I love computers! (sometimes)

[Jeff Horton]

If you don't want to hear (read) someone complain then just move on to the next post! I want to complain!

I upgraded my old Pentium-133 over a year ago. New mother board and AMD 650 mhz processor. Was smoking compared to what I had. But it took 3 motherboards to find a good one!! First one would run but not right. I had installed it and the place I buy from said bring it the computer and they would trouble shoot it and replace it. They confirmed the MB was bad and replaced it. Before the tech could get back from lunch (he left mine on the bench running) the second board failed. Third one worked OK. For a while anyway.

I have had a lot of problems that could just never be found. Always suspected the new parts I/we put in. About every 3 months the errors would get to the point I was forced to reformat the HD if I wanted to do anything without rebooting every 2 hours. Last week I had to reformat the HD once again and this time it would not ever let me install Windows. Try as I might I could not find the errors or any reason for what was happening.

That did it for me. I went to the computer store and bought a new Abit Mother Board, a Thunderbird 1.5 Ghz processor, new 40 meg HD and Windows 2000. I decided to fix my problems this time.

Of course this didn't go to smooth. Another bad Mother Board. When I turned on the Computer it would just refuse to boot up! Another trip with the computer back to the store for a replacement motherboard. Needless to say I was feed up. This time it turned out to be my ancient Video Driver would just work with my new Hi-tech motherboard instead of another bad motherboard. Of course that meant another $50 bucks plus labor.

I just love computers!!

But I have to say this thing is smokin' now!!

 

[airphoto]

Jeff,

You gotta understand that, as a cost saving measure YOU are the quality control. The makers never burn these things in .. just ship'm to you and hope they work. Part of our disposable society ..

I blamed WinDoze (prolly correctly) for years for a bad hard drive, two bad flippies and a defective MommyBoard. That's why I've often posted on here to folks to suspect the hardware as much or more than the software for WinDoze and other software problems ..

 

[McPheeters]

Jeff,

I just put together my 3rd Abit based comp. All 3 are SE 6's running P3 1 gig procs, big HDD's and 512 mgs memory. They run 24/5 and have been since last summer. However, a friend was telling me the other day about having Abit mobo problems. I guess it's hit or miss with mobo's......

 

[Paul in bama]

Asus motherboards, remember the name!! And not the VIA chipsets, go with the Intel chipset.

 

[McPheeters]

Paul in Bama,

Most definitley the Intel chipset with those Asus boards, have heard about problems whit the Via chipsets............hmmm, the ins and outs of building your own rig.

 

[Jeff Horton]

I looked at Asus MB and actually that was my first choice but I needed one ISA slot becuase of my old SCSI card for my scanner. ASUS didn't have a board that fit the bill. Well they didn't stock one at least. Everything is going to PCI cards now.

Now that we have replaced the video card this Abit seems fine. But funny thing is my SCSI card is not compatable with Windows 2000 and I have to buy a new one anyway. So the ISA slot was not an issue.

(And yes I have downloaded new drivers for the SCSI card for W2k but it still will not work.)