Mail Archives: opendos/2001/01/29/22:54:21.1
LeavesI am doing a massive upgrade of my computer system. Some of the
things I have found at auctions may be of some use to people in this
list that want to upgrade their systems. My goal was to make a system
that would work with just about any OS. My current 5x86-133 system just
won't hack some of the newer OSes. NT runs like molasses at twenty
degrees below zero. I wanted the fastest cheap system I could build and
keeping in mind that I will later want to upgrade it again. I bought all
of the following items from auctions on ebay and Yahoo.
I won't list too many prices I paid for stuff unless I spell it out and
will used rounded off numbers. This list rejected my last message as
spam. (probably looked like a big ad of items for sale.)
Several months ago, maybe even a year or more, I did research on mother
boards and since I have a full height very heavy duty expensive tower
case, I wanted a board that would work in this case. It had to have a
lot of slots for cards and have excellent speed and capabilities. I
settled on the Tyan Trinity 100AT S1590s.
I was looking for one on ebay and Yahoo and none were being auctioned
off execpt for two. Just a few months ago these were very plentiful. One
did not include anyhting but the MB. The other was used and about two
years old. However, it did include everything that comes in the retail
box: MB, manual, driver CD, IDE, floppy, serial, parallel, PS/2 mouse
cables and connectors. This one also included the USB cables and
connectors which is not included in the retail box. I also got the best
heavy duty fan that I also bid on and won in this auction that the same
seller was selling separately. I did not get the CPU which was an AMD
K6-2+ 550 MHz. It was sold via "buy now" before I looked for it. I won
this auction on ebay for eighty-two bucks. The fan was about another
twenty, but I saved on the shipping by getting both together. Total with
shipping was about 112.
Here is why I wanted this particular board even though there are cheaper
boards out there:
This system will be more powerful than what many Internet sites use. It
will out perform Celeron chips by a bunch. These boards are no longer
being manufactired by Tyan unless you special order 500 of them at a
time. Anyone interested in getting one of these boards new, let me know.
I know of a place on the WEB that has 333 new ones in stock. They will
run a little under 120 with shipping. I don't recall the exact amount
but believe it's about 115.
These are one of the very best K6 boards made it has 2.0-whatever CPU
voltage and will run the following CPUs:
Intel Pentium™/Pentium MMX™
Cyrix/IBM 6x86(M1) / 6x86MX(M2)
AMD K5/K6/K6-2 (K63D)
IDT C6/C6+
And though not listed in the specs, they will also run the K6-III+
If you currently are running a 66 or 83 MHz motherboard you could gain a
lot of speed by going to this board, but use your current processor
until you can get your hands on a K6 processor if you are currently
using one of the other processors mentioned above. I don't recall
whether you can get 83MHz bus speed on this board. There are a lot of
things you can do with this baord that are not documented. Tom's
Hardware is a good place to look for this stuff.
It has a FSB of 66MHz and 100MHz. It has 3 DIMM sockets and 2-72 pin
SIMM sockets. It will work in any AT or ATX case
except if the ATX case is not an 8 slot case you cannot use the AGP
port. It has 4 ISA, 4 PCI and 1 AGP-2X with one ISA/PCI slot shared. It
has connectors for both AT and ATX power supplies and has many other
features not found in many boards that still can be bought for AT cases.
It has a standard AT keyboard connector. It comes with a PS/2 mouse port
and connector. The retail box also includes large and small seial
connectors, parallel port connector, two IDE cables, one floppy cable.
About the only additional thing you need to buy is, if you want to use
the USB ports, you will have to buy those connectors. Also if you want
to use the Inhrared port you will have to buy that adapter as well. The
board includes the header for it. The only drawback may be it only has
33MHz IDE bus speed. Since I am using SCSI, I could care less about
that. Not many people running DOS have IDE 66MHz drives anyway.
The person selling this used board included the USB connectors with it.
I had to bid 82 to win this one and it's been used since late May 1999
so it's almost two years old. The person selling it used a K6-2+ 550MHz
CPU in it. I bid on and won a K6-3+ 450MHz. It is even faster because it
has 256K internal cache and the 1MB external cahe is used as L3 cache on
this motherboard
and can be expanded to 2MB. But from the speeds I saw, 2MB would not
increase performance very much with a K6-3. It might with a K6-2.
I bought my k6-3 for about the same price as k6-2 500 Mhz cost when you
include the rediculous shipping charges the sellers want on ebay. I
bought this one from a Yahoo auction in which the seller was selling 20
of them for 49.99. Total cost with shipping is 53.99! So the k6-2 dutch
auctions on ebay are going for around 42 and the sellers want 12 and 13
shipping! A k6-3 333MHz will out perform a K6-2 550 MHz CPU! Both the
K6-2+ and the k6-3+ have MMX capability and will out perform Intel"s
MMX. (It has extended MMX features not found in Intel chips.) Short of
going to a Pentium III or a K7, this will be the highest performing
system you can build and at a cheap price. It will leave a celeron in
the dust. A k6-2 400MHz will do that easily. (probably even a 350.)
It is an excellent choice for upgrading an AT chasis and for that matter
an ATX if you have a few ISA cards. Most of the ATX stuff only has 1,2
or 3 useable ISA slots. (most are 2 and newer ones only one ISA.)
To see the specs on this great board, check out this URL:
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/trinity100at.html
I also bought 2 PC-133 128MB DIMMs for this board for about 90 including
delivery. This should be a kickass system.
Note this is not a promotion for these and I am not affiliated with
anypalce selling these. It is just a heads up that these great boards
will probably not be avialable much longer, so grab while you can if it
fits your needs. There are ATX boards that are just as fast and good
ecept for the noted absence of ISA slots. In fact you can buy an ATX
baord and case for about the same amount.
My next message will include the other upgrades I am making to my
system. All of it was bought from auctions and very cheap. I am not
promoting auctions, but over the last two or three years, I have had
very good luck and gotten very good deals. I bought my current 5x86-133
MB with 48MB RAM with CPU and a few of the cables used about two years
ago for about 50. I was considering upgrading my 386DX40 from 8MB to
36MB or possibly even 64MB until I saw the price on 4MB 30 pin SIMMs. It
was cheaper to buy a much higher performance MB and 72 pin SIMMs than it
was to upgrade the 386 to 36MB!
If you have never bid for something on ebay or Yahoo, or if you have but
lost out on what you wanted, I can give you some hints on how to do
things that may help you get what you want. The first thing you should
do, is to learn everything about each of these auctions and watch what
goes on in the bidding for items that are similar or exactly what you
would like to get. It also gives you an idea of what the going rate is
for things being auctioned. WATCH the SHIPPING CHARGES, some sellers
gouge you with them to make more money on a sale. i.e. hidden charges!
Some have a surcharge for credit cards. Sign up and use Pay Pal (it's
free and you get 5 bucks for joining) (please use my URL so I also get 5
bucks when you join) and you can send the seller the funds immediately
and save on any CC charges. I have also seen where some sellers charge
an extra fee for each item they auction. So read the details closely in
the item descriptions. Don't deal with those jerks that charge extra for
this and that. They may have a lower starting bid for things and even a
buy price, but they kill you on the other charges.
Pay Pal URL:
https://secure.paypal.com/affil/pal=pmoran22%40yahoo.com
If you need help on how to do last minute bidding to insure you get what
you want at a good price let me know and I'll give you some more hints.
You have to be a cutthroat bidder in many cases. I have lost out because
of this cutthroat techniques, but it didn't take me long to figure it
out and use the same techniques against other smart buyers.
Pat
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