A Socket 7 mobo out of a Toshiba Computer

[LickEmSmack]

I got this computer from my friend and he has told me that he had severe crashing problems under Windows 98. I put Linux on it and it still had some crashing issues, just not so severe. Is there any way for me to tell who made this board? Could I possibly flash the BIOS and get the stability up a bit? I am not above getting a new (used) board that is ATX, has 4 SIMM banks and is Socket 7. Any suggestions?

 

[hymy]

It may be faulty hardware other than the motherboard. The one toshiba I ever saw had an intel socket 7. If its intel it will have a sticker that begins "AA-" followed by a bunch of numbers

 

[LickEmSmack]

Yeah, the board is a Socket 7, and I have just checked, there's a sticker on there that says "AA...". Does that mean that my board is actually an Intel board? Is there some way to find out if I can flash the BIOS and upgrade it? I really hate the onboard everything, and I thing that's why Linux didn't like it. I am taking suggestions for replacement boards.

 

[hymy]

yeah its an intel board, you can get everything you need from here:


http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/identify.htm

Before you buy a replacement board make sure its not the memory that is bad. Also the toshiba case That I have doesn't have the usual 7 slots but instead has six. So you have to be careful which MB's you put in it.

 

[LickEmSmack]

Good Call... I don't think it's the RAM, but I'm not sure. How can I find out if it's faulty RAM? I am patrolling the For Sale boards lookign for Socket 7's currently. I just want to get the stupid thing working so I can play w/ Linux again.

 

[hymy]

The only guaranteed way I know is to try different ram. Sorry. But it would suck if you bought a new board and it was the ram all along. You got anything else in it besides MB, memory and chip? Hell it could be the chip too. Frequent crashing can be caused by everything. Drivers, hardware, etc. You just gotta eliminate one at a time until you find the cause.

 

[LickEmSmack]

Crap, that's not what I wnated to hear. I really need to get this sucker up and running again. I will go ahead and buy a new board (I can always sell it if that's not the problem, besides I really don't trust the BIOS from Toshiba or any other company like that). I have another set of SIMM RAM I can check with but now my computer is all apart. I will wait until I get a new board (assuming that it will work). If it doesn't, I will try to do what you said. All the drivers I was using were provided with the Red Hat 6.2 distro. We'll see what happens!! Thanks for your help!