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How ABIT motherboards are made

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To the people who say that ABit aren't reliable:

At the moment, I have my server running. It's an ABit BH6 with a Celeron 400 (bought at the same time). IIRC, I bought both bits in 1996, maybe earlier. To this day, there's never been a hiccup, and the two parts are still running perfectly. Windows Server 2003 (gotta love that 180-day trial license) is ticking along beautifully on it.
 
Originally posted by: Tostada
I certainly never noticed ABIT going through a spell of making bad boards.

The oldest board I have that's still useful is an ABIT BH-6 from 1998. It used to have a Celeron 300A @ 450 in it, now it's got a P3-700 @ 868 in it. I could run it faster, but it's got a sorry bunch of mixed PC66 and PC100 SDRAM running at 124 MHz already.

Makes me think of my Riva 128, paying $300 for a 128MB stick of PC66, and running the Quake 2 Massive1 demo to see how badass my Celeron was.

Many motherboards and other components have come and gone, but I think my BH-6 is the oldest piece of equipment I'm still using in any of my machines.
Click to expand...

That's around the time they were at their worst, the BX boards.
This forum was more or less flooding with people have issues with the old BX boards, memory issues in particular.

Been a while since I used an Abit, so I have no comment myself, I tend to stick to Asus, I've probably owned ~20 boards, none have given me any trouble, and all are still working today.
Actually I lied, I threw away an old SiS based S7 mobo, but the TX97 that replaced it still works fine as a firewall 🙂
 
Originally posted by: calam63
human rights? lets not bring that onto the boards - you can't govern a country that has over a billion people with democracy
Click to expand...
Why not, look at India? I'm not saying that they have it any better than China, but it does prove the inaccuracy of your statement.

Democracy works and China is proof positive that communism is inferior IMO. Look at all the wealthy countries in the world; they are ALL democracies. Look at all the communist states in the world; they are all extremely poor.

Sorry for going off topic, I just wanted to correct this.
 
there are plenty of brands I'd rather buy than Abit... Abit wasn't always known as good.. I've never owned one for what used to be a problem they had of reliability. not sure if it's still the same but they definitely were not always a top dog IMO!
Click to expand...

I`ve owned Abit and can tell you there are lots of brands just as good or better then Abit IMHO,I`ve no brand loyalty,infact I like to try new brands now and then ,there are a few brands I would put above Abit if I was buying a new board right now.

Stability wise I`ve never had any problems with any of my brands(motherboard wise) but then I can only speak for myself.
 
Originally posted by: DopeFiend
To the people who say that ABit aren't reliable:

At the moment, I have my server running. It's an ABit BH6 with a Celeron 400 (bought at the same time). IIRC, I bought both bits in 1996, maybe earlier. To this day, there's never been a hiccup, and the two parts are still running perfectly. Windows Server 2003 (gotta love that 180-day trial license) is ticking along beautifully on it.
Click to expand...

You're a bit off there.

The Celeron without L2 cache was released in spring 1998.

The ABIT BH-6 was released in fall 1998.

The Celeron 300A with on-chip cache was released in December 1998.

The Celeron 400 was announced in January 1999.
 
Originally posted by: Mem
there are plenty of brands I'd rather buy than Abit... Abit wasn't always known as good.. I've never owned one for what used to be a problem they had of reliability. not sure if it's still the same but they definitely were not always a top dog IMO!
Click to expand...

I`ve owned Abit and can tell you there are lots of brands just as good or better then Abit IMHO,I`ve no brand loyalty,infact I like to try new brands now and then ,there are a few brands I would put above Abit if I was buying a new board right now.

Stability wise I`ve never had any problems with any of my brands(motherboard wise) but then I can only speak for myself.
Click to expand...

Pfffft...you buy a motherboard like once every 5 years Mem. 😛 You ran that 8KHA+ until the caps leaked, and I'm pretty sure you haven't used an Abit in at least the last few years. Having owned Abit boards at one time years ago does not equal knowing the boards Abit makes these days.


😛😀🙂
 
In respect to nf2/u400 abit mobos, I have had 0 that have worked properly. Even kt266a and nf, I don't think I have ever gotten one that works. I simply RMA them enough times so that I get the fewest amount of problems (only the sound doesn't work or only the lan doesn't work). I gave them their last shot a bit ago, so I am never buying another one (I'd go with an ECS/PCChips b4 i buy another abit).

On the other side, I know that have some great P4 boards.
 
Originally posted by: SickBeast
Originally posted by: calam63
human rights? lets not bring that onto the boards - you can't govern a country that has over a billion people with democracy
Click to expand...
Why not, look at India? I'm not saying that they have it any better than China, but it does prove the inaccuracy of your statement.

Democracy works and China is proof positive that communism is inferior IMO. Look at all the wealthy countries in the world; they are ALL democracies. Look at all the communist states in the world; they are all extremely poor.

Sorry for going off topic, I just wanted to correct this.
Click to expand...

You are taking a naive look at things. We helped make those countries poor...

now sticking to the hardware aspect of it...

Abit I've always viewed with quality. I've owned Asus, Epox, Soyo , ECS...

never an abit, but i've only heard great things 😉

even ECS people trash for no reason IMO
 
Quite an interesting article - nice to see the pics.

Those component placing machines are crazy.

A minor clarification - the article describes a machine as 'printing traces' onto the board. That's not correct - that machine is applying solder to the boards. A metal stencil is aligned with the board. Solder paste is then poured and wiped over the stencil and is allowed to flow onto the component connection pads. When the board goes into the oven later on, it is this paste that melts and makes the connections.

It was fun watching that wave soldering machine. You can't see it terribly clearly in the video, but there is a little bath of molten solder in the machine, with a dipper that produces ripples on the surface. The boards are then moved over the top, so that the tops of the ripples just touch the board and make the joins.

And finally, a 'what's missing?'. Where are the x-ray inspection machines. That's the only way to check the solder joins for the chipset - the solder joins are actually under the chip, so you can't see them directly. I wanted to see one of those in action.

Of course, the next question is 'who makes the PCBs?' and can we have a tour of their facility as well.
 
Hi Mark,

I think its cheaper for them just to test the board rather than xray it. They do X-ray PCB but thats at a different facility.

As far as whole makes the PCB : Ive hinted on it before.

Kristopher
 
Insane3D(Pete) , I actually buy a new board every year sinceI do upgrades for friends (they choose the board since it`s their money which includes Abit ) besides if you read my post I said I had no stability problems with any of my boards but was trying to say I don`t rate Abit as the best.

you ran that 8KHA+ until the caps leaked, and I'm pretty sure you haven't used an Abit in at least the last few years
Click to expand...
Hehe made sense at the time since my backup PC had a new motherboard,besides the Epox is now retired.

Now get back to playing with your car and leave me to game or I`ll come round and let your tyres down 😉 .

🙂
 
Originally posted by: Tostada
Originally posted by: DopeFiend
To the people who say that ABit aren't reliable:

At the moment, I have my server running. It's an ABit BH6 with a Celeron 400 (bought at the same time). IIRC, I bought both bits in 1996, maybe earlier. To this day, there's never been a hiccup, and the two parts are still running perfectly. Windows Server 2003 (gotta love that 180-day trial license) is ticking along beautifully on it.
Click to expand...

You're a bit off there.

The Celeron without L2 cache was released in spring 1998.

The ABIT BH-6 was released in fall 1998.

The Celeron 300A with on-chip cache was released in December 1998.

The Celeron 400 was announced in January 1999.
Click to expand...

<shrug> Time flies 🙂
1999 it was then.... damn... that's still pretty good.
 
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