Abit KT7A-RAID

[bigboxes]

Yes, this is another trip down memory lane, ATers! No, this is not a necro thread. I had posted a thread on AMD's AGOIA stepping this last Sunday. Today, I give you the Abit KT7A-RAID motherboard.

This was my first motherboard. That is, it was the motherboard I chose when I built my first computer. I had some Compaq POS that I got for free from a very nice lady at work. It had a 200 MMX processor. The hard drive was bad and all I had to do was replace it with a new one and I would have my own computer. If only I knew anything about computers. HA! I was in graduate school and it was 2000 and you needed a desktop or you'd spend all your time in the computer lab on campus. So, I bought some 10GB Maxtor at Fry's and got Win98 through my school for $5. Paid one of the IT guys at my work $20 to install it. After I got it up and running I signed up with AT&T @HOME broadband internet. Not the same ISP as today. Later, it would become Comcast, then Time Warner Cable, and today, Spectrum (Charter owned).

Soon after I started using it I realized how dated it had become. I desired to build my own and bugged the IT staff on a daily basis to learn what they knew. I started buying parts, piece by piece. Case, power supply... stuff that wouldn't change overnight. I waited until I was ready to put it all together before deciding on the final parts and putting it altogether. It was on AnandTech where I first read about the KT7A-RAID motherboard. It was a full feature motherboard with the newest chipset for AMD, the KT133A.

I bought the KT7A-RAID from Googlegear. Googlegear was a tech retailer startup in 2000. They changed their name in 2003 to ZipZoomfly after Google lodged a complaint with ICANN over the domain name (googlegear.com). I paired it up with the latest AMD processor, the Athlon 1200Mhz Thunderbird. It was the fastest processor at the time. From Newegg (I just looked it up) I purchased an ATI Radeon 64 VIVO video card with 4X AGP and two sticks of Kingston PC133 SDRAM 256MB. Man, that computer would fly! Web pages opened almost instantly. Soon afterward I ordered a third stick of that ram. I didn't need it, but by that time I was hooked by the computer bug.

I'm sure many are wondering, "Why did you get this board?" Well, with the help of a pencil I was able to unlock my T-bird and o/c my CPU from 1.2Ghz to 1.4Ghz. Plus, you see all those extra ATA connectors? That's enough to connect a lot of drives. If I remember correctly, at one point I had six 60GB hard drives in that thing. Never did RAID. Just a bunch of disks (JBOD). Also, you see there are 6 PCI expansion slots on that motherboard. I added a Firewire card, a USB card, a TV tuner card, a sound card and SCSI card. I used the SCSI card to hook up a high end Yamaha CD burner. It was supposed to use less system resources while you were burning a disc. It think it was the fastest at the time with 40X speed or something like that.

All this housed in an all aluminum Cooler Master mid-tower case (ATC 200). I think the CPU was cooled by an early Thermaltake product, the Volcano 2. Here's a picture of the old board. It doesn't post. Not sure of the issue. None of the caps are bulging, but the board doesn't post. Thought it might be the AGP slot, as multiple cards wouldn't work. Can't believe I still have hung on to it. Lots of nostalgia for boxes.

Anyone else hold on to an old board even though they never use the thing? Still have the CPU, ram, video card, case, scsi card, tv tuner card and cpu cooler as well. Someday, I'll put it all back together for some time travel.

 

[bigboxes]

I just realized that there was no onboard ethernet. So, PCI slot #6 would have held an ethernet card. This box was packed to the max. Never used the ISA slot. Since this was my first build I had no legacy parts. I had so much fun on that motherboard.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

I friggin' love the ATC 200 look.

Have an ATC 110, black PAC-T01, and silver PAC-T01 still in service.

ATC 110 running a 3770K @ 4.5GHz w/ 780 here (typing this post on this rig)

The only modern lookalike I could find was the Silverstone TJ09S, which is what I'm using from my main rig now.
I probably bought the very last 2 new ones (black, silver) in the entire US back in 2013 for my Haswell builds

 

[bigboxes]

I friggin' love the ATC 200 look.

Have an ATC 110, black PAC-T01, and silver PAC-T01 still in service.

