Re: Upgrading Chaintech mobo?

treenoakio@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

I've an old pc with a Chaintech 7AJA motherboard. I'm trying to work
out if it's upgradeable enough to use as a test PC for working out the
best multi-booting setup for WinXP, Linux and even perhaps Vista. It
wouldn't have to run too well under Vista, just boot into it.

The motherboard currently has a Socket A, AMD Athlon (Thunderbird)
900Mhz CPU
The memory at present is a mere 127MB. I can get this upgraded to a
full complement of Crucial SDRAM (1.5GB) for just over a 100quid,
which may be worth the trouble and expense if it's possible to upgrade
the CPU by a significant amount. I did read that it may be possible to
fit a mobile variety of CPU to gain best performance.

Is there a way I can check for sure the maximum upgrade capacity of
this motherboard, or can anyone please advise me on the same?
--
Regards,
*** Treen

There's not much info on Chaintech's site, that's for sure!

Best I could find is here:

http://www.motherboard.cz/mb/chaintech/CT-7AJA.htm

The limitation is the 200MHz FSB. I seem to recall that the fastest Athlon
that runs that bus speed was a 1400, but finding a second hand one may be
difficult. Most of the 1400's are 266MHz FSB.

There is no way that I would spend 100UKP on this! Find a couple of 256MB
PC133's on eBay and Memtest them.

The AGP slot is only x4. IMHO, that alone rules out Vista. I've found that
Vista is sluggish on a box with an Athlon XP3200 and 1GB RAM, so I would
not even consider trying it.

Using the existing CPU and 512MB RAM, it would run XP acceptably. (FSVO
acceptable, obviously!) It would run a modern Linux disto, even with KDE,
very well; in fact I have a box sitting next to me with a 1000Mhz P3 and
512MB PC133 RAM that runs PCLinuxOS perfectly well.

HTH

Chris

--
Remove prejudice to reply.
.