ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 - Socket 939 with PCI-E and real AGP and Socket AM2 upgrade path

[WT]

Th AM2CPU upgrade card is available from Ewiz for $31 plus S/H.
Ewiz link to AM2CPU riser card

It is in fact a very large card that sticks upwards between the AGP and PCIe slots (its yellow IIRC). Here's a pic of mine, and you can see how it is mounted on the board:
AM2CPU riser card installed

Keep in mind that the AM2 card will also mount your DDR2 RAM (the S939 uses DDR1, so that will add to your overall upgrade price, but its so cheap right now that you might as well spend the $30 on a 2gb kit.

Cost:
AM2 CPU (5000+ Black Edition) - $99
AM2CPU riser card - $39
DDR2 RAM - $40

Thats a better CPU than what you priced, so your upgrade could be under $150 if you go with less CPU than I listed. I'm very pleased with this setup, and I couldn't complain seeing as how its been running almost 24/7 in some hardware form since 2006.

Edit: Noticed your link on the second CPU is for an S939 CPU .. not what you want, my friend.

 

[fustercluck]

Confusing...

Well, I think it'll just be easier to get a S939 CPU and hope it works in the semi-scratched up 939 socket.

What I'm doing is giving my old computer to my mother (the DualSATA/1GB of corsair ram/CPU which I haven't chosen yet). So, I already got a new computer for myself (in my sig), and am not too worried about my old one. But, it'd be nice to upgrade my mom's computer since it's really old.

 

[Sandan]

I have a big problem. I have the 939dual sata 2 with the 3800+ x2 processor, 3gigs Ram, running Vista ultimate. My operating system is on an SATA2 Western Digital drive attached to the SATA2 connector. Just bought a Seagate ST3640323AS 640GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb drive. Connected it to SATA 1 connector and it won't get recognized. If I connect it to the SATA2 connector it is seen and then I put the WD drive on SATA 1 and that one isn't recognized. Tried both of the SATA 1.5 connectors and same issue. In bios I have set to auto detect on the non-raid mode for the 1.5 SATA connectors. Anyway....are there special drivers needing to be installed for Vista to see drives on the 1.5 connectors. Or do you think SATA 2 drives on this board won't work on 1.5 connectors? Thanks.......

 

[StormRider]

Some SATA drives have a jumper that you can set to make it appear like an older SATA 1.5 drive for when you have problems.

 

[Peter]

Exactly. That's a protocol fsckup in the SATA-II specification, with the result that 3-Gb capable drives won't link up to SATA-I host controllers.

Many drives indeed do have a jumper to limit them to 1.5-Gb. Some of those that don't can be soft-configured via a vendor specific utility program. So, check manual, vendor's FAQ on their home page, etc. etc.

 

[Sandan]

On the back of my drive there are jumpers to dummy it down from 3.0 to 1.5. I tried both ways jumper on jumper off but still isn't recognized. But as said it is recognized on sata 2 connector. The reason I don't put it on the 3.0 is because I already have one there and I want 2 SATA Hard drives. Again I switched the one on the 3.0 to the 1.5 and it won't get recognized either.

 

[Sandan]

Finally got things working....I had to come in the back door. I set a jumper on the original sata drive I have vista installed on to dummy it down to 1.5 sata....and plugged it into the sata 1 controller. Then I took the new Seagate drive with no jumper making it SATA2 and plugged it into SATA2 controller. It's all good. Still don't know why the Seagate wasn't recognized on sata 1.5 controller with jumper set properly....Anyway I can now relax.......

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: Peter
Exactly. That's a protocol fsckup in the SATA-II specification, with the result that 3-Gb capable drives won't link up to SATA-I host controllers.

Many drives indeed do have a jumper to limit them to 1.5-Gb. Some of those that don't can be soft-configured via a vendor specific utility program. So, check manual, vendor's FAQ on their home page, etc. etc.

I wouldn't recommend using a Samsung SATA 2 Hard Drive with the Asrock 939 Dual Sata2. I had one and it was crash after crash.

 

[djwhodunnit]

ko so i see that this thread has been dead for a while now, and i honestly wish i could read through the whole damn thing hoping that somewhere in there is a solution to my issue, i've read QUITE a bit of it and found similar issues but not solutions...here's the situation.....

got given one of these boards recently, i just built a system around it using stuff i already had...

