canthearu wrote:
Thanks. If I have the oomph left this evening after taking the little ones to bed, I might get to work on the to-do list. I have the Promise SATA300 TX2Plus at last, and have a new switch unit.
If you have only replaced the 2 large capacitors next to the slot, I'd also check the 1000uF capacitors next to it. This is the one that was failing on mine.
Hmm, worth a look - particularly on the board that's a bit odd when it comes to CPUs. Easy enough to do as that board's not installed.
I am currently running the Parkard Bell BIOS, version 5 off the driver website. It accepts all of the coppermine processors I have, but only runs them at 100mhz (tested with 550/100mhz SL30A, 667/133 SL3XW, 1000/133 SL4C8)
The retail Award BIOS gives you a lot more options, but nothing new in terms of CPU or HDD support. I have one on each board, and swap the chips if I want to try the other.
It didn't come in it's original Packard bell case unfortunately, was a custom feature build someone did in a wooden case that I might do something with. But will require installing proper mounting points for motherboard/drives/PSU and getting airflow right.
Sounds interesting - and very similar to something else I want to do: basically do all my case-independent retro builds in a set of drawers, so they are helpfully out of the way when not needed (with less moaning from partner and unsupervised fingers from children), but perfectly accessible when needed. Hook all that up to a KVM switch, an Ethernet switch and some sort of audio switch/mixer (still need to see what I intend to do there, particularly as at least one build will have three ISA sound cards and two midi sound modules attached). Issue is exactly what whoever did that wooden case obviously hasn't solved: getting the ports/slots right. What I want is to use removable motherboard backplate-trays-with-slots-included popular in the mid 1990s more high-end AT and ATX cases. Great idea, but if there's one thing more difficult than finding old cases, it's finding multiple specific quite rare ones. Also, I don't really feel happy cannibalizing these beautiful cases.
Probably I'll shift to finding cases that are damaged and/or have parts missing and getting out the old grinder on those. But that's a more long-term project.