This may seem rather mundane, but I just have to ask... 
I'm about to get all new guts for my machine - and I mean everything. All I'm saving is my floppy drive, zip drive and one of the two optical drives - the cd-burner (a new dvd-burner is replacing the dvd-rom drive). Everything else is out of the case, even the original fans are getting replaced. It's an old Micron Millenium GS from about 4 years ago.
However, as I hemmed and hawed over all the choices (Intel/AMD, which MB for each option, which PSU, which RAM, which video card, etc...) for over a year, there were only a couple of issues which I though might give me problems.
One, at first, was the front panel connector - the power switch, power LED and HD LED. The Micron used a Tyan board and had a specific 18 pin connector (at both ends) to cover the 3 main connections needed between the case's front panel and the MB. 17 of the 18 places in the connectors had a wire even though only 6 of them were actually used. I fretted over this for a while as I tried to find somewhere that sold these connectors individually - because as I downloaded the pdf manuals of all the MBs I was interested in, I began to realize that not everyone follows the Intel pinout standard that Tyan and the Micron front panel circuit board followed. Some did, like the Foxxconn and MSI. But others like the Asus, DFI (close, but not exact) and the one I settled on, the Abit KN8 Ultra are all different. This issue was something I was able to settle once I figured out how to re-arrange the contacts in the connector. For the Abit, one pin that I need to connect to is outside the 18-pin connector's reach (its at pin 20 on the MB, while pin 1 is also used), so that contact is just going to have to slide on the pin on it's own.
The other issue is less critical, but something I realized I might need to deal with as I was looking at all these front panel connector layouts - the "system speaker". The Micron case doesn't have one. But, the Tyan board has a piezo buzzer built-in, and that's whats always done the POST beep. I noticed that about half (if that much) of the MBs out there have such a buzzer on the board. But others don't that I can tell.
So the question is, does the Abit KN8 Ultra have a built-in buzzer somewhere that will beep for me? The manual pdf does not state whether there is one or not. Or will I have to scrounge up a small speaker from somewhere (hmm... maybe one of my son's old toys) and hook it up to the system speaker connector and just lay it somewhere inside my case?
I'll appreciate whatever suggestions you may have.
Joel
I'm about to get all new guts for my machine - and I mean everything. All I'm saving is my floppy drive, zip drive and one of the two optical drives - the cd-burner (a new dvd-burner is replacing the dvd-rom drive). Everything else is out of the case, even the original fans are getting replaced. It's an old Micron Millenium GS from about 4 years ago.
However, as I hemmed and hawed over all the choices (Intel/AMD, which MB for each option, which PSU, which RAM, which video card, etc...) for over a year, there were only a couple of issues which I though might give me problems.
One, at first, was the front panel connector - the power switch, power LED and HD LED. The Micron used a Tyan board and had a specific 18 pin connector (at both ends) to cover the 3 main connections needed between the case's front panel and the MB. 17 of the 18 places in the connectors had a wire even though only 6 of them were actually used. I fretted over this for a while as I tried to find somewhere that sold these connectors individually - because as I downloaded the pdf manuals of all the MBs I was interested in, I began to realize that not everyone follows the Intel pinout standard that Tyan and the Micron front panel circuit board followed. Some did, like the Foxxconn and MSI. But others like the Asus, DFI (close, but not exact) and the one I settled on, the Abit KN8 Ultra are all different. This issue was something I was able to settle once I figured out how to re-arrange the contacts in the connector. For the Abit, one pin that I need to connect to is outside the 18-pin connector's reach (its at pin 20 on the MB, while pin 1 is also used), so that contact is just going to have to slide on the pin on it's own.
The other issue is less critical, but something I realized I might need to deal with as I was looking at all these front panel connector layouts - the "system speaker". The Micron case doesn't have one. But, the Tyan board has a piezo buzzer built-in, and that's whats always done the POST beep. I noticed that about half (if that much) of the MBs out there have such a buzzer on the board. But others don't that I can tell.
So the question is, does the Abit KN8 Ultra have a built-in buzzer somewhere that will beep for me? The manual pdf does not state whether there is one or not. Or will I have to scrounge up a small speaker from somewhere (hmm... maybe one of my son's old toys) and hook it up to the system speaker connector and just lay it somewhere inside my case?
I'll appreciate whatever suggestions you may have.
Joel
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