 devices! There is also an extra output for one more IEEE1394 port. The IEEE1394 controller used by the AT7 is capable of full speed 400mb/sec. So no matter what interface your advanced external peripherals are going to use, Abit definitely has you covered with the AT7.
Once again, Abit gets unique with the AT7, this time with the bundle. Included are a set of nifty black IDE cables (3 IDE cables, 1 floppy cable). This is a great way to have some nice looking custom IDE cables without worrying about using rounded cables (IDE cables are flat for a reason you know!). Also included are a set of cable tie-downs, to aide in keeping your PC nice and tidy inside. This is a great little bundle for a motherboard! A custom ATX rear panel plate is also included of course; the one that came with your case is now officially outdated. You also get one PCI plate USB adapter, to be used on one of the USB2.0 outputs on the motherboard. I would have liked to see a pair of these, in addition to another firewire adapter, since the board supports it. Unfortunately, you're going to have to get your own this time.
MediaXP
One significant absence in our package (I believe Abit is going to make it an option for some retail packages) is a MediaXP panel! MediaXP is one of the great steps forward with the MAX series. Basically, it adds integrated support for various portable media, including Smart Media, Compact Flash, and even Sony's Memory Stick. MediaXP also includes headphone and microphone jacks, SPDIF ports, and 2 USB ports! It is expected that most cases will start using MediaXP panels, rather than their own Mickey Mouse panels you see now. It is already beginning to look like the MAX is taking the PC a step in the right direction...
Pretty cool that you would need a USB keyboard with this, now if I could only find one without those annoying windows keys, clicky keyboard would be even better.
Sadly that's all thats holding me to using PS/2, the lack of a decent USB 101-key (not 104-key) clicky keyboard.
chown -R us.
I wish motherboard manufacturers would stop integrating all this useless stuff. I don't want integrated sound, IDE RAID, or any of that other junk. I don't even particularly care for integrated IDE.
Think of how much more stable the motherboards would be if there were less chips present and less IRQs being shared. Oh yeah, in theory PCI is supposed to share IRQs with no problem, but that doesn't mean it actually works out that way in practice.
There wouldn't be much cost savings associated with getting rid of these functions, but spending $5 or $10 less on a product is always nice.
And, no, sometimes you can't just turn these features off in the BIOS. Even worse, sometimes there's no way to reclaim the IRQs that are lost due to integrated functions! Check out some of the really bad implementations out there. It's a nightmare trying to make those poorly designed boards work. Abit is not known for their stability or great design, so I don't have much faith in this motherboard. Even if Asus made a board like this, I would have some trouble trusting it.
Getting rid of the PS/2 ports is just asinine. They are an industry standard. USB sucks. PS/2 works.
Just who do you expect is buying new motherboards? People hoping to drop in a replacement for the dead mobo in their XT? If you're happy with legacy ports and busses, nobody is forcing you to upgrade. For me, the next time I build a PC, I'd rather not have interrupts and physical space taken up by interfaces I haven't used in at least three years.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
So, why exactly are you not only reading, but also posting, to Slashdot?
TRUE geeks know how to get X Windows working without the latest and greatest.
Poverty ain't the issue. It's the fact that any kid can go down to the local store and buy the latest shit every week. That's fucking lame. Get an old box working well, and that's fucking cool.
Most of the "Cutting edge" Linux crowd are busy crowing about how they still have their 486 running fine, and how a Athlon XP is far more power than any reasonable man should ever need, so get yerself a 386 damnit. I hardly think Abit is targetting the Linux crowd.
As a "cutting edge" Windows user I have 6 USB devices connected to my PC right now (yup, it's Windows XP, though my cool factor is accomplished by saying that my webserver/firewall/NAT router is a FreeBSD box) and I have never had anything but good experiences with them.
TRUE geeks buy hardware 'cause it's new and 'cause it lets you do more things faster.
Actually, true geeks design their own hardware from the circuit level up.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
You want more USB ports, get a USB hub, they're cheap, their easy, and they work fine. I have 2 USB ports on my computer, one is broken, I got a 4 port USB hub, so now I can plug in my printer, scanner, CF/SM card reader, and my MP3 player. If I need more ports, I'll go get another hub, or a bigger (8 port) hub. USB has been designed this way so you wouldn't need that many ports on the computer.
More firewire ports would be better. I've never seen a firewire hub, and if they are out there, they're probably expensive.
Free Mac Mini
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
"Hardcoreware.net"? Are you sure this isn't porn spam?
/.ed anyway, so it doesn't matter...
At least I'll be learning something useful rather than 70's technology - and in that I include unix. Heh!
So you need a second mortgage and a new sound card
Not that you would _want_ to put 8 drives in a RAID 0 array. The chances of failure and total data loss are just too high. But it's cool that you can.
12 friggin' IDE channels. The mind boggles. Perhaps I can finally use up all the bays in my full-size tower. It looks mighty pathetic with just my CDRW and a floppy.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Apple ditched legacy ports with the first iMac, four years ago.
Intel followed Apple's lead and started promoting "Legacy free PCs" within a year of the iMac's release. Some PC integrators such as Compaq tried to follow suit, with products such as the iPaq legacy-free desktop (not to be confused with the iPaq handheld, which was a completely different kind of device and came later).
Most legacy-free PC designs failed. Why is it so exciting that a board-maker has released a legacy-free board 4 years too late?
Novelty do it because we can is not for mission critical stuff... we all know it... and until the board is proven in combat that's what I'm taking this as... For instance the BP6 was rock solid for some people... mine never worked... but I now own two KT7A boards and you can't beat them up unless you threw them out the window. I for one hope this turns out to be one of their better boards... They've taken huge risks to please the geek population and as a result run my favorite machines... As for 12 IDE devices anyone know of a case that can cram that much into it?!
I know this is going to get trolled down, but you have two options:
1) Buy a different motherboard. They sell more than one, you know.
2) Use an OS that actually has *features*, instead of constantly bitching that your OS doesn't support hardware any newer than two years old.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
ATM I have TV card, Sound Card, and NIC in my system; sure, this system's got on board NIC and sound, but so what? I have an SB Live that'll beat most on board stuff (well, maybe, I'm not a great fan of Live's anymore :), and needing another NIC isn't that unlikely; 3 is definately going to feel cramped.
I want to congratulate the company on making a motherboard that is virtually useless to anybody who isn't bleeding edge. I don't even have a single USB device, and I still use ISA cards extensively because they'er so damn cheap.
I used to do that. Then I decided that I'd rather not have to beat my head against a wall mucking with IRQ conflicts and port addresses to save $10.
USB keyboards are dirt cheap. USB mice are dirt cheap. If you're shelling out for a new system in the first place, replacing keyboards and mice are a negligeable cost (and you'd want new ones regardless, so that you can still keep the old machine active).
Graphics-wise, I'd have to be paid a lot of money to go back to using a graphics card obsolete enough to be ISA, even if all I'm doing is running a 2D desktop. Network-wise, PCI network cards are *almost* as dirt-cheap as your keyboard and mouse.
In summary: If you're buying a new motherboard at all, you can afford to upgrade the peripherals.
Quoth the review:
It is FINALLY time to get rid of that old mouse... While you're at it, toss out that old Dot Matrix printer, and even the $13 keyboard with the ASDFJKL: keys completely rubbed off!
Ya know, I really like my peripherals. I have a great Gateway Programmable keyboard that has built-in hardware macros (so it's not OS dependant) and a slick logitech trackball that fits my hand well. My printer is pretty crummy, but it has this great ability to turn text into physical paper, which is all I need.
Having a motherboard which boasts of the ability to make me buy new hardware isn't quite what I'm looking for.
Sam
"I wish it had even more built-in USB ports, but six is a good start"
Am I the only one with so many wires connected to their PC that it looks like a plate of spaghetti? 4 ports is more than enough on the computer after that I found it's better to use a hub. I have one on the other desk where my printer and scanner are and one by the keyboard for my MP3 player and Digital Camera.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Oh Yes, USB and PCI are so "bleeding edge".
They say, that three PCI slots will be enough because all that stuff is onboard....okay. But, until the onboard 5.1 sound, and ethernet is everybit as good as what i get from my Soundblaster Live or 3Com NIC, I will continue to use those instead of onboard solutions. the support for so many USB and IDE devices is nice though
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Funny thing is Apple, of all companies, are always ahead of their time. They come out with a great idea but too radical for most people to accept. After about 1/2 a decade later its is mimicked and is wildly successful.
One thing I am glad never took off was that whole translucent thing, I think I was the only one that thought it was annoyingly ugly.
ISA??! hey, the 1980's called... it wants its computer back. :-P
my other computer is your Windows(tm) box...
