UPDATE: I got to update the A7Pro bios with the Asus utility (nice) with latest (much) better bios with even more options. Until now with the G400 no blue screens... I am going to try later to go back to the G450 and maybe updating its bios too.

Hi 😀

Has the issue been resolved?

I googled your motherboard and apparently it's very similar to 2 motherboard models I have somewhat extensive experience with (the A7V and the A7V133).
As I was gifted around 8 or 10 or so of these boards (I really should count them 🤣) from where I used to work and we worked with tons of these boards for a year or so (We got >20 of these from a school or something) I have done quite extensive research years ago and there used to even be a forum specifically about these early Socket A ASUS boards, which sadly is now gone. It did contain a LOT of very detailed information and experience stories of which I kept very little, but 2 things I did remember:
1) There was a way to install several DIMMs and have the least chances of the system running unstable
2) The Palomino was supported by rev "1.05." which should be a sub-revision or something which came right after the "1.05" (1 dot instead of 2)

I do remember that these ASUS boards had a lot of quirks and were very picky, but with these tricks (and some others which I don't remember anymore) these boards could actually be gotten to run in a way that (don't choke 🤣!) can be described as stable and solid.

The memory thing was something like this:

The 3 memory slots are numbered and iirc on these boards they were numbered in reverse (so the first one was farthest away from the CPU instead of closest which is more usual), the first slot being the right one instead of the left one.
What I read and what I did was carefully pick 3 DIMMs which were as similar as possible. The first DIMM I would pick a DIMM with 16 chips and (this is an example) 512MB and put this DIMM in the first slot. The other 2 DIMMs would be 256 MB each and have no more than 8 chips (so basically exactly like the first DIMM, but "cut in half").
Most important was memory chip density had to be exactly the same with all memory modules used on that board or it would be unstable. Whenever possible, I'd even use DIMMs of the same manufacturer, whatever, I'd pick DIMMs which were as close to be similar to each other as I possibly could.
The largest DIMM is PC-133 Kingston? I'd try to use 3 Kingstom DIMMs, the first one 16 chips and the other 2 with only 8 chips and half the amount of memory so all 3 DIMMs use chips of the same memory density.

I've build at least 3 rigs around variants of your board and at least one had 1x512MB + 2x 256MB, the other had 1x256MB and 2x128MB, both seemed to not be very problematic. I even ran one 1.05 (no dot) with a Palomino and it ran very well, even though the board officially didn't even support Palomino.

Sorry for the long write, but I promise it will soon be over 😁

I should still actually have these 3 rigs I build, one is even here in the living room and the other 2 (which I basically only used to run SuperPi) are probably either still in the attic or outside their case, but still with the parts together in a box (and with the memory modules still installed), I could take a look what other things I did with these boards.

Hope this helps 😀

Tetrium wrote:

Hope this helps 😀

Thanks for the info! I actually have two simm one 512MB 16 chips on both side and I added another 16 chip but 256MB both PC133 running at 100Mhz 2-2-2-6 (512MB (SIMM3 far from the cpu) and 256 at the center). I thought that the 1GB limit on a Win"9x" system could be the problem but I don't think this is the problem cause since I switched back to the G400 I have not seen a blue screen yet. I want to use the G450 for its ramdac and probably even better analog output quality. Having two different but same model cards I don't think they are damaged or whatever. Being early motherboard I would think some incompatibility so I'll check if with updated bios of both mainboard and vga will solve the problem.

386SX wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

Hope this helps 😀

Thanks for the info! I actually have two simm one 512MB 16 chips on both side and I added another 16 chip but 256MB both PC133 running at 100Mhz 2-2-2-6 (512MB (SIMM3 far from the cpu) and 256 at the center). I thought that the 1GB limit on a Win"9x" system could be the problem but I don't think this is the problem cause since I switched back to the G400 I have not seen a blue screen yet. I want to use the G450 for its ramdac and probably even better analog output quality. Having two different but same model cards I don't think they are damaged or whatever. Being early motherboard I would think some incompatibility so I'll check if with updated bios of both mainboard and vga will solve the problem.

Yw! 😀

I actually remembered another thing just now.
Boards around these systems proved to just love good quality power supplies. Even good ones with 25A/5v were more unstable than ones with more amps on the 5v rail. I typically used FSP PSUs with at least 30A/5v and it does help.

