Upgrading CPU/RAM/MOBO

[Fatboy]

Ripping friends DVDs? Isn't that a bit naughty? (Don't know in terms of legality)

[Dougal]

Ripping friends DVDs? Isn't that a bit naughty? (Don't know in terms of legality)

He's backing them up for his friends incase their DVDs get damaged. No biggy.

[sawyen]

He's backing them up for his friends incase their DVDs get damaged. No biggy.

[Fatboy]

Fair enough, no further questions your honour.

[Fatboy]

Sawyen, you mentioned you're on BIOS rev2.2. I know that the current one is 2.4.

What is involved in flashing it? Is it a question of pressing CTRL & F2 (I think that's what I saw)? If so, I tried it yesterday, and it then came up with the message that it was searching for an .exe file on floppy. Is it going to be a case of dragging it off the CD to floppy, and then slotting in another one with the BIOS update?

[sawyen]

2.4? is it? COOL.. let me check.. WOOHOO! its out..

Ohh.. if you're able to get into your OS, just use Abit's window based flash utility.. never was flashing this easy (reminds me of those NF7 days)..

If not, just download the flash rev 24 file.. uncompress it, drag the files into a floppy, or USB stick.. and boot from it... You can refer to

http://www.abit.com.tw/page/uk/download/guide.php

if you need anymore guides to flash your BIOS from the command promp

[Fatboy]

2.4? is it? COOL.. let me check.. WOOHOO! its out..

Woo, glad I could share something of some help!

Gonna go the floppy disk route I think, at the moment it looks like the easiest option.

Regarding the updates, I'm glad they recalibrated the CPU temp - I thought it was a little on the high side given the monstrous heat-sink I have stuck to mine and started to think it might not be seated right!

[sawyen]

rev 22 already looks pretty cool... mine only runs 28C idle when C'n'Q is turned on @ 2.4GHz... cant wait till I download rev 24 tonight..

[Fatboy]

Mine was showing 43 degs until I turned the CPU fan the other way up so it was blowing air into the heat-sink (DOH! Rookie error - although I'll probably need a 92mm fan grill now to protect my delicate little fingers!), now its at 37, although the fan autoadjusts for temperature, so I'll see how it goes, it might be another BIOS issue, I'll give it a whirl when I get home.

BTW - the Guru-clock jobbie is genius IMO, although I'm gonna have to see about connecting all my other fans to the MOBO so I can track them too - although really it's just about seeing the CPU temps and fan speeds.

[Fatboy]

Right, flashing the BIOS to 2.4 seems to have helped A LOT! Unplugged the IDE drives and am currently trying to install XP.

Do I need to install a 3rd party driver when it prompts you to press F6? I'm not having RAID, just a stinky quick single drive? I tried pressing F6 and it just carried on regardless, then I get a "Setup could not determine the type ...." message regarding mass storage devices.

Ok, so I press "S" to specify an additional driver (one of the ones that came with the MOBO), kind of unsure which to choose, tried it with the SATA AHCI Intel driver - no joy, next thought "stuff it" and specified all the others (bar one which I didn't need because it was already supported). Right now we get the standard "Welcome to Setup" screen - but STILL NO HARD DISKS INSTALLED!!!!! AARRGGGGGGHHHH!!!!

[Fatboy]

Incidentally, in the boot device bit, what is an LS120?

Edit - sorted, it' a whopping great big floppy.

[sawyen]

I'm really suprised that you're still having problems running SATA as boot.. (spits mud from mouth in grave).. I got it running no prob, so I thought u might want to call up ABIT for some advice... see what they say..

[Fatboy]

Might just try that crazy plan of yours!

[sawyen]

relax m8, you just might have screwed up some isolated BIOS settings.. I'm sure you'll get it sorted out soon enough...

[sawyen]

Woohoo! rev 24 bios ROCKS! The temperature thingy they fixed sure is cool... now its reporting only 23C for my CPU on C'n'Q... room temps at 20C at the mo.. but the values seems to good to be true.. was having a really dodgy feeling that they actually 'manufactured' the value..

[Fatboy]

Glad you're getting on well with the update - I'm still having no joy installing XP to SATA, I've e-mailed Abit about it, so hopefully, sometime soon, I may have my desktop back in action.