- TRUE geeks know how to get X Windows working without the latest and greatest.
yeah, but why? If i don't need to make something work on old hard-ware (say, due to poverty), why cause myself extra headaches? Is it so I can lord it over other people about how L33T i am? That's fucking lame.Poverty ain't the issue. It's the fact that any kid can go down to the local store and buy the latest shit every week. That's fucking lame. Get an old box working well, and that's fucking cool.
True geeks with money to burn have every computer they ever bought still operational and networked and they have the latest and greatest which they've hacked to be overclocked except that it requires the refrigeration unit from an old frigidaire to keep it cool.
Actually, true geekdom isn't based on what hardware or software you have. It is what you do with it that counts.
Coding Blog
what rock have you been living under? The only reason ISA cards ae cheap is because they're OLD, and there's just as many cheap PCI cards floating around too. Probably even fewer, since there hasn't been a retail pc made with ISA slots in 2 or 3 years. Unless you consider minimum wage wealthy, I don't think you'll go broke on $12 sound cards and 100Mbps nics.
Mod parent up you wankers
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
bull.
First off, my older machines don't need a keyboard and mouse, I run them remotly.
second:
Please tell me where I can gt a good 101 USB keyboards? something with a metal base that I can type on for 15+years? I am using the same keyboarsd, right now, that I was using 15 years ago.
PLease stop telling people what they can afford, it is real annoying
This is one of the things I like best about PS/2 ports -- my collection of decent, sturdy, clicky keyboards.
However, there are USB PS/2 adapters; I don't have one for the PC yet, but since I've recently acquired a machine with no PS/2 ports, I guess I need one. My iMate though lets my clicky ADB northgate keyboard work great with my iBook and other modern Macs. And there are a few nice clickies made for USB, but probably nowadays all are 104 key.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I know this usb2 is supposed to do the same thing, but I'm invested in firewire devices.
Ok, maybe I missed it, but what about this board precludes 98? The USB 2.0 and Firewire?
The two boxes sitting underneath the networking equipment in our network/server closet here at work. Sure, they're more expensive cube cases, but one actually has twelve drives in it. Linux and software RAID turns them in a great half terabyte (non-mission-critical) fileserver for the office.
TRUE geeks know how to get X Windows working without the latest and greatest.
Actually, TRUE geeks know that it's not called X Windows...
Goddammit! It's about time that someone stood up for the little geek! I'm tired of sitting at home for days, waiting for my 'make buildworld' to finish on my '386/25 with the Seagate 20MB RLL drive as the glow of my amber screen slowly flickers as it spits out the Slushdot webpage in Lynx via the full-length Hercules Graphics card. Ahhh, the good ole' days.
This poster's name secretly replaced with Folgers Crystals
Excuse me, but not having PS/2 keyboard/mouse ports is totally ridiculous: come on, I have a great old keyboard (first-gen MS natural, with the 'bigger' keys) that works perfectly and is not manifactured anymore and a great Logi mouse (forget the model, not manifactured anymore either) and I would have to throw them away just to use this M/B? No way!
And let's not even talk about my laserjet printer (which works *great* but is, obviously, parallel).
And what's the deal with no gameport connector (for MIDI)? Why should I pay twice for the onboard sound and for a creative card to hook up my MIDI gear? Not to mention some people that have hundreds of $$ invested in non-USB HOTAS setups.
I don't like backwards compatibility at all costs, and I like the idea of having some firewire ports and some extra USB ones (even if IMHO USB hubs are a much better idea, I can connect/disconnect things on my desk instead of having to crawl behind the computer) but removing things like keyboard/mouse connectors and parallel ports goes really too far.
-- the cake is a lie
Does anyone have a mirror of the article or even some photos of this board, the review seems to be slashdotted already. I can't wait to see how they managed to cram *12* ide connectors on the mobo! But very cool all the same. Funny thing about IDE, does anyone even use the lame-o "slave" drive on each chain? With all of the controllers/connectors on modern boards, I don't know anyone that doesn't just have a single "master" drive on each channel.
Thankfully I work with FibreChannel and SCSI at work... but with 12 IDE channels on a single board, I think I could "suffer" with IDE!!!! Schweet!
Can anyone guess how successful a Linux installation would be on such a motherboard? (Without even a PS/2 keyboard port, I'm wondering if the RedHat installer would even talk to you, without a lot of hacking and customization.)
Removing all legacy ports seems a bit silly, to me; it takes so little to provide serial and parallel ports, they're usually integrated into some other multi-purpose I/O chip these days anyway. Sure, don't bother to have the full port on the mother board (just hook up a ribbon cable to some pins, if you need to break out the port), and allow people to disable it. But completely removing it would limit it's utility to some folks. I picked up a little motherboard recently which had no ports mounted, but everything (VGA, serial, parallel, game, sound, etc.) could be hooked up via ribbon cable to a little breakout connector. Saved a lot of space on the motherboard, but still gave you the functionality you might need.
(In fact, a lot of the same folks who would get excited about the built-in raid, are the same folks who still need serial ports to talk to routers and switches and stuff.)
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
> am using the same keyboarsd, right now, that I > was using 15 years ago.
heh - you can tell by all the typographical errors....
You know, Apple got rid of legacy ports a loooooong time ago (at least in computer-time). Of course, I am still a fan of legacy ports (where would all of my cool old hardware plug in?), but this doesn't seem groundbreaking on the grand scheme of things. Heck, Sun even went all USB on their SunRay appliances. Yeah, they aren't "real computers" but still. But, alas, the world is dominated by "innovation" from Intel and Micros~1, so until they do it, it hasn't been done. (like the "first optical mouse" that Micros~1 came up with a couple years ago - what do you call the optical Sun mouse I have that has "1992" stamped on the bottom of it?)
Posted from the wireless couch.
That's completely asinine. If you are running a mobo with that poor of a design, maybe you need to start spending more money on your PC parts. Most boards will let you turn off integrated components AND reclaim their reserved interupts. I'm running an older Abit with a KT133A and a built-in HighPoint 100 Raid controller. I don't need the built-in raid functions so I disabled it. I have no problems using other cards on the interrupts, as I have the ability to manually select what each IRQ and DMA is allocated to. That's a good design. It's also rock solid, only crashes when I do something retarded like boot up Win98 :-0
One thing you are right about, built-in components cost a lot of money. More than just 5 or 10 dollars. Look at high end dual proc boards; many times the only difference between them is a nice builting SCSI raid card and $100.
USB doesn't suck, it's more flexible. It just requires more software support and it seems the Linux USB support isn't quite *there* yet.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
... when ABIT did it, they gave it a score of "98%".
That said, I do want to point out a few things. While there are 10 USB ports, **many, many** more USB devices may be used per channel if you plug in some external USB hubs.
Also worth noting, the board only has 3 PCI (vanilla 33 MHz, 32 bit) slots, though you do already get a lot of stuff onboard.
IDE is provided via four "raid" channels and two "plain" channels. If you use a slave device on each channel, you can have up to ten IDE devices, but performance will suck. Fill up the onboard IDE slots and then invest in a nice IDE raid card when your needs grow. In my ancient PC I already have a 12x DVD-ROM, 24x CD-ROM (each on its own channel, "slave" sucks). Plus a stripe of two 80 GB 5400 RPM drives (storage) and a srtipe of two 60 GB 7400 ROM drives (boot/main).
How is this innovative when apple has been including all this stuff in their mobos for quite a while now?
the board you picked up with no ports and ribbion options. where did you get whats its name and how much
for me to consider a new motherboard "innovative" it would have 1 1.1 usb and 1 2.0 usb (you can get hubs to extend them if needed) then it would have 68 and 80 pin scsi controllers on it (1 each) forget ide all together - then 1 firewire port - it would have the latest nvidia chipset or ari chipset card with all the extra connections on the board as well as the dlink 100/1ghz ethernet card onboard. it would also include a creative labs card onboard with all the rca and audio jacks available - then THAT would be the board of the future
Ave Molech Setting
While this looks nice in a sort of consumer way, I won't be buying one of these. 1 CPU, 4 memory slots and 3 PCI slots are about 1/2 of what I want for each of these key expansion busses.
Instead, give me something like THIS.
It's that "new math".
12 IDE devices total if lame-o "slave" devices are used.
Slave devices are fine on Grandma's PII/400, but not on my God Box.
no. /. and rant about MPAA while running out to watch LOTR.
A true geek plays quake, buys clothing from think geek, hangs out at
What you are sir, is a nerd.
be proud, you actually know something about technology.
It's sad that the term geek has lost all meaning, but thats what happens when something becomes "hip"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
haha, you got me there. but believe me, my spelling would not improve with a new keyboard.
I had to re-learn how to talk when I was 6, that screwed up my spelling forever.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Without serial ports are there any easy/cheap ways to remotely administrate this box via the Linux console?
Do they sell cases that can handle that many drives?
SCSI has its downsides, but it's easier to hook up lots of drives because the SCSI world tends to support external drives better.
Now if they would only make a firewire (HD)TV tuner card...
