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| Product: FIC VA-503A Motherboard |
Company:
First International Computer (FIC) |
| Web: www.fic.com.tw |
Phone:
+886 (2) 2717- 4500 |
| Platform: Baby AT PC case & Socket 7 CPU |
SRP: ???
Street Price: $140 |
Cred Rating: | Special Award: |
[Deep Geek Alert: This piece covers upgrading a PC motherboard. As author Larry Smilg says: "Motherboard replacement is an involved process - you end up disconnecting and reconnecting every component of your computer." If you're squeemish about upgrading your RAM, move along, there's nothing for you to see here. If you've been toying with the idea of amassing more PC firepower without buying a brand new machine, read on.]
Well, the upgrade bug bit me...again. My Pentium 166 MMX wasn't providing enough speed for the programs I was running (like System Shock 2), and even worse, my motherboard was starting to show signs of senility, including loss of the PS/2 port and not booting up at its assigned bus speed. I set off in search of a new CPU and motherboard combo.
I wanted to go cheap, but I wanted to get access to some of the newer technologies that I didn't have with my old system. At the top of my list were AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port for the latest video cards), USB (Universal Serial Bus for devices like mice, scanners and digital cameras) and ATA/66 (The latest hard disk IDE interface technology, capable of transferring data at 66.6 MB/s). Constraining me was my old case, which was the AT style. Most new motherboards are ATX, which are differentiated by automatic power off, having the I/O ports attached directly to the motherboard and the component layout. Getting a new ATX case would add about US$75 to my upgrade costs.
I selected the FIC VA-503A with a 400MHz K6-2 processor, which cost $141 with ground shipping from Access Micro. The FIC VA-503A has 1 AGP slot, 4 PCI slots, 1 ISA slot, and 1 AMR slot. AMR (Audio Modem Riser) is a relatively new interface that allows an inexpensive software modem and sound card to be added to the motherboard. The disadvantage is that the audio and modem functions take processor cycles to run, which slows down other tasks. Also included with the motherboard are two USB root hubs, with one 2-port interface included (a bracket with 2 more ports that plugs into the motherboard may be purchased separately), a sound interface to allow use of the integrated sound without purchase of an AMR device, an ATA/66 hard drive controller which allows four IDE devices, ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) which can provide wakeup and shutdown control when running with a software controllable power supply (usually ATX), 3 DIMM slots for EDO or SDRAM with the option to run SDRAM 33MHz slower than the CPU bus interface, hardware monitoring of system voltages and temperatures, and the usual floppy, serial, parallel and PS/2 ports.
When I opened my package, I found the wrong motherboard inside. I had been sent a FIC VA-503+, which is a previous generation board with a different slot configuration. I called Access Micro and had them cross ship me the correct board. I opened my second package to find *another* FIC VA-503+. After speaking to a supervisor, they apologized and told me they were having trouble with this product at their warehouse, that it was not my fault (Duh!), that they would be sending me the correct board, and that I should check my email for the shipping information. That night I received an email saying that would not be able to ship me my motherboard and they were refunding my money for that item (I kept the K6-2). I ordered the board from another vendor.
Motherboard replacement is an involved process - you end up disconnecting and reconnecting every component of your computer. A good guide can be found at AnandTech.
Some tips on the process:
- Set all jumpers and DIP switches and make as many connections as possible *before* installing the motherboard into the case. Access gets harder once the board is installed.
- I found that my motherboard screws were loose when I went to remove my old board. Torque those screws well!
- Before you start, make a copy of the "Original Profile" in the System Properties/Hardware Profiles tab. When booting up for the first time, choose "None of the Above" on the boot menu to force Windows to re-detect all the new hardware.
The FIC VA-503A uses DIP switches to configure CPU voltage, bus speeds and CPU multiplier, which is easier than setting multiple jumpers, but not as easy as being able to perform that setup in BIOS, which some boards allow you to do. A jumper needed to be set for the power supply type and the factory default is ATX (most purchasers of this board will use AT). I set my machine to use the proper 2.2V, 4x multiplier and 100MHz FSB (front-side bus) settings for the CPU. I also set my RAM speed to 66MHz so I could reuse my 12 ns (nanosecond) SDRAM (100MHz operation requires 10 ns SDRAM).