And just ftr, SDRAM and newer are DIMM, SIMM is basically EDO and older, which are usually in boards that require you to click the SIMM in sideways instead of at a right angle from the top. DIMMs (at least for desktops) are typically somewhat more lengthy and the chips are thinner. The ones on SIMMs usually are fat little chips 😁

But the real difference is in their names: DIMM stands for Dual Inline Memory Module and SIMM for Single Inline Memory Module. In a way, a DIMM is kinda 2 SIMMs on a single DIMM and are 64bit while the newest desktop SIMMs are 32bit. That's why in Pentium boards you need to use SIMMs in pairs where the same boards only need single DIMMs (provided a Socket 7 board has both SIMM and DIMM slots).

Anything that can take either Socket 370 Pentium 3s or any Athlon will use DIMMs

Tetrium wrote:

Yw! :) […]
Show full quote

386SX wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

Hope this helps 😀

Thanks for the info! I actually have two simm one 512MB 16 chips on both side and I added another 16 chip but 256MB both PC133 running at 100Mhz 2-2-2-6 (512MB (SIMM3 far from the cpu) and 256 at the center). I thought that the 1GB limit on a Win"9x" system could be the problem but I don't think this is the problem cause since I switched back to the G400 I have not seen a blue screen yet. I want to use the G450 for its ramdac and probably even better analog output quality. Having two different but same model cards I don't think they are damaged or whatever. Being early motherboard I would think some incompatibility so I'll check if with updated bios of both mainboard and vga will solve the problem.

Yw! 😀

I actually remembered another thing just now.
Boards around these systems proved to just love good quality power supplies. Even good ones with 25A/5v were more unstable than ones with more amps on the 5v rail. I typically used FSP PSUs with at least 30A/5v and it does help.

And just ftr, SDRAM and newer are DIMM, SIMM is basically EDO and older, which are usually in boards that require you to click the SIMM in sideways instead of at a right angle from the top. DIMMs (at least for desktops) are typically somewhat more lengthy and the chips are thinner. The ones on SIMMs usually are fat little chips 😁

But the real difference is in their names: DIMM stands for Dual Inline Memory Module and SIMM for Single Inline Memory Module. In a way, a DIMM is kinda 2 SIMMs on a single DIMM and are 64bit while the newest desktop SIMMs are 32bit. That's why in Pentium boards you need to use SIMMs in pairs where the same boards only need single DIMMs (provided a Socket 7 board has both SIMM and DIMM slots).

Anything that can take either Socket 370 Pentium 3s or any Athlon will use DIMMs

Yeah I know, it's a nostalgic mistake calling it simm.. 😁

386SX wrote:

Yeah I know, it's a nostalgic mistake calling it simm.. 😁

Could've been worse...much worse! 😵
One of my former "employers" used to talk about "DDR memory SIMMs", now that is bad 🤣!
He didn't even know the difference between a "Slot" and a "Socket" and thought both were the exact same thing and he had no understanding of bus frequencies, putting PC-66 RAM into Athlon XP boards running at 133MHz and was wondering why so many of his computers came back with problems. He never even heard of leaking caps and even called me a liar when I mentioned this to him. I can't believe he actually worked as a "network server admin" or whatever it exactly was what he did.

But anyway (to get back to your A7Pro 😀 ), please let me know how it works out for you 😀
Just remember these boards require some care, kinda like a Super 7 except without ISA slots 😜

Tetrium wrote:

Could've been worse...much worse! :dead: One of my former "employers" used to talk about "DDR memory SIMMs", now that is bad l […]
Show full quote

386SX wrote:

Yeah I know, it's a nostalgic mistake calling it simm.. 😁

Could've been worse...much worse! 😵
One of my former "employers" used to talk about "DDR memory SIMMs", now that is bad 🤣!
He didn't even know the difference between a "Slot" and a "Socket" and thought both were the exact same thing and he had no understanding of bus frequencies, putting PC-66 RAM into Athlon XP boards running at 133MHz and was wondering why so many of his computers came back with problems. He never even heard of leaking caps and even called me a liar when I mentioned this to him. I can't believe he actually worked as a "network server admin" or whatever it exactly was what he did.

But anyway (to get back to your A7Pro 😀 ), please let me know how it works out for you 😀
Just remember these boards require some care, kinda like a Super 7 except without ISA slots 😜

I tried today updating everything bios and drivers but I still had blue screen (even at shutdown in safe mode). Bios is not nearly optimized for performance and so I came back to the G400 and still everything is running stable (until now..). I will try to get another G450 to test again or put them on a ss7 fast config to see how they works.