Well, us Linux folks had their usb mouse detected during their last installation of RedHat 7.2, so quit yer complaining get a newer kernel.
Hell, I was even using a usb mouse _before_ the 2.4 series.
I can almost see dropping a floppy drive, but a ps2 keyboard and mouse? I use a USB keyboard and mouse on my laptop, but it does take a fair bit more CPU cycles to use the USB version over the ps2. Mind you, a few seconds longer to boot weblogic is not a huge deal, but like those silly winmodems - why waste it on something like a keyboard and mouse? It is not like this board is headed for "almost embedded" solutions like the 170mmx170mm mainboards I plan to toss in my car.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Actually, true geeks photomask and etch their own silicon. Careful with the HF, now.
Don't forget the SCSI Ultra320 bus. That's 320 MB/s!! I think IDE maxes out at 40MB/s and the bus is shared so that's 40MB/s for all devices. SCSI kicks IDE's ass, no doubt about it.
50 percent will say "I am not throwing out my old hardware!!!"
20 percent will say "Use a USB hub fool!"
15 percent will say "There's not enough PCI slots"
10 percent will say that Apple already does this.
5 percent will say that Abit are smoking crack.
you ppl r so predicatable
The colored, translucent plastics of the iMac touched off (or added a lot of fire to) a design trend not only among other computer and electronics manufacturers but among all kinds of consumer products. I saw waste baskets, vacuum cleaners, even ceiling fans with colored translucent plastic pieces.
So it certainly did take off, but like any other fashion trend, it eventually ended. Apple's current fashion is milky white plastic opposite grey or metallic parts, usually with a little clear plastic trim. I'm not sure if anyone else is copying this latest Apple fashion, though.
It's only got 3 PCI. Granted a whole heap of the hardware is integrated but there is more in life than sound, ethernet, firewire and USB. Wheres the AGP? This renders the card almost void for a whole host of people. USB? I don't think I'm the only one but I fucking hate it. It's so so so slow and still fairly incompatible with Linux. Linux, yeh, whats the word of compatibility with this board? The article says its only for Windows (excluding 98). SCSI. Why didn't they use that. Mmmm, It's like people took one look at it and ejaculated all over their pants. This board looks pretty much redundant. The page was /.ed before I read anything further than page 1 so some of my ramblings may be false. 'Just my two bits worth, worth'
Mod me down, fine with me, it's my real karma I try to keep up.
The floppy drive on most modern PCs uses DMA channel 6.
This is really disappointing. Just when I thought I found the right board to replace the P2B-LS in my HTPC. But...
Bzzzrt.
I still need more than 3PCI slots, even with the cool I/O on this mobo.
I need:
HiPix Card (HD Tuner Card)
Gig Ethernet (You try shuffling 16GB movies in HD around)
SCSI (DDS-4 for offline storage of said HD movies)
And it's full. No possibility of adding the next cool thing. I'd have to use an AIW if I wanted to use dScaler for DVDs, etc. etc.
Seems like omitting SCSI and GigE were severe oversights.
-Z
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
As meatloaf sort of said, 1 out of 3 aint bad.
I find it rather amusing that this board is dubbed the Abit MAX when it seems to be lacking so much. SO say I order this wonderful new motherboard only to find that I have to replace my mouse, keyboard, printer and scanner or I can go buy the entire rack of USB adapters. No thanks Abit.
People seem much brighter once you light them on fire.
Then find me a "dirt cheap" wireless keyboard with
integrated pointing device. The one I have now
uses serial port and PS/2; they don't make it anymore! >:(
Well, if you really really really can't live without your museum piece you could buy a ps2 to usb converter.
Heh, I hope for your sake you're not describing an ABIT KA7, otherwise you'll see soon enough just how stable it is... I've never heard of a single one of those boards lasting even two years... (I've had 3 that didn't make it to one)
Hey, if you can make your PII 250 work as good as my Athlon 1.4, THEN maybe I have some learning to do.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
True geeks manufacture their own silicon to prevent imperfections. Or have I gone too far?
So go write some decent USB drivers for Linux, and GPL them so the non-coder g33ks can have some fun!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I don't know where you're getting your information, but all 3 common USB host controllers (UHCI, OHCI and EHCI) use bus mastering DMA to transfer the data from the device to main memory.
Go check the USB host controller specs for yourself.
Why does everyone keep calling this thing useless? This motherboard is made for -NEW- PCs. Why do people not seem to understand this? Most of the time, when buying a new PC, you think about things like "what peripherals will I need for this?". If you don't think about this sort of thing, you shouldn't be building a PC with this type of hardware in the first place, so, holy gods, you _don't buy this motherboard_!
I hate to sound mean here, but I hardly see how a manufacturer pushing the edge of computing can be seen in the wrong for releasing -one- product in their entire bloody lineup that doesn't cater to the needs of people who are stuck in 1995. It seems pretty simple to me; if you are building a new computer and aren't planning on using any legacy technology (I'm not, for instance), then buy this type of board. If you do need legacy support, they and practically all the other manufacturer's are -still- making boards that will work quite nicely.
Let's hear it for companies finally ditching legacy ports and moving to the future, carried by people who buy new computers.
that's right - you're talking bullshit, linux will happily support usb, and firewire.
For what reasons is Windows 98 not supported? For the same reasons as Windows 98 won't run, will {Linux,{Free,Net,Open}BSD} be affected? They do not go into any detail on this whatsoever.
What's wrong with my old ball mouse? It works. Why should PS/2 keyboards and mice be replaced by USB? It seems overkill, especially for keyboards, where things should always work, even if your OS is having problems seeing your USB controller. With USB, too many things can break, and leave your system in a hard-to-fix state. (Ever added 'usb-uhci' instead of 'usb-ohci' to /etc/modules, or equivalent? Many OSs don't have USB support in the installer; Debian doesn't at least, and I don't think any of the BSDs do. Does the BIOS emulate an AT interface for USB keyboards?) More importantly, new eras of computing have little to do with shedding "legacy" devices. New eras of computing are set in software ideology and design. Even as far as hardware goes, new eras of computing would be more akin to a next generation of processor, or a new archetecture in CPUs or busses enabling more than 16 IRQ lines. That last sentence seems very marketroid.
The "consumer" market doesn't use 12 IDE devices. The high-end hobbyist/server/gaming markets do. I think it's a shame they left out SCSI, which seems inconsistent with trying to shed "legacy devices". SCSI is great. Why are you thanking them?
I use rounded cables (that I make myself) to improve airflow and increase the ease of routing/positioning cables inside my cases. I don't care about how they look. And no, I didn't know of a reason IDE cables are flat, besides conventional manufacturing techniques in use. Too bad you don't explain why, because the first thing I'd do with these cables is use a razor blade to slice them into segments, and bunch the segments together with zip-ties, as I would any other flat cable.
Uh huh. I take it these MediaXP panels are specific to Abit and their licensees. How much are you being paid by Abit again?
Comparing "dog poo to cat poo"? Maybe you meant comparing apples and oranges. "Ugh"? The reviewer seems to have come straight from the AOL chat rooms... Okay, so I say "ugh" from time to time, but you don't use that word in a written review. That's fairly unprofessional.
One more gripe, but somewhat offtopic: at the bottom of every page, I'm told to use IE 5+ and a 1024x768x32-bit screen. There is no excuse for bad web design that depends on a specific browser configuration like this. </pissyrant>
That there's some kind of happy stuff ingestion going on. It's not just at ABIT though. In the review they said:
"you are only going to get 3 PCI slots. This is because most of the peripherals that would use a PCI slot, such as the Ethernet adapter and sound card, are already onboard. Personally I've never used more than 3 PCI slots, and with this board, not a single slot it used. Yep, 3 should definitely be enough."
WHAT?! Only three?! I have a fairly decent board, one of the Microstar KT7 Turbo Ltd boards, and I'm using all six PCI slots. Granted, most people don't have extra video cards, TV Tuners, multiple SCSI controllers, additional sound, etc, but the fact of the matter is that anyone who would actually go for the all USB approach that isn't buying it in some OEM's computer would probably skip on this one. I'll admit that the addition of the IEEE1394 and USB 2.0 is neat, but in many regards, the board is simply crippled by having no legacy ports, and no real place to add them if you actually need such.
I'm still wondering why it's a full sized board with only the three slots. I could at least justify its existence if it were micro-ATX, for it'd be useful to then actually USB things. Right now, it's just dumb.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
OK, this is a neat board, (10 EIDE devices and 6 USB!) but look at what the current Mac has had for a while:
2 x Firewire
4 x USB (2 on the keyboard)
4 x PCI
Modem
Gigabit Ether
Audio
Video
(Airport) (currently optional)
See ADB or DB25 SCSI anyywhere there?
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Not to mention that I have yet to see a 10/100-base-T ISA ethernet card that could actually compete with a PCI card, and lets not forget 1000BT..
.
