Abit KT7A swap to KT7A-Raid - Any probs?

[CRParker]

Hi -

I currently have a KT7A mb, with a 1.2 Athlon oc to 1.33. Everything is working just fine except:
About every 8 weeks, the network card goes out. This only started happening after a lightning strike took out my network switch and fried all the NICS in each computer. I assume that some sort of residual damage happened to the mb, and it took a while to show. I've already closed the insurance claim, and don't want to deal with them for something simple like this.

I can't try putting the nic into a different slot, as they are all filled up.

I found a local discount store selling the KT7A-Raid mbs very cheap, so I picked one up. I'm going to swap out the "bad" mb, and put in the new one. With the exception of the raid controller, it should be an identical switch, so I don't think Windows will even notice.

Does anyone think I'll have any problems, or run into any strange situations?

Setup is:
Win2k-sp2, 640m ram, DVD & CR-RW on IDE-1, 2 ata-100 hd on internal IDE-0, 2 ata-66 hd on maxtor PCI controller, SB Live, NIC, firewire card, isa modem

Since the mb works just fine except for eating nics, I may try setting the old one up as a second computer, with just a nic (no sound, firewire, etc) and see how it works with the nic in a different slot.

Thanks!

 

[tbalon]

It should work ok but as always make sure the KT7A-RAID has the latest bios from Abit. I would also update 4in1 from VIA if you haven't lately. I would use the onboard raid controller and dump the ATA66 controller card. I believe the raid channels are ATA100 compatible. That will free up a PCI slot and some system resources. Remember the bios needs to be set to boot from (SCSI) for your drives on the raid channel.

Good Luck

 

[tbalon]

I just double checked my set up and it is set for boot FIRST DEVICE- FLOPPY, SECOND DEVICE- ATA100RAID.

 

[CRParker]

tbalon - Thanks for the info!

I did the swap today, and it was pretty much transparent. I put all hardware in the same slots, and then flashed the BIOS to the latest from Abit's site. When I booted Win2k I had to install the drivers for the RAID controller as expected.

I then removed the Maxtor ATA controller, and put the 2 hds on one of the RAID controllers. All is working perfectly now. Just for the heck of it, after the swap was complete and working fine, I upgraded my cpu to an Athlon XP 1700 and it's working just fine also. My mb is rev 1.1, so supposedly it's not supported, but the latest bios detected it perfectly.

I even solved my usb problems that I'd posted about back in Feb. I'd guess that my original mb had some damage from the lightning strike, and it didn't manifest till I really loaded the PC down with extra hard drives and usb devices.

Now I just need a case, and I'll put the old mb/cpu together as a file server. No usb needed, no extra cards (except a nic) needed, so it will hopefully work just great.

 

[tbalon]

Good, glad to here it went well....... Gotta love those ABIT mobos!