I have a PCI Matrox G450 running happily in a SIS super 7 board with a Cyrix 6x86 MII PR333 & Windows ME. Also used a Matrox Mystique 220 in same machine as I use it as a DVD player with a Creative DXR-2 so need the decent VGA output from the card.

BSA Starfire wrote:

I have a PCI Matrox G450 running happily in a SIS super 7 board with a Cyrix 6x86 MII PR333 & Windows ME. Also used a Matrox Mystique 220 in same machine as I use it as a DVD player with a Creative DXR-2 so need the decent VGA output from the card.

I am running the Dxr3 myself and the G450 seems the best card I have for the best possible signal in and out of the decoder card. My mobo has the early KT133 chipset. It's not still clear why it happens with this and not with the G400.. need more testing. Any tool for low level testing of the vga?

386SX wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

Could've been worse...much worse! :dead: One of my former "employers" used to talk about "DDR memory SIMMs", now that is bad l […]
Show full quote

386SX wrote:

Yeah I know, it's a nostalgic mistake calling it simm.. 😁

Could've been worse...much worse! 😵
One of my former "employers" used to talk about "DDR memory SIMMs", now that is bad 🤣!
He didn't even know the difference between a "Slot" and a "Socket" and thought both were the exact same thing and he had no understanding of bus frequencies, putting PC-66 RAM into Athlon XP boards running at 133MHz and was wondering why so many of his computers came back with problems. He never even heard of leaking caps and even called me a liar when I mentioned this to him. I can't believe he actually worked as a "network server admin" or whatever it exactly was what he did.

But anyway (to get back to your A7Pro 😀 ), please let me know how it works out for you 😀
Just remember these boards require some care, kinda like a Super 7 except without ISA slots 😜

I tried today updating everything bios and drivers but I still had blue screen (even at shutdown in safe mode). Bios is not nearly optimized for performance and so I came back to the G400 and still everything is running stable (until now..). I will try to get another G450 to test again or put them on a ss7 fast config to see how they works.

Now I kinda remember the BIOS needed some tweaking as well?
Some options in the BIOS needed to be disabled in certain conditions I think...man, these boards were difficult to get stable, but they would work rather well once it was tweaked a certain way.

Perhaps I should power up mine and write down the BIOS settings? I might also actually have taken notes on which BIOS settings were needed, but afaicr the best start would be so set everything in the BIOS to the most relaxed settings and see if it'll run (more) stable.

I build multiple systems around these boards at work and at least 3 (2 A7V133 and 1 A7V) for myself so I must have written some tweaks down for these, probably also it's BIOS.

I'll go see what I still have about these boards, might even fire up one of these and write down the BIOS settings

edit:
If you use google, there's still lots of info available and lots I read brings back memories.
But anyway, this thread http://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/asus-a … -xp-2100-92085/ has a few more tips, including disabling spread spectrum, but I'm pretty sure there were some other BIOS tweaks that helped increase stability. It all came down to setting everything to more relaxed settings (like setting PC-100 memory to cl3 instead of cl2, even if the models supported cl2, stuff like that).
Several websites recommend to set the board to manual when using an Athlon XP (usually Palomino as Thoroughbred we didn't even risk trying on these boards 🤣!), but I ended up not using auto settings at all, just so it was less troubleshooting and these boards seemed to run better that way.
After a while I started remembering the optimal settings from top of my head 🤣

edit2:
That website may have been a7v.com. It was a forum and some of it's members knew tons of bits of information about these early ASUS sA boards. I've been trying that wayback machine thing and it did find 'a' a7v.com website, but it won't load as if wayback machine is choking 😢

Tetrium wrote:

edit: If you use google, there's still lots of info available and lots I read brings back memories. But anyway, this thread http […]
Show full quote

edit:
If you use google, there's still lots of info available and lots I read brings back memories.
But anyway, this thread http://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/asus-a … -xp-2100-92085/ has a few more tips, including disabling spread spectrum, but I'm pretty sure there were some other BIOS tweaks that helped increase stability. It all came down to setting everything to more relaxed settings (like setting PC-100 memory to cl3 instead of cl2, even if the models supported cl2, stuff like that).
Several websites recommend to set the board to manual when using an Athlon XP (usually Palomino as Thoroughbred we didn't even risk trying on these boards 🤣!), but I ended up not using auto settings at all, just so it was less troubleshooting and these boards seemed to run better that way.
After a while I started remembering the optimal settings from top of my head 🤣

edit2:
That website may have been a7v.com. It was a forum and some of it's members knew tons of bits of information about these early ASUS sA boards. I've been trying that wayback machine thing and it did find 'a' a7v.com website, but it won't load as if wayback machine is choking 😢

Problem solved or it seems until now.. the problem was not the G450 but probably seems it was the "default" motherboard I/O voltage that probably was a bit too much for this video card.
I forced to the lower setting and the card is running ok, I would say even smoother than before. Gonna test it but seems ok. The G400 was really good too but I feel this one even better in general analog output quality.