You are wrong. Many USB devices are already cheaper than their ISA/PCI counterparts.
USB 802.11b Addtron card: bought for $45
cheapest IS/PCI 802.11b card ? At least $80
What about flash card readers ? I bought USB
one for $25. FDD/PCI start at $60.
USB scanner I got for $20 from staples.
If had to use ISA with SCSI it would be more expensive.
I bought USB Linux-compatible Ethernet cards
for $11.
USB is very far from bleeding edge.
And it works quite well with Linux though.
You just have to be carefull what you buy.
Check http://www.qbik.ch first.
Kubus
I'm not sure what Abit was smoking when they came up with this design...it just boggles the mind. I have a Palm cradle and an HP Deskjet which conveniently wouldn't work because they use "legacy" interfaces. Maybe all those IDE channels could come in handy...oh wait, or I could just continue to use SCSI.
In conclusion, "legacy free" = a load of cheap integrated crap with no backwards compatibility in terms of hardware. Way to go Abit (whose products I once purchased)...if I actually owned an Athlon or a Pentium 4 I know what I wouldn't be buying in terms of a mainboard.
there has never been anything bleeding edge about linux
Oh yes, 120$ for a new ibm m-series is so cheap. I don't even know if they have them in usb. I don't like any other keyboard
The coffee god lives!
Sounded like a nice board till I read the words "integrated" and "3 pci".
I want a board with at least 3 firewire and 4 usb. I want dual athlons and at least 6 pci. No ide though. Thats for the scsi card I would put in. I would think keeping the ps/2 would be good though...
That's funny, my motherboard can support 256 USB devices. I think what they mean as that the mobo has a build in hub.
Most people won't use more then four or five USB devices. Whats really cool here is the firewire.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
New:
Mouse and Keyboard are USB, plugged into the "main" USB ports.
Keyboard has two USB ports built-in, for ad hoc hot-plugging.
Graphics tablet and joystick are plugged into one of those "extra" USB risers that came with the motherboard, an ABit KR7A-RAID.
Legacy:
Audio is still analog (stereo). Not for long.
Unfortunately, our digital camera is ancient and only works with the serial port. So I could *almost* use the reviewed motherboard, but not quite.
My buddy who does video editing would kill for six
Bugger it all... Continued:
...for six^W the ability to plug in six^Weight IDE RAID ports.
A $15 ps/2 -> usb dongle. Keep your old Model-M -- or, in my case, my $250 Kinesis Classic. PS/2 was a shitty stupid idea when it was introduced, and it's no less stupid now. I'm happy to see it go away.
(jfb)
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
This just made learning electronics more difficult. There are numerous parts that rely on the serial or parallel ports because of their simplicity. I have yet to see a PICMicro programmer based on usb. Do they still make serial/parallel i/o cards for pc's that aren't based on extremely old ISA buses? In which case after the i/o card, decent sound card, etc this board seems to be pretty useless. Sounds like they included only 3 PCI to hide the fact that all the extra crude on the motherboard uses an insane amount of IRQs.
1) This board sucks! How am I supposed to connect my [10 year old piece of hardware] when there isn't a [PS2/Serial/Parallel/AT/ISA/Microchannel] [port/slot]?!?!? This can't POSSIBLY be for people building a new computer from the ground up, because, dammit, that's not what I do, so obviously no one else does either! And speaking of [10 year old piece of hardware], aren't I so 1337 for still using it? I thought so.
2) [SCSI/IDE] rocks! [IDE/SCSI] sucks!
3) Natalie Portman pours hot grits down my pants. Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
What exactly is it? I know the review briefly described it, but I was looking for something more detailed. Googling for "MediaXP" doesn't return any significant hits. What's up?
USB is not the best way to run every device. PS2 style works much better for mice and keyboards. I have yet to use a USB printer. Homemade circuits are not easy to hook up to USB. Text terminals on USB?! Actually, the only thing I own that uses USB is my mouse, and I run it on a PS2 adapter.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
Odds are that his PCI slots work better than yours.
As for 12 IDE devices anyone know of a case that can cram that much into it?!
c as e/new2001_11-12_pc_case/pc72SCA.html
Behold, the JCL Aluminum Server Case.
http://www.lianli.com/11302001jcL_pc_case/jclpc
I don't know about the rest of you, but I have tried many USB devices. I have a MS Intellimouse Explorer that can be USB or PS/2, and a MS Natural Keyboard Pro that can also be USB or PS/2. My grand master plan a while ago was to get rid of some of the legacy stuff in my PC so that I wouldn't have so many cables in the back, makeing it easier to make it look better, to unplug for upgrades, etc. Well, I tried it for about 1 day and went back to PS/2. Why? Because the thing I use my PC for more than anything else is gaming, and I could notice the delay in response between a USB keyboard and mouse and having them on the PS/2 ports, even when they were the only USB devices in the system. If I had the bios make them act like PS/2 devices, instead of windows, it was still noticeable. 100+ FPS in games like Quake 3 and Counter Strike is useless if your mouse/kb doesn't update fast or consistantly. Sure, when I need a mouse on my laptop, USB is great. When I need to borrow my mom's color ink jet instead of our network attached laser printer, it's great too. But when I need fast response time for killing that AWP whore, I'll take PS/2 any day. Frankly, I'm disappointed in USB, I'm still waiting for it to make my life easier.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I agree with you. Often onboard sound chips cause problems with linux even though they can be turned off in the BIOS. It'd be nice to just have a motherboards with a bunch of pci ports and a bunch of usb ports.
Got friends?
And, no, sometimes you can't just turn these features off in the BIOS. Even worse, sometimes there's no way to reclaim the IRQs that are lost due to integrated functions! Check out some of the really bad implementations out there. It's a nightmare trying to make those poorly designed boards work.
<RANT>
I have to concur on this. My dad bought a Soyo K7V Dragon Plus! with onboard RAID. I configured the RAID and everything was working flawlessly until one day the RAID JUST STOPPED WORKING! It decided that the 2nd drive just was not connected. I wasted a whole weekend and lost a lot of data trying to get it working again. A week later my Dad noticed a little blurb in the documentation about not putting a SCSI card in PCI slot 2 because the IRQ on that slot is shared with the RAID. Well, there was no SCSI card in slot 2, but as it turns out the RAID broke(i didn't realize it at the time) right after I rearranged some PCI cards and ended up putting a FireWire card in slot 2. NICE F#$%#KING design, slot 2 is completly useless on that board if you are using RAID. What good are all these features if they don't WORK TOGETHER?
</RANT>
That's kinda nice. But what I REALLY want is a MOBO with no integrated ANYTHING. Just IDE, USB, and a buttload of PCI slots (and 1 AGP slot)!!
Let me choose my own Sound card / NIC / Video card / Modem, please!
I bet $1 it has one of those damned 'shared memory' video cards. Nasty.
Modern "legacy-free" computers work just fine with USB keyboards and mice, and if you don't like new mice, get a USB-to-serial converter to support your antique Logitech. The Firewire and USB2 mean you can plug in fast external devices, either inputs like video cameras or storage devices, and and as a bonus you can refill your MP3 player from the 3 YEARS OF CONTINUOUS MP3s it can hold :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yeah, gee, putting the chips on different boards is going to help. We'll use the same architecture, but with longer traces, and copper contacts instead of solder joints. That figures.
If you had ever tried to build your own little hobbyist PCB shop, you'd either be laughing at how stupid your statement just sounded, or crying that it's out of your reach. Damn, what I wouldn't give, to be able to mask even 8k roms.
I don't think so - I rather have intergrated components - as long as they work well (which in the case of my A7V-266E they do). For one thing it saves a whole lot of time and headache - because you know they tested it and its going to work most of the time.
:).
Not to mention this board - you can just buy it, plop a video card and a hard disk drive and your done - pc built
Click here for abit's info on the motherboard.
Wow, there's a fan on the KT333 chipset! I'd think with all the legacy stuff they removed, they wouldn't need a fan. The KT333 actually still has all the legacy functionality in it which might be why they need the fan.
Got friends?
Most people don't use them, and they make the board and box far bigger. A no-slot version would be useful for a little-box-under-the-flatpanel-monitor form factor.
An excerpt from Abit's MAX FAQ:
WHAT IS MAX?
Charlie, lead designer of the AT7: "I'm glad you asked me that. MAX is a mother board with a legacy-free device interface, maximized CPU performance and memory capacity, on-board LAN, 6 Channel Audio, USB 2.0 and IEEE1394a..."
MAX: "Blah, blah, blah. Anybody can tell that by reading the specsheet! I'm more than a bunch of interfaces and memory slots! Without tooting my own horn, I'm everything anybody could possibly ever want in a computing system. I'm like the beautiful girlfriend you've always wanted who also cooks, cleans, mows the lawn, pays the bills AND lets you play CS all night-- if that's what you want."
Charlie: "Well, I guess you could put it that way..."
BUT WHY MAX?
