choices for duron and sdram?

[davesaudio]

Whats still out there as a current stable motherboard that can be used with sdram and a duron 700?
ESC K7S5A comes to mind (except for the stable part)
this machine has been a tale of woe to date and too far away to support conveniently
so I would like something with an ungrade path like K7S5A but solid.
Ideas?

Dave

 

[dderolph]

What about K7S5A PRO? Or, KM2M Combo-L?]http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_cpu_support_detail.php?UID=411[/L]?[/L] Both of these support both SDRAM and DDR SDRAM.

I don't know the woes of K7S5A that you mentioned. I recently installed a K7S5A PRO. Seems like this is going to work fine. Another option might be the older K7SEM. That's what I replaced with the K7S5A PRO. Only reason I replaced it is because I bought an Athlon XP 2200+, thinking it would work on my K7SEM, and it will on some versions of K7SEM, but I had an early version and found it does not support the 2200+. I ran a 600 MHz Duron on the K7SEM and had very good stability with it. You might have to buy the K7SEM on ebay, since it seems to no longer be in the normal retail market.

 

[Bonesdad]

If you havent had a K7S5A for yourself, don't assume they are unstable. I owned one of these boards and built several machines around others. All are still running and in use 2+ years later, except for mine, which went when my PSU flamed out...

 

[davesaudio]

Well, I didn't say they can't be stable. I have one with no issues so I'm 1 for 1 (100%)
But since we know they can be fussy about PSU, fussy about more than one sdram@133, etc
and I'm only swapping the MB so it has to work w what I've been handed

If you can say the Duron at 100 in a K7S5A never has been fussy about memory,
and that load won't tax the existing PSU or
the newer Pro has done away w all the old issues,
I'm listening

otoh maybe someone point outs another economical base board which has an exemplary track record
I'm still listening

 

[Cerb]

K7S5A Pro *is* much less picky about memory. Also, if you get PC2100 or PC133 and run it at 100MHz, you get a good chance with the older models as well.

 

[Peter]

All that K7S5A demands is SDRAM that actually works at its rated speed. I've been building many systems with that board, all but two of them used SDRAM, and all of them worked and still work fine. About half of them have two DIMMs in. The art is in getting the BIOS settings right.

Same for the power supply. Use one that actually supplies (proper) power, and you're set.

 

[tcsenter]

Stripped from the other thread:

ECS K7S5A Pro SIS735

MSI KM2M Combo-L VIA KM266 + VT8235

Biostar M7VIG PRO VIA KM266 + VT8235

And a couple others based on the KM266 theme. The ones listed above are still readily available if you look around (Newegg, eWiz.com, ZipZoomFly, PCParts.com, FTIComputer.com, et. al.). 266MHz FSB processors is the max on these boards. Pay attention to what you're buying, because there are later versions of the Biostar and MSI models that have removed the 168-pin SDRAM slots, leaving only DDR. e.g. The Biostar M7VIG PRO "D" has DDR slots only.

All boards listed have an AGP slot, whether or not they also have integrated VGA, so you can toss-in a cheap 32~64MB DX7 or DX8 AGP card that will out-perform any of the integrated solutions by a healthy margin. USB2.0 ports and an upgrade path to DDR. Can't go wrong.