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Old computer woes...

M

Mears

Platinum Member
I?ve been spending the weekend trying to get my family?s first computer up and running. It is a Compaq Presario 8702 (166mhz Pentium classic, 24mb edo, 2mb S3 Virge, etc?) Anyways, it has an Interwave sound card that has been a PITA trying to get to work so I picked up a SB AWE64 to replace it. I decided to nuke the hard drive and put win98se on it(I also have another 64mb of edo on the way). However, I didn?t realize that a small partition on the hard drive was used for bios editing. Even through I smoked it win98 installed fine, but when I tried putting in the sound card in an ISA slot on the riser card it was not detected. I tried some other hardware on the riser card as well, but nothing else was picked up by win98 either. I?m guessing that it probably has something to do with me deleting that bios editing partition or possibly that the riser card doesn?t work(the computer will boot w/o the riser card in the slot, even though there is a graphics controller on the riser card).

So anyways, I?ve decided just to go ahead and get a new case and motherboard, but I?m not familiar with most older h/w.

1) I believe that I need to get a socket 7 mobo, but would a super-7 work as well?

2) I have a power supply that is of AT form factor because the power connector wasn?t ATX. Here is a pic of it: connector

3) Would this case accept an AT power supply: case
I?d like to have the option of using either or so I have more options for mobos.

4) On my computer there a memory bank that I?m not familiar with. I think it might be L2 cache. If so, would a new mobo come the memory or would I need to reuse that memory? It feels like it?s lodged in the slot pretty good. Here is a pic: memory

Thanks a lot
 
If your budget is really limited find an Aopen AX59 PRO II or similar MB-it should run your 166MHz CPU now and later you could upgrade it to a K6-2/3 550MHz CPU. It has both SIMM and DIMM memory slots, two ISA slots as well as an AGP slot and will run in that ATX case. I would recommend spending a bit more and get a Duron and a newer board(you will need to use SD RAM though).
 
The Aopen AX59PRO might be hard to find. Here is a link to a Gigabyte socket A(I've run Durons up to 1.3GHz and Athlon Bs up tp 1.4GHz on these boards) MB; GA7IXE4. And remember putting your ISA cards and SIMMs to rest will give you more modern MB choices.

I can't seem to get a direct link to the board on Gigabyte's site so click on the Socket A tab and scroll down to the GA7IXE4 if you want to see more info on it.
 
Well I'm looking to get away as cheaply as possible. All I want to use this for is for old DOS gaming and basic word processing and web surfing.
 
Looks like you are on a slippery slope trying to save some money.

Compaq should have a way to restore that HD partition if nuking it was a problem. Check the support at the Compaq site.

A mobo that old may not have a plug n play BIOS, which may be a problem for W98 detectecting it. That was normal before a certain date. (During the transition period, there used to be program that would generate the plug n play data for non plug n play BIOS mobos, but I never successfully made it work. I just forced Windows to take the driver anyway.) In addition, some old ISA cards are not plug n play. If the card is not detected, what you need is the drivers for the sound card, and then point Device Manager to the location of the driver, which should have a .INF file located there. In any case, that is what I did for an ISA AWE32 card, on a mobo that DID have a plug n play BIOS.

Yes a super socket 7 mobo will work as well as a socket 7. If you can find a super socket 7 mobo, the only ones I ever had came with the cache memory that you mention installed.

The problem with a new case like that ATX style one is going to be the power switch, which is a momentary switch that "softly"activates an ATX power supply through the mobo. The AT power supplies have a switch hardwired to them which is directly attached to the power line. I believe I still see AT cases for sale sometimes at computer shows. Really, if you are going to do this, your best bet is to find a used AT one. There are stores around that specialize in old used stuff. This may be too old. You could try Salvation Army stores.

There are socket seven mobos that are ATX style if you are getting an ATX case.

 
I think the problem is that soundcard is not Plug n' Play compatible. Just go to Add/Remove hardware under the control panel.
 
Well I went to add remove hardware and it didn't detect it. I tried adding it manually, but after the drivers installed, they had the warning sign besides them in device mananger.
 
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