Charlie: "Good question. MAX fully utilizes system bandwidth and provides the best storage management currently available in a motherboard. Combine that with all the fully integrated extra features, and you have the ultimate integrated computer platform."
MAX: "Charlie, We know that already. What people want to know is why would they want MAX. Well, the answer is, `cause I'll make your life easier, giving you more time to spend at the beach, or playing MOH: AA till your wrist seizes up and your brain melts."
Charlie: "We didn't think of that whenwe included all the integrated extra features, but I suppose you're right."
MAX: "Of course I'm right! I'm ABIT Engineered!"
Charlie: "Before MAX interrupted me, I was going to mention that MAX users will have the best platform solution in the market, with the best design for users thanks to ABIT Engineering. Because MAX includes just about all the integrated features users will need in a motherboard, MAX is designed for now and the future."
MAX: "That's right Charlie. I'm gonna be around for a long time...like Gandalf."
All I can say is: Wow. That's the most horrible thing I've ever read.
Wow, that reviewer guy likes exclamation points.
I stopped reading after the second page, when I'd run out of fingers and toes to count them on.
I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein
I have an i810-based computer, and currently am using the on-board audio. Thing is, there is so much crosstalk from other devices on the motherboard like the IDE lines and so on that unless you are pumping high-volume sound around you still hear little subtle pings and hisses.
I have heard that with the Nforce-based all-in-one motherboards the problem has pretty much been licked. However, I will not believe it until I hear it with my own ears.
Meanwhile, I'm saving my pennies for an Audigy... unless Turtle Beach comes out with an audio card with a firewire port on it.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
IRQ12, which is usually for the PS/2 Mouse, is probably the only interrupt that can be reclaimed. IRQ5 can probably be used by the on board sound.
If you can't reclaim the resources, then dropping the connectors on the back is a step backwards, not a step forwards. And they probably can't reclaim the IRQ's because it would break compatibility with everything out there.
Cryptnotic
My other first post is car post.
I think PC's lose their usefulness without paralle ports. If your trying to interface some simpel device you've made who wants to bother with USB interfaces and UARTs and stuff. Just read and write to the memory mapped parallel port. Its so easy! whay would I do with this?
I suppose not buy it, but still. . .
I'd agree that there aren't a lot of supported USB devices for Linux yet (webcams in particular, due to lack of manufacturer openness about protocols), but to say that "Linux USB support isn't quite *there* yet" is a bit over the top.
Sure, there have been some problems along the way with the hotplug code, but except for the now-rare occurance of a race condition due to autoloading dependent modules, I've had little to no problem with hotplugging.
Keyboards and mice work with mini-HID drivers. The full-blown HID is pretty decent. Even some esoteric devices like USB multiport serial adapters from companies like keyspan work well.
AGP = TNT2
PCI 1 - DVD decoder
PCI 2 - Sound Card
PCI 3 - Ultra ATA controller
PCI 4 - Capture card
PCI 5 - NIC
PCI 6 - Modem
All cards working fine, thank you very much. It's not hard to do. If you can't fill 6 PCI slots and get the cards working correctly then I would wonder about your actual computer knowledge.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
The Abit KR7a with 4 RAM slots has ram issues which cause it to give memtest86 errors. This has been hypothesised to be caused by the non-standard amount of ram slots. This was a huge source of grief for me, and I eventually returned the board and had to get credit for the store. As this board also has 4 RAM slots, I would watch out for this board. I will never buy Abit products again because of their extremely high RMA rate.
Please follow this link for details on the problem.
>"Duhhhh. PCChips use onboard stuff, and they're cheap, so it must be bad."
:-)
>Yeah, gee, putting the chips on different boards is going to help. We'll use the same architecture, but with longer traces, and copper contacts instead of solder joints. That figures
Yeah, but the average slashdot geek is too friggin' dumb to realise that PCChips is actually about 15 different companies (congratgulations on knowing that PC Chips is PC Crap, though!).
Witness how idiots on slashdot constantly boost the ECS K7S5A. It's a PCCHIPS motherboard for crying out loud! You bought crap and you got lucky because you bought the only non-crap product from a manufacturer of pure CRAP. Don't tell me ECS is good until you either own it for a year or two, or buy another PCChips product (might I reccomend somthing with the Mega-TX+^2/Pro-Ultra-PC2500 chipset or something else purposely confusingly named that exists only because PC Chips is too cheap to even buy 3rd party chipsets?).
Sorry, I just have to get that off my chest... Thanks for noticing how bad PC Chips is.
Or if you want to see the true low-end hardcore:
http://www.lowendmac.com/
I have nothing but admiration for people who keep old machines alive, particularly when they spread their technological wealth around. Which reminds me: I will be decommissioning one of my machines soon. It was built in 1997 and was a real science experiment, hence the name it's held on my network, "Dexter." In fact, I brought the case cover to a comic convention and Genndy Tartakovsky drew his mad scientist character on it and autographed it for good measure.
Dexter has been useful for all these years, and it's only because I have some new stuff coming in that I have to reluctantly decommission it. I'm keeping an eye out for a deserving new home for the thing. The scanner is going out the door too...it's an UMAX 600P and it is not supported in any OS beyond 98SE. SANE doesn't support it and UMAX doesn't make a 2K or XP driver for it either. It also barfs if connected to a computer with a processor that runs at or above 300MHz. Timing prob. Still works like a champ, too.
This machine will be going to the Pacoima Community Center or somewhere else deserving.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
>If you had ever tried to build your own little hobbyist PCB shop
:-)
Mmmmm, the smell of Ferric Chloride and photo-resist in the morning.
Can I puke now?
I never once actually had a PCB come out right... Maybe I just suck too badly at it.
Any tips?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Does anybody know of any GOOD front mount USB devices for a 5.25" bay? I DO NOT WANT one that includes a 5.25" to 3.5" adaptor, I have ENOUGH 3.5" bays in my full tower case, I just want to be able to plug in massive USB devices to the front of my computer. . . .
.
Bleh.
:(
The ONLY solution to this problem that I have been able to figure out so far would be to mount a regular old USB hub in one of the bays with some screws and some very careful drilling into the Hub itself (I have found some Hubs that are of about the right size and would fit in a 5.25" bay just nicely) but this is far from optimal. . .
I mean WTF am I supposed to do with a shitpot load of USB ports AND NO DAMN WAY TO ACCESS THEM. Well except for from behind my case, but already I have WAAAY to many wires back there and it is a royal pain in the arse to have to reach back around behind my computer and try and grope for something remotly resembling a USB port to plug some device in to. . . . It would be nice to be able to actualy see the port. ^_^
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Two bp6's and a vp6 out of 8 Abit mobos in one year died on me.
Argh. So many "legacy" ports got rid of...nice.
Now, how about updating the bios, so that ALL the old ports are emulated? To the extent that DOS 5.0 will still install from scratch and run?
Having a USB device is nice, but HARDWARE IS HARDWARE. They should function all by themselves with only the BIOS (think "safe mode"), and not only when some OS-supplied drivers are run.
How else do people fix things when the drivers break?
They claim they support ECC SDRAM, but they don't. Their motherboards run ECC SDRAM, but don't actually use the ECC hardware. See http://cr.yp.to/hardware/abit.html
They claim they support ECC SDRAM, but they don't. Their motherboards run ECC SDRAM, but don't actually use the ECC hardware. See http://cr.yp.to/hardware/abit.html
I personally will be getting one of these mobos as soon as I get up off of my 15-year-old geek ass and get a job. A leagcy free PC? Finally, the PC competes with the Mac.
I *do* know what an AST Rampage is, and trust me, you're better off if you never have to find out! :)
:)
For the younger set, it was a memory card of the XT and 286 era, that with a matching driver provided an early version of EMS. In the days of memory chips socketed on the motherboard (generally 512k or 640k, but sometimes as much as 4mb), that's how you got beyond a given mobo's onboard memory limit. Most such cards were 8bit, tho high-end models were 16bit. They typically used very slow memory chips (up to 200ns).
I have a BocaRAM card in my (t)rusty 286, to total a whopping 3 megs of RAM.
And don't feel bad, I'm typing this on a lowly P233, and it works just fine too.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
[laughing] After reading this thread, I am REAL tempted to break out my XT (yes, I still own a working XT), install NetTamer on it, and post to Slashdot that way. :)
To some degree, you're right -- the real test of geekdom is the ability to make stuff WORK, even old stuff if that's the current need. And sometimes the old stuff works BETTER -- but we've gotten used to the cranks of the new stuff and have forgotten how simple it was to merely move a jumper instead of argue with a PnP device that has weird ideas about what resources it wants to hog, and can't be taught different.
To quote an old saw -- There are two kinds of fools: The first says "This is old, and therefore good." The second says "This is new, and therefore better."
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
To be honest, I've yet to get one right. But ferric chloride is the scapegoat I'm using. That, and etchant tanks, seriously looking at building a spray etcher, with persulfate.