ATC 110 running a 3770K @ 4.5GHz w/ 780 here (typing this post on this rig)

The only modern lookalike I could find was the Silverstone TJ09S, which is what I'm using from my main rig now.
I probably bought the very last 2 new ones (black, silver) in the entire US back in 2013 for my Haswell builds

I loved the build quality of the ATC-200. I had an early version and it had no front USB panel so I just had a 4-port hub on top that I ran from the back. But (big but) that box was soooo cramped. When I built my first Athon 64 box (3200+ Winchester) I moved to the venerable Antec P180 and stuck with them through my Haswell (P280) build (in sig). However, I noticed how empty that case is with everything being onboard and no bottom PSU divider. I can see how the smaller midtower that we used back in the day would be of use. We barely need the optical drive any longer. Funny how things change. The only bad I would say about those cases is the small case fans. At 80mm, they were an improvement over the more common 60mm/40mm that were sold by the major manufactures. Hell, I replaced all of the case fans that came with the ATC-200 with Vantec Stealth fans. But the move to 120mm was a much needed improvement on my ears.

I still have one working Socket A mobo, the Abit VA-20. It's micro ATX that I just got before they stopped making them so I could play with my old processors if I wanted to. It's got DDR, AGP, on-board VGA, ATA and SATA.

 

[bigboxes]

HA! The VA-20 is mounted in the ATC-200. I was wondering where my other Thoroughbred (2600+) was. Just need to pop a power supply in there and fire her up!

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

80mm is not so bad. I use medium speed Panaflos in the ATC 110 and both PAC-T01s, with fan controllers.
They seem to be adequate to cool 2500K @ 4.6 and 3770 @ 4.5, both with somewhat warm GPUs (780, 290)

 

[tcsenter]

First mobo was the Biostar 8500TVX and first case was Enlight tower cannot remember the model #.

 

[RLGL]

Had 2 Abit IP 35 boards. They performed well but alas the lifespan was short, about 2.5 years.

 

[Jeff007245]

Owned that very same board... I have great memories of my KT7A Raid board. I paired it with a 1.4Ghz tnird and somee kingmaxx PC150 ram. I had it in one of those beige cases of old.

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

Wowwww, Abit...my second ever build was a Socket 939 tower and it had an Abit motherboard. What happened to them? Were they acquired by ASRock or something, or did they just fade out into the night like the little green light on your PSU when you pull the wall plug...?

 

[tcsenter]

Wowwww, Abit...my second ever build was a Socket 939 tower and it had an Abit motherboard. What happened to them? Were they acquired by ASRock or something, or did they just fade out into the night like the little green light on your PSU when you pull the wall plug...?

There was some mismanagement and IIRC embezzlement that left ABIT with too much debt and had to fold. I remember reading that most if not all their leading motherboard design team(s) got gigs at other companies.

EPOX also had a pretty good design team, there was always a nice 'symmetry' and balance to their layouts that showed.

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

So that's what happened...thanks for telling me. Sad to hear.

 

[mikeymikec]

Those caps are far too close to the CPU socket! How are you supposed to install a Hyper 212 on that?

 

[bigboxes]

Did I mention that the hard drives were IBM "Deathstars"? Yup. I had six 60GB 60GXP drives in that case. All six failed under warranty. All but one of the replacements failed. I still have it in a box somewhere.

 

[Rubycon]

Nice boards. I liked the KG7 RAID the best because it worked perfect with four 512MB REGISTERED ECC DIMMS. 2GB was pretty decent in 2001. Took some playing around in the bios to get it perfectly stable but the BFG Geforce3 Ti 500 was partly to blame.

 

[bigboxes]

Nice boards. I liked the KG7 RAID the best because it worked perfect with four 512MB REGISTERED ECC DIMMS. 2GB was pretty decent in 2001. Took some playing around in the bios to get it perfectly stable but the BFG Geforce3 Ti 500 was partly to blame.

Wow. You went balls to the walls. There was no way I was going to go to a new platform so soon after I built this box. Nice 761 board. I think I got the KT7A-RAID because using PC-133 ram was a stop gap until DDR boards became available. I went with DDR August 2002 when I upgraded to an Abit KX7-333 mobo and moved from my Palomino 1600+ to the Thoroughbred 2600+. I'm pretty sure I went with 2GB of Corsair ram, but not ECC. What a fun time for PC building!

