PC Chips M900 Intel 850

[Javern]

Anyone have opinons on this motherboard..only $11 at Compgeeks. Thinking of putting together a new system and know NOTHING about this or any PC Chips motherboard

Oh, I have an opinion allright. Stay away from PCChips, ECS, Biostar, all those "cheap-o" mobo manufacturers. Pay more and get something that's going to last and not get RMA'd in the first weerk.

Again, this is just MY opinion and I'm sure there are others out there who have PCChips, ECS, and Biostar that will tell you they're the greatest things since Mentos.

[Peter M]

Nothing wrong with ECS/PC-Chips, from a personal experience of about 100 boards. Can't say anything about Biostar, can't even buy those here.

Anyhow. M900 is an old board, using socket-423 (!) processors and RAMBUS technology. In other words, the reason why it's so cheap is not that it's built cheap - it's that it's outdated and useless today. Unless you have a socket-423 P4 catching dust somewhere and are willing to spend a fortune on RDRAM.

ftp://ftp.pcchips.com.tw/Manual/M900/

[wakko69]

I fell for the compgeeks $11 special. It doesn't even power on unless I set the cmos to clear. nice... :-{

[Peter M]

You sure? Normally it's exactly the other way round. If it indeed doesn't fire up with the jumper in "Normal" position, I'd question the RAM compatibility first. RAMBUS is delicate.

[John Prophet]

yeah..lots of pc chips boards come with the cmos jumper on the clear position..then you have to move it to "normal" to get it to boot.

There are converters by the way, to go from socket 423 to socket 478 in case you get the itch to upgrade some.

[58apache]

Has anyone out there had any luck trying to get a SATA adapter card and drive to work with the PC400 (same as PC-Chips) M900 series mother board? I have tried two different brands of SATA adapter cards and they both have the same symptom. The system will not boot from any of the devices configured in the BIOS as boot devices; i.e. CDROM, Floppy. If I unplug the data cable from the SATA hard drive, and reset the PC, it will boot from either the CDROM or floppy, and if I quickly plug the SATA data cable back in when the CDROM or Floppy starts to boot, then the SATA drive is even recognized by the system.
With the data cable plugged in before power up or reset the system locks right after the SATA adapter cards BIOS information is displayed.
I just want to use this old PC as a Linux box for my home lab, but would like to add a 700GB SATA drive that I have.

Any help is greatly appreciated. (no response from PCCHIPS tech support)

58apache