Won't hurt when I have proper copper electroplating tanks, so that I can do real vias.
Or a proper cnc drill.
Or a laminator, so that I can do pretty soldermasks.
Or a press, so that I can do multilayer.
I just need to win the lottery, that's all.
Amen. Geeks suck. I'm sick and tired of hearing about "geeks" who are great people because they can do drugs and get laid like all the other idiots on campus. I'd much rather be a sober nerd who can integrate the equations in the back of the book, and who gets married to the first woman he lays.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Overstated, because, even with 4 USB 1.1 ports, when you take out the PS/2 ports, then your mouse and keyboard will inevitably go into one of those, bringing the number down to 2.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
One thing I hate about these supposed hardware sites is the lack of kernel compile times. Lets face it GCC is the best benchmark tool ever made. Period the end, indisputable... you cannot argue that! Anyways... I sure would like to see a real benchmark site one of these days. I'm sure they exist, but I don't' see those listed on /. very much. I did notice the raid chip doesn't support level 5, but does support 0+1 raid.. and that actual faster, but more expensive to get into. Oh well... I guess we should all expect to replace our old serial keyboards with the new serial keyboards (aka USB, etc..). My SGI boxes at work all have USB terminal connects... when will the rest of the hardware world catch up?
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
Half the messages here are from people saying "they did it all wrong" or "I don't need all this integrated stuff". Fine. If you don't like it, don't buy it. There are about a million other motherboards with all the standard ports and lots of PCI slots. Why is everyone complaining just because someone decided to make something different? It's not like they're replacing all other models with this one.
I still own one of the original Compaq "luggables" -- serial #1555. It was originally built as a dual-floppy PC clone, then upgraded to an XT clone (a 10 megabyte hard drive, twice the size of the 5 MB drives in IBM XT's at the time).
It still works. I occasionally pull it out of the closet and turn it on to show it to visitors. But, it has an early version of DOS with no networking at all.
Honestly, I can't stand USB mice. I do like my USB keyboard, but every time I use the USB mouse under high load, my pointer gets laggy. To heck with that. I'd vastly prefer legacy for at least that -one- peripheral where the responsiveness of an interrupt driven input device is actually meaningful.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Gotta love Asus. I had an MSI K7T266 Pro2 die on me after two months. Just replaced it with an Asus A7V333-R. Hopefully it'll last as long as my old P2B-S did (4 years and still going).
This new asus is pretty sweet too. Most of the good parts of this Abit board (4 USB1.1, 4 USB2.0, 1 FireWire, 2 IDE, 2 IDE RAID, 5.1 sound), and still has 2 PS/2, 2 serial, 1 parallel, and 5 PCI slots.
Carpe Cerevisi - Seize the Beer
Actually, I think that is the board. I've had it for two or three years now. Works flawlessly. With updated Via 4in1 drivers for Win98, it works great under windows. Unfortunately, I'm bound to Windows because of work. I have to use SolidWorks and 3dStudio Max 4, both Windows only.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
USB 2.0 is backwards compatible with 1.1, right? so Why have a mix of 2.0 and 1.1.?
I'm sure the answer was that 1.1 ports are cheaper, but I would rather have 5 decent 2.0 ports than a mix.
Can you physically plug a 2.0 device in a 1.1 port? If so, I can see people plugging in there new 40x usb 2.0 cd burners into the wrong port, wondering why they keep spitting out coasters.
Hotplugging is very important. It's one of the most touted features of USB. It works most of the time.
My only really serious problem was getting my Epson 777 usb printer to work. I tried newsgroups, and getting support but I couldn't make it work. It's a nice printer, with built-in support for text. That's why I thought it was weird that it wouldn't work, because even set up as a generic text printer, it still wouldn't work. Oh well...
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
A motherboard with neither serial nor parallel ports, leaving modems, mice, printers and other peripherals out in the blue. I for one would never buy one, how the hell would I connect my (geee, ancient, centronic-only!) printer?. As a gamers platform, sure. But to actually use it for something but the coolness factor I need something more.
Also, ten IDE devices when we all know that the only disks _not_ braking down within (or about) the warranty time is SCSI?! They can't be betting anything much on this board, more than the hype and coolness factor.
Would _you_ depend in IDE disks for vital company data?
/Mike
So that people would pay more attention when plugging in their mice and keyboards. In the old days, people just reached around and plugged 'em in by feel. This made computer guys look bad, because easy == lazy == bad.
So they changed it so that your chances are a cointoss unless your turn the machine around and look at the damned colors or shine a light on it. Hard == hard working == good.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Good job losing data on RAID. That's why it's called Redundant, because you're not supposed to use RAID 0.
It's nice being able to unplug a USB mouse then plug it back in and not be detected.
Most people like to keep DVD/CD drives and CD-RW on separate channels. But the Highpoint Raid (4 channel) controller, is very shaky with optical devices.
I also thought gamers loathed on-board sound and lan 'cause it sucked processor power from where it's needed.
Lastly, Making the statement, "XP only" makes me shudder as much as the term "Winmodem".
Legacy is the thing that makes bleeding edge stuff worth something when the wind changes.
(Abit KR6A-RAID user)
I'd just like to expand on this just a bit. Not only are all the traces for the integrated chips on board... but the manufacturer can test it more thoroughly and more efficiently. They choose the NIC / Sound / IDE raid / whatever. They don't have to test it to see if 47 different NE2000 NICs work. And once it works, it works.
He may not be 100% right but he's no troll.
YES, VIA may have the best performance for the Athlon platform right now.
And YES, the VIA chipset boards would be slightly cheaper than nForce boards with similar bells and whistles.
But nobody, and I mean NOBODY but the true DIY masochists WILLINGLY put up with a VIA chipset!
Their service history of the last few chipsets can't exactly be described as "rock solid" here.
k around the hardware message boards for a while. Look at the people who are having problems with their Athlon-based systems. The top three problems are:
Now don't get me wrong. Other chipsets have their own issues as well. But how many of the chipset makes have the high running tally of problems that VIA has had?
I, and many other builders, ESPECIALLY those building for other people's systems, would rather pay a little bit more, and settle for slightly lower performance than deal with a VIA product.
VIA simply needs to work on improving their track record for a while before any serious builders are comfortable with them again.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on ME!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
This motherboard sucks, I can't even connect to the internet with it. :)
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
They should have gotten rid of the floppy port and the IDE (use scsi).
The board is not as big a leap as apple made in the iMac.
USB adapters for "legacy" devices can be flaky and just add another potential point of failure to your machine. USB itself was designed specifically by Intel to suck CPU and thus cause people to buy faster processors sooner than they otherwise would. From a performance perspective it's got to be one of the biggest scams in the computer industry and I refuse to participate. If for some bizzare reason in the future I need to use USB I'll find an old, cheap mobo and throw together a machine specifically for that purpose rather than waste cycles on my primary rig with such nonsense.
Integrated peripherals are to be avoided at all cost. What do you do when you can't just unplug it? Disable it in the BIOS. What if disabling it in the BIOS doesn't really fully disable it? What if you can't get to the bios because your integrated video took a shit? What if you can't plug in another video card because the integrated video isn't disabled in the BIOS? No matter what, I *always* want the option of stripping my computer down to nothing but mobo and CPU with no worries about weather or not some major peripheral is TRULY out of the equation.
Everybody seems to have forgotten that motherboard manufacturers tend to stop supporting their products long before companies like Creative Labs. What if the drivers for all these off-brand integrated peripherals are complete ass? What if they are good now but later on start sucking? What if they stop making updates in six months or updates take forever? I've seen all these things happen and more.
Onboard peripherals get shitty support from their manufacturers because they are seen as "freebies". Even on Nvidia's latest motherboard the integrated GeForce isn't compatible with the standard Detonator drivers and updates are much slower in coming.
Beyond all this, I don't enjoy looking like a fucking chump because I've got a shitload of redundant ports on the back of my machine that all go to disabled on-board components. Maybe that's a personal problem as for years I have associated this with shitty machines that say things like "Compaq" or "Packard Bell" on their cases (and within the past five years, shitty machines with *any* OEM brand I recognize on them).
Wow, that's just about a certifiable antique! And was probably a honkin' screamer in its day, too.
I was trying to find my XT a good home (10MHz, 60mb of HD space, VGA -- Trident 8900 ISA cards work fine in an 8bit slot -- and it even knows the right year!) but just as well there were no takers -- while back I needed it to beta-test a fix-util for an old program that's still in wide use. And it's kinda cool to have at least one working system from every major hardware era, eh? :)
I know a guy who still uses his old luggable CP/M machine, because he can't find a more-recent replacement for one particular program that he can't live without.
Personally, I hate to throw out working hardware, no matter how outdated. Besides, old parts sometimes come in handy -- I support several folk with old machines and no money, and they're gradually using up my stock of ancient components. :)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
IDE
160GB x 12 = 1920GB (1.920TB) (Due to HD reporting, it'll actually be about 1.788TB for real.)