939dual-sata2 - 3800+
160g Maxtor DiamondMax20 sata hdd
RAM - First setup, 2 1g Corsair pc2700, 2 512mb corsair pc2700: Second setup, 4 1g Corsair pc2700: Third setup, 2 1g corsair 3200, 2 patriot insulated 512 3200...ALL HAVE BEEN MEMTESTED, ALL WERE CLEAN, have cycled one piece at a time etc...
Video cards i've tried - PNY Geforce FX 5200 256mb AGP, Nvidia Quadro FX 740 128MB AGP, ATI Radeon 9600XT 128MB AGP, Sapphire Radeon 9250 128MB AGP, Geforce2 MX/MX400 64MB PCI
I've had multiple optical devices ranging from sony optiarc dvd-rw brand new to a memorex 52x cd rw from 2002

OK FIRST ATTEMPT

started up right away showed my stats, i hit the bios right away to check out what was goin' on in it (hadn't flashed it), so i checked things out and exited without saving anything, on the restart...NOTHING, fans, lights, drives all trying to work, NO VIDEO, DVD drive was acting like it was trying to read a beta disc it was ridiculously looking hard for something, spitting out occasionally to pop right back in, NO MOTHERBOARD BEEPING, NOT THE INITIATING BEEP or an error beep...

tried a couple more times nothing still, swapped video cards, ram, optical drives, (don't have another sata drive and i think the board has an IDE Controller issue so no hdd swap), tried with just 1 stick of ram, video, and processor nothing, added hdd, nothing, swapped PSU units (i know the first one was good because i took it out of a system far superior to this one just the day before =P) to another one that i know was good because it runs my daily system that is comparable to this one in power usage...i've thrown countless boot disks for vista/xp/64bit versions too and have yet to see a damn thing on that friggin' monitor...no heat issues, plenty of power, and the monitor is getting signal (it's in standby mode as soon as hooked to any card) but apparently the wrong signal...I know this is an old board that has given people problems for a while...but i'm just starting to make some headway on building systems from nothing in this small town where at 23 with 4 years of lax computer usage (until the last year or so) i far surpass everyone else's comprehensive abilities...and it has proven so far to be a profitable venture lol, the one thing that hasn't happened yet is for me to build myself a second system so i don't have to use someone else's computer in the house as my third pc when troubleshooting software/transferring data blah blah blah the rest of the stuff involved with fixing other people's computers...so now that i've revived a dead thread and bored you to death with the longest whiniest post i can ever remember making, IS THERE ANYONE WHO CAN HELP ME OUT HERE???? I have VERY VERY limited K8 experience...I have never come accross a k7 or am2 board that gave me so damn many problems before and i like this board's setup dammit i want it to work!!!! unfortunately i don't have a PCI-E card to try and see if i get video...because i don't have another board with a pci-e slot (less a CRU51-M7T_0607_B running a sempron 2800+ that is what i have setup for my grandfather to play his internet games and chess and stuff on) i'm not sure if i can post my e-mail in here or not and have no problem with a mod removing it if i'm not allowed but if anyone would be able to give me some help my e-mail is djwhodunnit@yahoo.com and even at that if you're in the continental U.S. and can give some live help via the phone i will foot the bill to call a landline (saving ur cell minutes!!!) LOL (i know desparate as all get out, but i want another computer dammit and i'm low on cash for being 23 with 2 kids >.<)

 

[WT]

In an effort to wring every last ounce of performance from my workbench Asrock rig, I decided to upgrade the 250gb IDE to an SATA 500gb drive plugged into the SATAII port. I used my Windows Home Server to restore the image onto the newer drive, then fully expected to hit the dreaded NTLDR error at boot due to the change from IDE to SATA.
When I did, I wasn't surprised, so I just tried a Windows repair install to fix the boot loader problem. Things went south from there, and I have been unable to even restore back onto another IDE drive to even get the PC back to operational status. I was even under the impression that my onboard NIC was dead, as I can't get any lights from it when I try and restore the image from my server, but popping a NIC into the PC still didn't resolve that, so I have some serious work to do to get this PC back up and running this weekend.
I should have left well enough alone, as other posters have had numerous issues with the SATA on this board, but I have this weird hangup about doing the challenging stuff to see if its possible, and I end up shortening my life expectancy due to the stress involved. I'll do a fresh install of Windows tonight to test hardware, then when I know its functional, I'll restore the previous Windows installation and correct the SATA boot driver before powering off.

 

[trevor0323]

Well mine finally took a dump last week, I ran into the problem where it wont display video out of either the AGP or the PCI-E slot. I checked it out and it seems to be a common problem, I dont know if it was ever discussed in this thread but I am not about to read 90 pages to find out. If anyone has any info or a fix please let me know. I also checked the Asrock site to see if I could send it in but that seems like a lost cause.

For a while it was putting out some beep code like 8 short quick beeps and then dying. I think I checked the code and it was a cmos checksum error.