Re: Error and Correction Beeps

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

Patricia M Godfrey wrote:

> Aha! Jordan and Harry both get beeps all over the place, and both have
> Award BIOSes. Now that's only three PCs (my K6-2 is also Award), but NONE
> of the nonbeeping PCs I've tested has an Award BIOS, so it begins to look
> significant. Jordan, does that PC have an ISA slot? Populated or
> unpopulated?

Hi Patricia,

It does indeed. That was one of my specification requirements. The block of

components I paid the builder for up front, before he did his disappearing
act,
included a 2 ISA-slot version of that main board, and a 1 Ghz. Slot-1 P-3,
both
of which soon became hard to find, the latter actually rare. The
"replacement"
MB I bought had just one ISA slot, and a P3-850 was as close as I could find
in
a matching cpu. It turned out that the builder was no crook (never really
believed
he could be), just someone with an unfortunate and very messed up personal
life.
Business-wise, very irresponsible though. He eventually resurfaced, sending
me
what I had originally ordered quite some time earlier, and that accounts for
the
dual set of parts.

Of course, all this legacy stuff -- including things like Parallel or Serial
ports -- is
now well into the process of going away.

> And thanks for the offer, but I make it a matter of
> principle to use AMD CPUs in my main machines. Partly because they've
> stuck to parity/ECC RAM, which Intel has mostly abandoned except for
> servers,

I have always had parity/ECC RAM, and have it now. Guess that helps make
this a server class system. The ECC option is turned ON in my BIOS, yet when

the BIOS signs on during boot-ups, one of the things it says is something
like
"Data Integrity -- Non-parity," which leaves me wondering what I paid a
premium for ??

Those AMDs run *very* hot. Plenty of extra cooling is indicated.

> and partly on general principles: resist monopolies.

I hear you. They are getting *much harder* to resist, though. Real
competition
seems to be shriveling up almost everywhere you look. In products, in media
--
you name it. If there wasn't such a broad-spectrum reaction to the new FCC
directives on station ownership, this process would inexorably be leading to
maybe
3 or 4 mega-conglomerates controlling everything on the air, cable/sat,
fiber optic,
screens, recordings, or in print. Do you think Jaguars or Volvos are still
as good,
ever since Ford took them over ? I have strong doubts about that.

> If worse comes to worse and I have to run a two-PC system, I'll probably
> swap

> the K6/2 for the beeping Compaq at the office. It's adequate for Xy, and we
>
> need a more-RAM equipped machine over there.

At the moment, those components are still officially spares. But if you
should
change your mind, let me know.

I'll float another offer out there, should anyone on the List be interested.
I still
have the core of this system's predecessor: An ASUS P2B-F main board, with
a P-II 450 installed. It may or may not still have the memory (256M)
installed,
I'd need to check on that. This main board has no USB built-in at all, and I

don't know whether USB would be supported via an expansion card. It was
the basis for a system with good performance, at least for the kinds of
business
app.s we tend to run, particularly if they aren't the most demanding, latest
bloatware
versions. It ran NT-4 just fine. If anyone wants this for a system, I would
be inclined
to make it available to you gratis -- just cover the shipping.


Jordan