Disk System Price: $2400
Options?
SCSI
181.6 x 30 = 5448GB (5.448 TB) (Due to HD reporting, it'll actually be about 5.073TB for real.)
Disk System Price: $30,230 (With DC controller.)
Options?
Basically, it all REALLY depends on what you want to do with the system. That and take a look at any of the recent comparisons between SCSI and IDE drives (especially the aforementioned 120GB WesDig JB drives).
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I thought that IDE was "legacy" by now? It's a shame SCSI disks still are so expensive.
And what about the floppy controller? Can't be more legacy than that! It probably still can't handle anything else than PC-formated disks.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
I wish motherboard manufacturers would stop integrating all this useless stuff.
So, because YOU don't use the stuff, manufacturers simply shouldn't produce ANY products built in this fashion? A bit self-centered there neh?
I don't want integrated sound, IDE RAID, or any of that other junk. I don't even particularly care for integrated IDE.
Plain and simple. BUY ANOTHER BOARD THEN!
I know it sounds like I'm trolling. I'm not trying to really be abrasive (well, not TOO much). But you've got to understand, that simply because you're not in the market for a product like this doesn't mean there isn't a market for it. Unfortunately, there's a MASSIVE market for this kind of thing.
Sure, I'd like a bare board with maximum PCI slots, an AGP slot, and pretty much NOTHING else as well. Then I COULD slap tons of SCSI equipment on there and not have to worry about it.
The problem there is that most of the Big Names in commodity-class motherboards don't see a big enough market for it.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
..then..don't..buy..it..
USB works. I've never had a USB problem I couldn't easily fix.
Why integrate things? Yeah, being able to essentially run your system from the board is SUCH a pain. Don't like integrated LAN and Audio? Turn them off in BIOS. That too much to ask? 9 seconds of your time?
PS/2 is antiquated. Out with the old, in with the new. These boards aren't designed to be drop in replacements and work with your old hardware, they're designed for NEW systems.
In my experience, another big thing going for the modern optical mice is that they're a hell of a lot lighter than the old Sun mice. I find it a lot more comfortable to mouse around all day with a light mouse than a heavy mouse.
I agree that it should be 6 PCI slots, but beyond that, Abit should sell an addon $20 PCI card for the knuckle draggers that includes the PS/2 ports, a parallel and a 9 pin serial port.
I don't want or need all those extra ports. Ethernet, USB, FireWire is already 2 too many it seems. Have you looked at a Sony VAIO laptop lately? Sheesh! Its got so many fricking ports, I'd bet most owners can't even tell you what they are all for.
Useless, redundant mostly obsolete ports == bad.
-- "Most people prefer a popular myth to an unpopular truth"
I just wondered if anybody knows more about what it came to with Abit's allegded GPL violations. And their Gentus Linux is dead isn't it?
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
It seems for the past year, Asus has been offering 6 usb ports on their top boards.
Also 6 IDE? The current generation IDE drives (IBM/Maxtor) don't have the best track record. If I've enough data to put 10 spindles turning(minus 2 for removable media) I'll go scsi!
So this is about a new expensive motherboard with no RS-232 (so I can't connect it to my mobile phone, to my self-programmed microcontrollers and so on) and will not allow me to use open OSs but only Windows. Plain weird, I think that this makes no fscking sense.
You should include failure/replacement costs in your totals. Check the warrenties and MTBFs of the SCSI drives versus the IDE ones!
Quoth the review:
It is FINALLY time to get rid of that old mouse... While you're at it, toss out that old Dot Matrix printer, and even the $13 keyboard with the ASDFJKL: keys completely rubbed off!
Aaarggghhh. If your keyboard doesn't have an H, it's probably time to upgrade!
--- My dad's political betting
What's a motherboard to you? A RAM bank, CPU slot, anda PS/2 port so you can enter the programs to be run?
You've just ranted about how you love 1993 motherboards. So, here's a tip: enjoy your 486. Nowadays, people can integrate extra functionality into a motherboard easily because the manufacturing process is so great. Granted, this has some bad effects (active cooling on the northbridge, usually by way of a cheap fan which fails after a couple months of serwice), but it's better overall for everyone.
Business and most home users don't have to buy expensive cards with features they'll never use to get audio beyond the stupid PC speaker (do you not like how the PC speaker is on every system as well?). USB is a standard, and it's a well implemented standard which lets me easily swap devices around while going between my main work computer and whatever other computer's on the bench without an expensive KVM. Do that with PS/2 without frying some ports. Oops, PS/2's not hotplugable by design! Hov about firewire? Do you have having high speed tranfers? Do you prefer the slow and limited lpt ports instead? Or are those too "damned useless" and shouldn't also be integrated?
Have you looked into a 1993 PC? A mess of cables from all the parts and port headers. A minimum of 4 expansion cards (NIC, sound, video, lpt/serial), and a cost more than any integrated board.
USB is great. Firewire is great. Everything should be hotpluggable on a PC, like it is on a mainframe. It's easier to manage, and easier to fix. Open, large cases with well laid out boards and no nest of wires everywhere. It's a joy to work on.
PS/2 ports just take up backplane space, ditto for the other legacy ports. Except for my main PC, I don't want to spend another 200$ to add sound when I can get a low-cost, general purpose, industry standard sound output from it with an onboard chip.
If the market for such boards wasn't great, I'm sure that they wouldn't be out.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Dude outside of Japan nobody knows about Yoshinoya.
Great board, but no AGP? No, thanks.
...when you control only five percent of the market.
if people can afford this board, why have onboard sound and NIC? you can get all that for less then $100 and it will be better then that onboard crap
I know - Hindsight is usually pretty damn good - but it's a good point to be made - in general. Be farmiliar with what your dealing with in order to set it up and diagnose properly.
True, sucky design, but you should have known.
DOnt these modern boards have audio 'errors' on POST time, in english/chineese?
"WARNING: slot2 sharing "
256kb ROM of audio is enough, or 80kb text 2 speech synth, even C-64 could do it via 3000 line hex codes from a magazine in 87
USB uses ALOT of cpu usage... is there any sort of usb hub that connects to the computer via a firewire port? firewire deals with devices by itself - no cpu interaction required. by having a usb hub/router on firewire, the hub/router could deal with all that w/o using up precious cpu cycles.
moox. for a new generation.
Think of how much more stable the motherboards would be if there were less chips present and less IRQs being shared.
Uh... you realize that most of the things you just whinged about are all on ONE chip, right? USB, IDE, and sound are all integrated into the south bridge of modern chipsets. The only thing you have to do is throw down traces (and maybe a few pots/resistors) to the physical connector.
As for IRQ sharing - gee... funny thing there... serial, parallel, and PS/2 ports all take up a IRQ each. USB takes up one. Period. Of course, the flip side is that IDE still sucks up an IRQ per channel, so I doubt there's any less IRQ sharing going on with this particular board.
And, no, sometimes you can't just turn these features off in the BIOS. Even worse, sometimes there's no way to reclaim the IRQs that are lost due to integrated functions! Check out some of the really bad implementations out there.
So quit buying bad implementations and then whining about it. I have a variety of mobos from a variety of manufacturers (Abit, Asus, Gigabyte, Iwill) and they all work fine in this regard.
Frankly, getting rid of legacy is good. If we could just be rid of the damn 16-bit BIOS things would be a whole lot better, at least in theory.
Yeah, it's so much better to unplug a PS/2 mouse, plug it back in, and have the entire system lock.
i'm not ashamed to admit this...in one of my boxes i still use an ISA SCSI card...
Which brings us to another topic.
Many motherboards today include features that were traditionally used as add-on cards. IDE RAID controllers (usually HighPoint or Promise), sound, video, IEEE1394, etc.
I'd like to hear your opinions on what can be considered decent (or even good) on-board solutions as compared price/feature/performance-wise to their add-on counterpats.
Here's what I gathered so far:
Integrated video: The concensus seems to be "don't bother".
Integrated RAID: Several recommendations for HPT 372.
Integrated sound: nForce, C-Media (which?) are OK. AC97 is junk.
Thanks.
Where can I get one? I've told those guys I have absolutely *no* use for a camera no matter how tiny!
My Belkin F1DS104T disagrees with you. It has PS/2 inputs and four ports of PS/2 or USB (your choice per-port) goodness. It also supports 1600x1200 resolutions at 85Hz without blurring. Oh, yeah - I got it for about $130 from Pricewatch, and I'd consider that to be pretty reasonable for a very high quality piece of hardware that works perfectly 100% of the time.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
making this piece of hardware that ... right ?
discards the "old" in favour of the
new even when the old works fine is
about genetating damand for the new.
thankfully, we are in an informed and
open market that knows that this is
the case. so, such a product won't be
an instant "hit"
Considering it does not support Win98 probably indicates it needs an OS that supports ACPI meaning that a plain Red Hat or SuSE install might not work.
