My daily starts to shut down of it's own accord. Anyway one of the RAM slots has dropped out. Ditch it.

Install fan-less video card in an I7 machine. Wife notices it's her old desktop background. That's right. I was intending this PC for her.

Grab PC I salvaged from the dump. Transfer dual core CPU from old PC and get some RAM running in it.
Transfer harddrive over after backup.
Takes a while to get the video up and running.
Running sweet. AM2 motherboard with 4Gb RAM and dual core. It now says Win10 is not activated although the hardware is similar. I didn't open a microsoft account.

Later realise the motherboard is actually exactly the same as the old one. Gigabyte GA-M61SME-S2. OK it's old by your standard but it's fine.

Decide top try a Quadcore CPU in it. BIOS upgrade is needed.

BIOS upgrade successful. That went sweet. First time I've done it. What was all the fuss about.

Put the quad core in. Phenom 9550.
Doesn't start. Beeps sound like a memory error. Bum. Have to leave it like that because it's dinner time.
Try different RAM. Turns out the RAM I had in it was 1066 but the board only goes up to 800MHz. It's going well now with 2 sticks of 800MHz RAM. Anyone can explain that? Why did the dual core processor work with the 1066 RAM?

Replaced the 3.5" floppy with a usb multi card reader. Can anyone tell me why 2 leds light on it when the machine is powered down?

Now the Win activation problem. It's 32 bit Windows anyway and I want to upgrade to 8GB RAM. Plugged the old harddrive in. Installed WIn7 from DVD. Started Win10 install. It halted because Win7 was not activated yet. Had to activate it by phone.

I have to keep stopping to play spider videos for Mr 2.5 year old. He likes to pull me by the finger saying tumon, piderwebs. He's much more important than computer play. And I'm so happy for this time on lockdown to play with him and have a break.

bit - 2021-09-01 21:46:00

And revived a EMachines netbook I had forgotten the password for. I lost the netbook for ages and thought I'd left it in the Philippines. Anyway apparently the BIOS battery finally went flat and it forgot my password. Except not on the harddrive. So I swapped it out. Fixed.

bit - 2021-09-01 21:48:00

if i remember correctly in olden times sometimes a dead ram slot was nothing more than a poor connection of the CPU, and reseating it often cured it.
The RAM speed support thing might be related to BIOS revisions
USB multi-card readers, are/were awful almost 100% rate of failure due to a user forcing a card into the wrong slot or into a slot upside down.

bitsnpieces2020 - 2021-09-02 08:42:00

The memory controller is on the CPU rather than the motherboard - my guess is the old CPU only supported DDR2-800 (same as the board) but the new(er) one is up to 1066 (higher than the board can handle)

vtecintegra - 2021-09-02 09:08:00

Ok so the quad core Phenom is the older CPU? I need to look again at the dual core as to what model it is.

As to the card reader. Why does there have to be power going to it when the board is off. I was nervous about plugging it in actually. I guess there's an industry standard pinout but I did cook a board plugging in a front USB connector once, even though the wires went into a single connector block.

bit - 2021-09-02 13:11:00

bitsnpieces2020 wrote:

if i remember correctly in olden times sometimes a dead ram slot was nothing more than a poor connection of the CPU, and reseating it often cured it.

I'll try it again now that it's reseated. Thanks for the suggestions.

bit - 2021-09-02 13:16:00

bit wrote:

My daily starts to shut down of it's own accord. Anyway one of the RAM slots has dropped out. Ditch it.

Install fan-less video card in an I7 machine. Wife notices it's her old desktop background. That's right. I was intending this PC for her.

Grab PC I salvaged from the dump. Transfer dual core CPU from old PC and get some RAM running in it.
Transfer harddrive over after backup.
Takes a while to get the video up and running.
Running sweet. AM2 motherboard with 4Gb RAM and dual core. It now says Win10 is not activated although the hardware is similar. I didn't open a microsoft account.

Later realise the motherboard is actually exactly the same as the old one. Gigabyte GA-M61SME-S2. OK it's old by your standard but it's fine.

Decide top try a Quadcore CPU in it. BIOS upgrade is needed.

BIOS upgrade successful. That went sweet. First time I've done it. What was all the fuss about.

Put the quad core in. Phenom 9550.
Doesn't start. Beeps sound like a memory error. Bum. Have to leave it like that because it's dinner time.
Try different RAM. Turns out the RAM I had in it was 1066 but the board only goes up to 800MHz. It's going well now with 2 sticks of 800MHz RAM. Anyone can explain that? Why did the dual core processor work with the 1066 RAM?

Replaced the 3.5" floppy with a usb multi card reader. Can anyone tell me why 2 leds light on it when the machine is powered down?

Now the Win activation problem. It's 32 bit Windows anyway and I want to upgrade to 8GB RAM. Plugged the old harddrive in. Installed WIn7 from DVD. Started Win10 install. It halted because Win7 was not activated yet. Had to activate it by phone.

I have to keep stopping to play spider videos for Mr 2.5 year old. He likes to pull me by the finger saying tumon, piderwebs. He's much more important than computer play. And I'm so happy for this time on lockdown to play with him and have a break.

Heh, yes the joys of getting old stuff going.
Good work, carry on soldier.

ronaldo8 - 2021-09-02 17:52:00

Thanks Ronaldo.

bit - 2021-09-02 21:17:00

bit wrote:

Thanks Ronaldo.

The curse of handmedowns, I know it well.
Satisfying though, until next time you find yourself up to your armpits in it. ;)

ronaldo8 - 2021-09-02 22:09:00

Hmm maybe I will try and get the old AMD Duron 800 going again. Perhaps the CPU just requires reseating.

tygertung - 2021-09-03 00:30:00

I carried out an upgrade to windows 10 on a laptop the other day, was a Compaq PresarioC700 originally vista basic, Single core celeron processor, 2gb ram. I thought I would have no end of trouble with it but I had none whatsoever, even the missing drivers automatically installed. It even updated to 21h1 without a hassle and didn't take that long. Not slow either, was quite fast. I was very surprised and my mate was very happy.

muppet_slayer - 2021-09-03 03:10:00

Wow. My above mentioned system took ages. In particular, it hung at 71%. Running sweet now.

Back to work today but will hopefully take another look at the board with non working ram slot tomorrow.

bit - 2021-09-03 08:19:00

So I had mentioned that the 1066MHz RAM did not work in a GA-M61SME-S2 board after I put the quad core chip in, Phenom X4 9550 and It works with a dual core chip Athlon 64 X2 4000+. Something to do with the timing? I don't know. CPU Z says the 1066 RAM was running at DRAM frequency of 200.9. With the quad core and 800MHz RAM I'm getting DRAM freq 401.8.

I had said one RAM slot had dropped out on my original GA-M61SME-S2. board. Both slots are working now but with non identical sims. Who knows, removing and replacing processors fixed it and one of the other sims was faulty as well perhaps.

While I mess around with this old stuff my son announced he has an I9, 32Gb RAM, RTX 3070 and 1 Tb SSD and 3Tb HDD. Nevermind. I'm having fun.

I bought this: P203128459. It doesn't even beep. Only the HDD led blinks. I will try other processors in it. I have too many PCs by far lol.

bit - 2021-09-06 10:13:00