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Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 5:02 pm
by Jim
I am in agreement King. Checked the board very carefully for any signs of having been used and didn't find any. Particularly the spring thingy mounted on the keyboard port is in pristine condition; and that is one of the first things to get bent to some degree or another; and very difficult to get back into its proper shape. In any case here are some better closeups of the caps on the used board for comparison.

Image

Image

Image

Image

It looks like the two boards have caps from either different manufacturers, or if from the same manufacturer, then from a different timeframe.

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 7:19 pm
by Jim
YESSS!!!!!!!!! THANKS URANIUM 235!!!!!! Cost a bunch though! Got to be very careful w/ this sucker.

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 11:48 pm
by Uranium235
The secret must be out that the Gigabyte GA-6VA7+ is the hottest AT board available. It's good your getting a spare for parts at least. Congrats! :)

Fastest AT Board

Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 3:59 pm
by Prime
A company named Commell made a Socket 478 Pentium 4 AT board. This rare unit may be the ultimate AT board. Here is a link to board specs.
http://www.bwi.com/prod/6255#
:)

RE: Fastest AT Board

Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 6:41 pm
by Jim
Very interesting. Didn't see a keyboard port in that pic, but presumably thats just because the pic is "representational". How did you come to know about that?

RE: Fastest AT Board

Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 8:24 pm
by Prime
On the specs page, it mentions that the keyboard is an internal connector, cable option. I happened to come across a link to this motherboard on a Tech forum while googling for a different AT motherboard. I was suprised to see it, I thought socket 370 was the end of the line for Baby AT's.

RE: Fastest AT Board

Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 10:43 pm
by Prime
Here is another link to a P4XB Baby AT board.
http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... f%26sa%3DG

RE: Fastest AT Board

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 7:01 am
by Jim
That one was a bit difficult to make sense out of. Still, it is interesting. I know absolutely nothing about P4s, cause I have never paid the slightest attention to them. The FSB reported for that board is quite impressive in AT terms. but I don't know how high the "Northwood" goes, nor do I know if "Socket 478" is the one Intel abandoned because of problems. (According to a tech in a local store, they did abandon one for that reason, --- 423??) The 2 PCI slots is a bit limited, though the presence of the AGP slot helps offset that somewhat. Did not see any indication that 4x AGP was supported though you would think that a board like that should. Probably keep my eyes open for 1 of those, though it will be hard to find since E-Bay started suppressing search for listings that don't specify international shipping. (which sucks).

EDIT : Correction, the first link you provided does specify 2x, 4x AGP so it is looking better.

RE: Fastest AT Board

Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:04 am
by Jim
Well for those who haven't figured it out already, I am now the happy owner of not one; but two Gigabyte GA-6VA7+ boards. The bad news is one of them, (obtained free), is supposedly dead. The good news is what killed it was a bios flash gone wrong. That was compounded I believe by attempting to revive the board with a replacement bios chip, which unfortunately was the wrong kind for the board. What all that means to me is that essentially it is a software issue; i.e. there is, (hopefully), no damaged hardware; all that has to be done is to get the proper bios installed and the board responding once again. Apparently the previous owner unsuccessfully tried taking a bios chip out of a good board to see if he could revive the board that way; but he did not go into details of how he went about that.

If it was me, I would stick the good chip in, clear the bios; stick in a PCI video card, some RAM and a processor then try it. Don't know if that will work, cause I haven't tried it yet; but I will; and I am open to any other suggestions as to how best to get the board working again.

Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2007 10:43 am
by Uranium235
That would be great if the bad board was fixable.

The Commell or Commate P4XB looks very interesting. I'm sure it is very hard to find one though. Thanks for the links Prime. :)

Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 12:15 am
by Uranium235
Here's another Gigabyte GA-6VA7+ for sale on Ebay. It will be interesting to see how much money this one fetches.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0085327510

Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 12:45 am
by Jim
That one went for $356.01; another one just went for the same price; and there is yet another with the bid sitting at about a dollar, w/ 5 days to run.

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 5:52 pm
by Jim
The third Gigabyte GA-6VA7+ arrived Saturday, (in filthy condition; - dust bunnies everywhere). Have not had a chance to test it yet; but assuming it works, that will be 2 good ones plus the bios flash casualty. EDIT : 3rd board tested and found working.

Have not been able to get the second one working yet though. Had assumed since the problem originated with a bad bios flash, that it could be solved by replacing the bios chip. Such has not been the case. Put a good chip in it and it still won't boot. "Q" : What could a bios flash do besides screw the bios chip ?

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 6:29 am
by theEMP
have you tried wipecmos from UBCD? ( http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ )

Try that on your bad bios chip a couple of times, I've read that it can help.

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 5:40 pm
by Jim
Thanks; problem is the board won't boot at all. Not w/ the original chip, (that was bad flashed by the original owner), not with the replacement chip that I took out of another GA-6VA7+, and now , having put that chip back in the board it came out of, it doesn't want to boot either!! Worse still, I flashed the third board myself to the latest bios, and though it would boot, shutdown, and reboot last night, it won't now. These are not very easy boards to work with. It took some fooling around with various video cards and processors to get them to work at all. Once working, however, they seemed alright; and I could put other video cards and processors in them and they would work. Next day, different story. Not sure what is going on; but when I hooked up SP5 again just now; it "found new hardware" - my monitor!!