My wifes PC (P3-500, Epox BX3 mobo) started having all sorts of fatal errors. I narrowed it down to memory and/or a mobo. After ripping ram in/out and still getting errors, so the next step was the mobo. So, I took out the Epox and put in old reliable still laying around from 1999.. my old Asus P2B.
Installed the old girl in a snap. On initial boot, I went into the CMOS. The date was right but the time was a little more than 2 hours fast... not too bad considering it's been in a box for about 5 years and the battery must be on its last legs! I couldn't do a format because the P3-500 wasn't recognized properly by the BIOS, so I had to put an old Celery 333 in it to reformat and reinstall windows. I then downloded the newest BIOS (from 2000) and flashed it (I don't have a floppy on my main PC and didn't want to fart around trying to flash with a CD.. so I figured this would be just as easy even though it took about 1/2 an hour).
So, I flashed it, put in the P3-500 which was immediately recognized and put on a fresh 98SE format. So, right now the wayback machine is running fine, complete with a TNT2 card and a SBLive soundcard and 256megs of PC133. Why worry about such an old PC? My wife just uses her PC for Office 97 and browsing the net, as long as I could re-build her PC to do that she was happy and it keeps her off mine 🙂 I think I'll put some circa 1999 games on too just to see how they run.
Installed the old girl in a snap. On initial boot, I went into the CMOS. The date was right but the time was a little more than 2 hours fast... not too bad considering it's been in a box for about 5 years and the battery must be on its last legs! I couldn't do a format because the P3-500 wasn't recognized properly by the BIOS, so I had to put an old Celery 333 in it to reformat and reinstall windows. I then downloded the newest BIOS (from 2000) and flashed it (I don't have a floppy on my main PC and didn't want to fart around trying to flash with a CD.. so I figured this would be just as easy even though it took about 1/2 an hour).
So, I flashed it, put in the P3-500 which was immediately recognized and put on a fresh 98SE format. So, right now the wayback machine is running fine, complete with a TNT2 card and a SBLive soundcard and 256megs of PC133. Why worry about such an old PC? My wife just uses her PC for Office 97 and browsing the net, as long as I could re-build her PC to do that she was happy and it keeps her off mine 🙂 I think I'll put some circa 1999 games on too just to see how they run.