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

 

[bigboxes]

Man, I was Abit, Zalman, AMD, ATI and Creative. I'm kind of excited about CPUs again with the release of Zen. Don't need a new main rig, but the rumors of a HEDT chip has got me thinking that I might build a new AMD rig this year.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Man, I was Abit, Zalman, AMD, ATI and Creative. I'm kind of excited about CPUs again with the release of Zen. Don't need a new main rig, but the rumors of a HEDT chip has got me thinking that I might build a new AMD rig this year.

Yup. Don't really need it, but might jump on an X399 or Skylake-X setup, and either Volta or Vega.
You know, YOLO / carpe diem and all that.

 

[bigboxes]

Yup. Don't really need it, but might jump on an X399 or Skylake-X setup, and either Volta or Vega.
You know, YOLO / carpe diem and all that.

Heh. Don't really need it. Where have I heard that one before?! Check out the case I have waiting for my next HEDT build.

 

[Ketchup]

I was an Epox guy back then, but I did have one Abit board before they went under. Those were the days when you had to refresh the AT home page several times a day to keep up with all the new hardware reviews.

The first computer I put together had a 90 MHz Pentuim in it, with the first computer I built from scratch having a 1 GHz AMD Socket A with a Swiftech MC 462 cooler. For it's first boot, I had it equipped with the loudest fan Delta made. That didn't last long. One of my case fans turned out to be plenty to keep that CPU cool enough. I think the fan went to Ebay (when most replaced hardware went back then). Fun times!

 

[bigboxes]

I was an Epox guy back then, but I did have one Abit board before they went under. Those were the days when you had to refresh the AT home page several times a day to keep up with all the new hardware reviews.

The first computer I put together had a 90 MHz Pentuim in it, with the first computer I built from scratch having a 1 GHz AMD Socket A with a Swiftech MC 462 cooler. For it's first boot, I had it equipped with the loudest fan Delta made. That didn't last long. One of my case fans turned out to be plenty to keep that CPU cool enough. I think the fan went to Ebay (when most replaced hardware went back then). Fun times!

You and I sound very similar in our beginning backgrounds with computers. I never went with Delta (back in the day) because I was never into max o/c'ing and I valued my hearing.

 

[Rubycon]

Oh yes the AXIA t-bird days of late 2000 early 2001.
Remember those well.
Mine came with a Thermaltake SuperOrb. It was buzzy and not very efficient IMO.
Then the Globalwin FOP-38. What a noisy rascal!
First real sink was the modded PEP66.
Then the Kanie Hedgehog. Nearly a pound of copper!
Then the Swiftech 460, even a heavier, thicker copper slab decorated with aluminum pins like some demented porcupine.
Later versions had ridges in those pins. Looked like aluminum all thread TBH. I liked shiny better but the increased surface area and turbulence was better at whisking away the heat.
Speaking of turbulence, plenty of that with those 80mm Delta fans.
I had a dual socket 462 board, the Iwill MPX-2. That one was a beast indeed.
We started using SuperMicro dual Xeons in the spring of 2004.
No more overclocking but there was no time to fidget with settings, there was work to do!

Motherboards over the years as I recall:

Some cheap generic junk ones (486) with FAKE L2 chips - Oktec
Amptron, PC Chips, ECS.
Asus, Spacewalker/Shuttle, Tyan, FIC, Epox, Biostar, MSI, SuperMicro, Abit (loved those!).

Never had a Asrock board before.

Oh and of course, EVGA Classified boards. Heavy hitters with OC and tweaking.

As were the DFI boards.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Rubycon, you just gave me the warm geek fuzzies.
I miss those days when tech seemed more exciting (albeit the market was more fragmented).

 

[bigboxes]

Oh yes the AXIA t-bird days of late 2000 early 2001.
Remember those well.
Mine came with a Thermaltake SuperOrb. It was buzzy and not very efficient IMO.

Still have mine. Even the box! Pretty sure I read about it on AnandTech. Got one and was quickly disappointed. Continued using the Volcano 2 until I upgraded to the Volcano 7+. I hated that as it had these thin copper fins that made an angelic hum (annoying as fuck). I was like, "Ooooh! A big hunk of copper." I think the fan was 70mm. I think I switched to Zalman after that. Now, that was a lot of copper and a big quiet fan!

Thermaltake SuperOrb

Thermaltake SuperOrb original box

Thermaltake Volcano 2

Thermaltake Volcano 7+