The lack of PS/2 ports will not cause any problems for Red Hat 7.1 and later (and probably not for SuSE either). I have been able to install using USB keyboard and mouse for a long time. As long as you don't connect them to the USB2 ports as those are not yet supported by Linux unless you go to a 2.5 kernel.
But to say this is the ultimate systemboard... It only has 3 32bit/33Mhz PCI slots. The systems I normally work with have 64bit/66Mhz and some even 64bit/100MHz and 133MHz (PCI-X) slots.
At the very least they could use 64bit/33MHz slots as they are 100% backward compatible with 32bit/33MHz (5v). For 66MHz and up you need 3.3v capable PCI cards.
I know this is a limitation of the chipset used, and not Abit's fault. No consumer chipset has support for more then 32bit/33MHz. You need to to to Intel's 850 or ServerWorks chipsets for more.
Also the memory interface of the Abit chip does not support interleaving. a decent server chipset supports this, doubling your memory throughput.
I may be speaking completely out of my rear end here but I can think of another reason to ditch the ISA stuff. I hear ISA is slow. Probably still runs at 8MHz for compatablities sake. Aren't the serial, parallel, and PS/2 ports all hung off the ISA bus. Getting rid of the ISA bus probably results in less device interrupts as well. Somebody with a clue have anything to add to this. I don't know my PCs as well as I used too.
-spitzcor
4 RAID ATA/133's also non RAID capible and 2 standaed ATA/133. Hmm.. that's only 12 drives, the article said it's aimed at the consumer market because it uses ATA/133 instead of SCSI but who has a case that's going to hold 12 drives? On the plus side anyone that does use that many drives probably has most of the HDD's they've ever owned connectd to the motherboard, many of them before SCSI's time. That's where I think it makes sense to use ATA, no home user is going to go out and buy 12 SCSI drives and it's too early to have them laying around just yet. This does mark a nice milestone and I will someday soon enjoy running a quad RAID 0 system + my two CD drives. Now that the memory clock sppeed has bypassed AMD's FSB and many new chipsets are structured to run them out of sync you will see additional performance for DMA. It's good to see someone finding a use for it.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Maybe I'm missing something but I'm running Mandrake 8.2 with USB - mouse, keyboard, printer and scanner with no problems at all.
The floppy connector.
Which, with all those IDE connectors would have been piss easy to dump.
Afterall IDE floppy drives have been arround for at least 5 years (both the normal 1.4MB type & the 1.4MB/120MB supper floppy type), actually if you search hard enough on the web you can find 5.25" CD-ROM/floopy combo IDE drives (yes they don't just make em for laptops).
Wow!
The last Belkin KVM I owned was a PoS, I don't plan to spend money on them again. But thanks for the info; if they're doing it, certainly someone else will catch on.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Short answer : not right now (based on results from my quick test).
Long answer : What happens is, the BIOS (if configured to do so) takes control of the USB Host Controller and talks (in a very simplistic way) to any attached USB keyboard(s) and possibly mouse/mice. The BIOS re-routes all scancodes/mouse event to appear as if they were generated by a PS/2 keyboard/mouse.
The BIOS continues to do this until the OS switches control of the USB Host Controller (the 'hand-off'). If the OS never switches control (e.g. DOS) then the USB keyboard will continue to appear to be a PS/2 keyboard. There is actually a decent description of this on M$'s website. And they have a detailed technical explanation (with pseudocode of course) of what goes on also. Note that I am almost positive that the Linux HCDs do not perform the hand-offs described there. Maybe I should add that. ;)
However, I just tested this and it appears that Linux does the USB HC hand-off as soon as the kernel is loaded (for the 2.4 kernel, with my config, at least). I had USB as modules and rm -rf all the USB modules, so it shouldn't take over the USB HC...I'm guessing that it takes it over during PCI bus initialization, not USB initialization (I may be wrong here).
So, no, you can't use a USB keyboard without native Linux OS support :(
Unless, possibly, you disable PCI support. That might prevent Linux from taking over the USB Host Controller. Maybe. I'm guessing.
The best option would be to enable USB and at a minimum the HID-Keyboard and Input-keyboard drivers. Then your kbd should work fine.
I'm pretty sure that in older (2.2) kernels it didn't take over the USB HC...I know my USB mouse worked (via BIOS translation) up until the point I 'modprobe usbcore'...
I seriously doubt that you can just plug 12 IDE hard drives without having power and heat generation problems with the regular computer case. If you want a mobo like that just so you can keep adding disks you're heading for trouble, unless you get a decent case with a super power supply. Power shortage can be a crashy experience.
Airegin
You mean I have to pay $30 for an adapter for my $5, 10-year-old Model M keyboard and even then it STILL won't work?
Whores.
I don't want to sound too paranoid, but although I love the KA7 in most respects, I'm 3 for 3 on having the capicators blow. Also, I'm nowhere near being alone in this.
If your caps are leaky (JPCON is the brand of these suckers), start making backup plans-- either start saving for an upgrade, or buy some replacement caps.
Oh how quickly you forget...
having all of the STANDARD components that a VAST MAJORITY of computer users are going to be using integrated on the motherboard, with guaranteed compatability between them is a bad idea. I sure wanna go back to the days when NOTHING was built onto the motherboard and I had to go out and buy my serial/parallel/fdd/hdd controlers and add them onto the board.
And what's the point in bringing up poor implimentations? Integrated hardware or not, you'll still have cut-rate crappy hardware, better to have it integrated so that you have some hope of it working together without catching on fire.
And most integrated hardware these days is fine.. integrated audio is good enough for non-audiophiles. Integrated video good enough for those who aren't demanding gamers. Integrated IDE is good enough for those who don't want to run multi-TB databases. Integrated NICs are good enough unless you have the bandwidth to saturate a 100Mb connection.
Notice a trend here? If the standard integrated componets aren't good enough for your needs you belong to a SMALL NICHE MARKET that has more demanding standards than the vast majority of users, and as such are going to need more expensive high-end hardware. I'm sure you'd like to live in a utopia where everyone had the very best in hardware, but I like being able to buy my father an $800 machine that's got more power than he'll ever need to use.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Ok, so you've got this board in a full tower case with plenty of drive bays. But, you can only put two drives on one IDE cable. Now, you want to add some RAM or generally get to the board. That's a lot of plastic and wire in the damn way, if you ask me. Routing all those wires will be a bitch. Bet you couldn't find your sharpie to label those drives when you bolted them in... can you even see the master/slave jumpers when it's time to plug the cables back in? And even with the long IDE cables, snaking them around each other burns those inches in a hurry. Just my opinion.
Sure. I'd simply have to replace all the disks in the IDE system twelve times over before I'd achieve the cost of the SCSI system.
Do the SCSI disks last 12x as long?
And what happens if none of the IDE disks break the bathtub curve (usually hardware fails either very early in it's lifetime or near the end of it)?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Maybe I'm a hardware freak, but I'm personally sick of this integration craze. It's a pain in the fat ass and it drives prices up for nothing.
I'd rather have a plain-jane board with the plain old ports, no onboard sound/video/lan/raid, but a dozen PCI slots (and two AGP), priced at 99$. Integration is good for your idiot uncle's web-surfing box because he will get all the castrated features he wants for a fraction of the price. Integration is bad for Billco the evil hardware freak because he ends up disabling all the onboard stuff anyway, because it _sucks_.
Let me tick off the list:
Onboard sound sucks for many reasons, mainly high CPU usage and poor sound quality.
Onboard video sucks in terms of speed (they're usually PCI devices), and that shared memory thing is just stupid.
Onboard Lan is sometimes OK, although in some cases you'll want a high-end adapter for better latency/throughput/wake-on-lan. I don't mind this one being integrated.
Onboard raid works fine (and saves you a bundle), until you upgrade to a different motherboard. I learned this one too late, as I have an Abit KT7A-raid board (with Highpoint controller). It works great and the speed is excellent, but in a year or two when I upgrade to a DDR-based board, I'll have to spend another 50-60$ extra for the raid option. Had I bought a regular PCI-based Highpoint controller (or just used my old clunky Fasttrak), I could just take it from board to board.
In all cases though, the worst part about integrated gadgets is the drivers. They're hardly maintained and they're always the source of instability in a system. I'd rather buy a PCI card that does the same work and rely on the actual manufacturer to provide drivers and bugfixes, rather than wait for my motherboard vendor to backport the updates to their BIOS or all-in-one driver set.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I think the only solution is for some people to set up a new motherboard company run by geeks, for geeks! Maybe it would have to be non-profit and GPL its designs or something during beta stage...
I guess to make up for the idiots who post boring, irrelevent, and useless crap, and then whine at full volume when they're modded down.
Now, this post is clearly offtopic! Let's see what happens...