386SX wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

edit: If you use google, there's still lots of info available and lots I read brings back memories. But anyway, this thread http […]
Show full quote

edit:
If you use google, there's still lots of info available and lots I read brings back memories.
But anyway, this thread http://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/asus-a … -xp-2100-92085/ has a few more tips, including disabling spread spectrum, but I'm pretty sure there were some other BIOS tweaks that helped increase stability. It all came down to setting everything to more relaxed settings (like setting PC-100 memory to cl3 instead of cl2, even if the models supported cl2, stuff like that).
Several websites recommend to set the board to manual when using an Athlon XP (usually Palomino as Thoroughbred we didn't even risk trying on these boards 🤣!), but I ended up not using auto settings at all, just so it was less troubleshooting and these boards seemed to run better that way.
After a while I started remembering the optimal settings from top of my head 🤣

edit2:
That website may have been a7v.com. It was a forum and some of it's members knew tons of bits of information about these early ASUS sA boards. I've been trying that wayback machine thing and it did find 'a' a7v.com website, but it won't load as if wayback machine is choking 😢

Problem solved or it seems until now.. the problem was not the G450 but probably seems it was the "default" motherboard I/O voltage that probably was a bit too much for this video card.
I forced to the lower setting and the card is running ok, I would say even smoother than before. Gonna test it but seems ok. The G400 was really good too but I feel this one even better in general analog output quality.

That's a good find! I already replied in that other thread about that i/o voltage and explained there. I had forgotten about some mobo manufacturers having the default voltage a little bit higher in order to increase stability...or at least with most components.

I hope this fixes the problem for you. So....you starting to like those early Socket A boards as much as I used to like em? If someone wants a challenge then I'd say early Socket A (SDRAM, Thunderbird or Palomino at the most) is a good starting point 😁

Tetrium wrote:

386SX wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

edit: If you use google, there's still lots of info available and lots I read brings back memories. But anyway, this thread http […]
Show full quote

edit:
If you use google, there's still lots of info available and lots I read brings back memories.
But anyway, this thread http://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/asus-a … -xp-2100-92085/ has a few more tips, including disabling spread spectrum, but I'm pretty sure there were some other BIOS tweaks that helped increase stability. It all came down to setting everything to more relaxed settings (like setting PC-100 memory to cl3 instead of cl2, even if the models supported cl2, stuff like that).
Several websites recommend to set the board to manual when using an Athlon XP (usually Palomino as Thoroughbred we didn't even risk trying on these boards 🤣!), but I ended up not using auto settings at all, just so it was less troubleshooting and these boards seemed to run better that way.
After a while I started remembering the optimal settings from top of my head 🤣

edit2:
That website may have been a7v.com. It was a forum and some of it's members knew tons of bits of information about these early ASUS sA boards. I've been trying that wayback machine thing and it did find 'a' a7v.com website, but it won't load as if wayback machine is choking 😢

Problem solved or it seems until now.. the problem was not the G450 but probably seems it was the "default" motherboard I/O voltage that probably was a bit too much for this video card.
I forced to the lower setting and the card is running ok, I would say even smoother than before. Gonna test it but seems ok. The G400 was really good too but I feel this one even better in general analog output quality.

That's a good find! I already replied in that other thread about that i/o voltage and explained there. I had forgotten about some mobo manufacturers having the default voltage a little bit higher in order to increase stability...or at least with most components.

I hope this fixes the problem for you. So....you starting to like those early Socket A boards as much as I used to like em? If someone wants a challenge then I'd say early Socket A (SDRAM, Thunderbird or Palomino at the most) is a good starting point 😁

Yeah until now no blue screens happened and with having updated to latest 1011 bios I have also easier AGP options to set 1-2-4X manually (before you had to set it auto or some "agp strenght" options to set it down..).
I like these older athlon motherboard and I hope to build a even older Slot 1 with early chipsets. They feel like as old as a Super Socket 7 but with much more cpu power.
About the cpu, on these socket 462 I can go up to the thunderbird 1200 (100mhz) or probably (but to test cause it's the basic KT133 not A) thunderbird 1400 (133). But probably no more than the 1200. Anyway I feel the Palomino being too much modern. 😁