When assembling my new system, the CPU did not drop into the socket as it should have. The K6-2 CPU had a bent pin on the outer center of a row, as if it had been knocked against something. This was probably Access Micro's fault (again!), as the CPU was OEM, which means that it comes in a tray of five CPUs from AMD, and then the reseller removes the CPU and puts it into an individual anti-static bag. I straightened the pin *very carefully* and continued. My first attempts to boot up were met with dead silence. Although my hard disk spun up and lights lit on the network card (indicating power to the peripherals and to the motherboard), the machine did not boot up or beep (beeps are indicative of a specific problem). I checked my connections and DIP/jumper settings twice. No luck. I tried removing all peripherals except for the video card and RAM and also installed my old P166 MMX CPU, but was never able to get a pulse. After exchanging the board with the vendor (that's right, my third attempt!), my machine again failed to respond. I cycled power again and it booted! I entered BIOS to configure the IDE devices and other settings, and got a complete lockup after about one minute. I reset and got more lockups. I tried reinstalled my P166 CPU and was finally able to run the system with no lockups. I suspected a heat problem. I'd noticed the heatsink/fan combo that Access Micro included with the K6-2 looked fairly small. I replaced it with the larger heatsink and fan I had used on my P166 and it began to run more reliably.
A better manual for the motherboard would have been appreciated. Weaknesses include poor explanation of the BIOS settings and a lack of instructions on how to connect the ATA/66 IDE cable. (The black connector goes to the IDE master, the gray to the slave, and the blue to the motherboard. If two devices are connected, both must be ATA/66 compliant to get ATA/66 operation.)
Re-detection of the motherboard resources and re-installation of drivers went without too much trouble. The biggest annoyance was that the IDE controller was detected late, and without that, new Windows drivers could not be retrieved from the included CD. I had to skip those devices and go back and install them manually from the System Control Panel after the initial pass-through. They were conveniently labeled as "Unknown Devices" with a big yellow question mark on the Device Manager list. A tip would be to copy all of the Windows .CAB files ("cabinet files" compress multiple Windows files into one that can be extracted with the extract.exe utility) and peripheral drivers to the hard disk before beginning the replacement.
After Windows was working properly, which took about seven annoying reboots, I looked at the utilities FIC included on the CD. The first items I checked out were the chipset patches. Documentation would have been greatly appreciated here. As it turns out, I didn't need any of the three patches offered, but installing the AGP driver messed up my PCI videocard's operation and I had to uninstall it. I installed the hardware monitoring program, but skipped the included Internet phone and anti-virus software. Drivers for the onboard sound were on the CD, but I used my old sound card, so I didn't need them. The hardware monitor, called 1st Aid, sits in your system tray and shows a window with a bar graph representing the CPU core voltage, 3.3V, 5V, and 12 V levels, the CPU and chassis fan speeds (if using a fan which supports that feature) and the CPU and system temperatures. Alarm levels can be set for all parameters. If an alarm is tripped, the eye in the taskbar turns into an exclamation point (which isn't very useful if the taskbar is hidden). An audible alarm or a popup box would been a better idea. The other drawback of the 1st Aid utility is that it accesses the hard disk every 2 seconds, which degraded my disk benchmark performance during random access testing. I removed 1st Aid from my Startup folder and now run it only if I want to check my temperatures.
Performance is good overall. My ATA/66 hard disk performance went up by about 25% because my previous motherboard only supported the 16.6MB/s interface. CPU performance doubled, as expected with the megahertz difference. Memory performance went down by about 20%, which is a known weakness of the VIA MVP3 chipset versus the Intel motherboard chipsets. It feels good, and System Shock 2 runs noticeably smoother now. The occasional failure to boot on power up disturbs me still...oh yeah...and I'll never buy anything from Access Micro again. In retrospect, I think I would've been happier with a new case, a quality ATX board and a Celeron processor, but then, I'd have been out another hundred bucks.
- Larry Smilg [2/11/00]
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