[VeedeeBee]

Last year I retired this system when I bought my Savastore cheapo Athlon64 PC.

MSI K7N420 (orginal NForce board 4xAGP) Motherboard with a Athlon XP1700 CPU with the following supplementary equipment:

Kosher (pristine original disk) XP SP2 which was a condition to joining Geeks to Go
Scan 200W PSU (yes it did actually work for 2 years) but the fan was noisy too.
Coolermaster CPU fan (noisy as F***)
Hitachi IBM Deskstar 40GB HDD (dodgy at best and is being scrapped as this was the main reason I bought the new machine)
512 MB PC2100 memory (on two sticks)
GFX5700 LE AGP VGA card
Creative Audigy Soundcard with gameport daughter card
Sony DW28A DVD-RW (16x RW)
TEAC CDW CD-RW (40x RW)
4 x Belkin PCI USB 2.0, PCI backplate
2 x MB conneced USB 1.1 frontplate
4 x backplate/riser USB 1.1
2 modems at one time but purely academic now (really hate non-or semi-hardware PCI modems)

I used to take it out of storage once a month to update Windows XP2 on the internet but a few months ago, the MSI MB seemed to go Kaput ! Tried for weeks getting her to restart but the MSI handbook generally says that 4 red LEDs posting at the same time means new MB time.

I now want to rebuild the machine in the original SCAN case with the following equipment re-used

The original Athlon XP1700 (humour me its going to be a spare machine)
The original SCAN case without the 200W PSU
512MB PC2100 memory on 2 sticks
GFX5700 LE AGP VGA card
Creative Audigy Soundcard with gameport daughter card
Sony DW28A DVD-RW (16x RW)
TEAC CDW CD-RW (40x RW)
4 x Belkin PCI USB 2.0, PCI backplate

First is a software question, if I do a brand new install of XP SP2, as I never had the chance to slipstream the updates, is there anyway of getting a disk to take you up to a managable point on XP. If not it, shouldn't be 2 bad as I have an 8Mb download connection, it's the constant rebooting that will drive me crazy.

Will there be any XP verification issues as the (now to be scapped) HDD that the OS was on will have been validated until (I think 3 months ago?). New HDD, new MB but old and kosher XP SP2 is that a problem?

(phew! just checking for the COA on the software box I forgot that it's still stuck to the SCAN case so no problems there)

The original OS disk says XP SP2 Ver 2002, I've just realised that all the updates wil be dependent on MS genuine advantage verification, so I will be doomed to start the updates from the point of my disk, crikey!

New Kit will be :

(1) A quiet fan for the XP1700 (not too much money) or have it software controlled at a pinch,
(2) An 8x AGP motherboard, these cost about £20-30 here in the UK,
A very small HDD (40Gb or 80Gb) as the machine is only intended to be a web browsing and DVD viewing machine
(3) A HIPER 350W quiet PSU.

I do have spare keyboards, modems and WiFi routers for getting things going

The most demanding game I intend to have on it is Novalogic's BlackHawk Down. (no Far Cry or Battlefield2,etc)

In all I do not intend to spend more than £70 for a motherboard, PSU and a small HDD.

I looked at a £16 Foxxconn SiS chipsetted Socket A MB but it only offers 4x AGP, after that the internet suppliers have very little in the ultra cheap department (K8N Nforce2, 3 etc).

All my software is kosher but all will be installed from new.

Does anybody have any suggestions for rebuilding a small limited Socket A system bearing in mind the market is chokka with st939, Core Duo, Core 2 Duo and much more modern kit?

Many thanks for cheap but reliable suggestions

Regards


Veedeebee

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you can still find socket A stuff on the net. Here you will find some socket A biostar motherboards and motheboard combos http://www.geeks.com...cts.asp?cat=MBB

[austin_o]

you can still find socket A stuff on the net. Here you will find some socket A biostar motherboards and motheboard combos http://www.geeks.com...cts.asp?cat=MBB

[VeedeeBee]

Thanks Austin,

Unfortunately I'm in England and so have far less choice than you in the US. Thanks for the lead on Biostar MB's I'll look on the UK net. Basically, even if the dollar exchange rate is 1.5 USD per UK pound we tend to pay pound for dollar prices here.

I tend to look at three sites SCAN UK, EBUYER and SAVASTORE but the last one confusingly lists P4 Motherboards under Socket A !!

Regards

Veedeebee

[peter99]

Windows updates in one package plus lots more

Current AutoPatcher releases
AutoPatcher for Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 (32-bit) - September 2006
AutoPatcher for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (32-bit) - September 2006
AutoPatcher for Windows x64 Edition (Beta) - July 2006
AutoPatcher for Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (32-bit) - September 2006

This release is based on the all-new AutoPatcher 5.1. Although it was made with Windows XP SP2 English in mind, it will load on any (English) Windows version, showing only the items which match the running environment. There are also special releases for Portuguese (thanks Gandolas), Greek (thanks heZzel), Italian (thanks dkdk_it), and Polish (thanks Marcin.Riki) versions of Windows.


Download the full version 257Mb not the update package 13Mb
Install then run, choose from list’s only one reboot at end

http://www.autopatcher.com/

http://www.neowin.ne...howtopic=496637

http://www.softpedia...nload-6278.html

I find it very usefull

[VeedeeBee]

Peter99,

Ace advice that'll be really useful, 295Mb will take less time downloading than all the boot and re-boots on a normal update. I'll print out your advice and go look at the sites.

Current problem is the severe lack of Socket 462 (socket A) boards on the UK market, there is a PCC one on ebuyer but it's only a 4x AGP and another at SCAN which is a uATX (only 2 PCI slots).
Thanks for your help.

Regards

Veedeebee

[warriorscot]

On a un slipstreamed fresh install you should only have to restart two times at most at least thats what i do it downloads and isntalls most things first time and some more after so its not that bad.

Getting socket A stuff is pretty hard it been discontinued for such a long time, to be honest they are often not worth trying to fix with new parts being cheaper than old ones which can be at a premium or at the end of their effective operational lifetime.

[VeedeeBee]

Yep warriorscot, it's looking grim, there are few Socket A's about the best bet still looks like the PCChips 4x AGP motherboard.

Some of the components are not that old, the GFX 5700 was only on the machine for 3 months, my son had Star Wars battlefield and I had Joint Ops so the Nvidia onboard card needed boosting. Main issue was I probably overloaded the system on a low power PSU, so it killed the HDD in time. I did loads of rebuilds and XP was so tolerant that all the rebuilds were simple but started (towards the end of July 2005) to get too frequent.

I bought a new PC in August last year.

When I did the system description I forgot to mention that when it died originally I had 5 IDE devices working on the system, a 40GB system drive, a 120 GB storage drive, a Sony CD-ROM, a sony DVD-RW and a TEAC CD-RW. Not good for a 200W PSU

In its new role as Browser computer and low power games and DVDs in the dining room it shouldn't be taxed too much. I'm even tempted to de-tune the CPU from 1700 to lower the operating temperature.

I need to be very serious about the tight £70 price limit (£30 disk, £26 MB and £14 PSU)

Regards


VeedeeBee