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Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2009 10:35 pm
by Jim
No, I am pretty sure that Gigabyte F--Ked Up, when they decreed that the Q6600 does not need the F8 bios on this board. The F7 bios undervolts the processor like crazy. It claims that NORMAL voltage for the processor is 1.25v. when it says 1.35v. right on the box the processor comes in. Worse than that, if you use the automatic settings you windup getting anywhere from 1.17 to 1.22v according to Sandra, and the "System Health Monitor" in the bios. You either have to be an expert who knows exactly what to set all the various voltages at, (THEN use the F7 bios), OR UNDERCLOCK the stupid thing to get it stable enough to flash the bios to the F8.

Posted: Sat Oct 24, 2009 4:35 pm
by Jim
Well, I've manged to get it working somewhat better than it was by disabling the "HPET Support" function (High Precision Event Timing) in the "Power Management" section of the bios. Apparantly you are only supposed to use that with "Vista". Thoughtfully Gigabyte had it enabled by "De Fault". I also moved the 2 800Mhz DDR2 sticks from slots 1&3 to slots 2&4. One other change I made was to change "Performance Enhance" in the "Intelligent Tweaking" section of the bios from "Standard" to "Turbo". You would think THAT would make the machine LESS STABLE; but Since Gigabyte enables it in the bios "Failsafe" "De Faults" when running an Intel Quadcore Q6600, I am led to conclude what it does is jackup the voltage for the faster processors that the board can support with this version of the bios. I actually have my soundcard software working for the first time in weeks; and all this clocked back at 9x266, with the voltages, except for the processor voltage set back to normal.

I tried to flash the bios to the F8 version; but the flash program that came with the board, 1) is incapable of finding the new bios's at any of the Gigabyte download sites, (Though it is supposed to be able to), and 2) Claims that the bios's that I downloaded myself from the Gigabyte site are the wrong ones for the board. All in all, I think I can get it working; but in future I will take a pass on "Gigabyte".

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All four HDDs have built in fulltime temperature monitoring. The removable and replaceable "C" Drive which resides in the Vantec SATA Hot Swap Tray, and the Removable Storage Drive which resides in the Vantec IDE Hot Swap Tray are shown in the next pic.

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And the two Internal Storage SATA Drives are monitored by the 3.5 inch bay Scythe Fan Controller, see next pic.

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Posted: Sat Oct 24, 2009 9:00 pm
by stevenaaus
That's some serious bios tweaking ;>
Temperature displays look good.

Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 7:39 pm
by Jim
Well now I have the bios flashed, thanks to the help over at Clunk forums. Thanks Kinnsey. Funny thing is no more black screen boots or blue screens or Checkdisk runs, but I am still getting program errors, and the FSB is running faster than it is set to run according to both everest and sandra. That with a lower than set multiplier! i.e the multiplier is set at 9x and the FSB is set at 266 Mhz, but Everest is reporting 7x343Mhz and sandra says the FSB is set above what the processor will support. Wierd !

Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 7:25 am
by Jim
Defective RAM was the issue. Would run if the timings were slacked off but not at its design speed. Fixed now, replaced the RAM.

Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 8:29 pm
by Jim
Welkl now that SCX is working ok finally, I have tackled another problem. Superpuppy 4. This has an Intel board, which has been the worst board I have ever tried to work with. Not that it dioesn't work alright, it does, except that the shutdown is rather flakey, if windows is not installed or operative. The problem has been drivers and bios settings and things like that. Very few bios settings in it, does not seem to want to support a 1.4 Ghz Tualatin, worry about that later I guess, for now it has a 1.2GHz P3. Having an enormous amount of trouble setting up my 98SE - XP PRO dualboot, thyis being complicated by the fact that I bought a used 9800 All In Wonder for it that didn't come with a driver disk. AMD / ATI are complete @@@ holes where their DVD decoder is concerned. So what I have had to try doing is setting it up with my All In Wonder 9000 to get the software in, (I have the factory disk for the 9000), then using the DVD Decoder from the 9000, switch cards to the 9800, and reinstall the other drivers. Fun ! Fun !! Fun !!!

Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 3:16 pm
by KenB
Well I got the new designs for the ductwork done; but none of the metal fabricating shops I tried wanted to
touch the job ! I am going to have to do it myself ! How disgusting that so called "Professionals" are unwilling
to attempt a job in their chosen field; and prefer to let an amateur handle the task himself !
Jim, correct me if I'm wrong, but most shops won't be interested in a tiny job like this. There's no money in it for them, these shops wants big orders, anything else is just wasting their time (in their view). You might be better served by trying to find a machinist who will do the work for you in his spare time. My uncle used to be a machinist, after work or at lunch, he would make aluminum rims for his RC car when he worked at a machine shop years ago. They were very professional and sturdy looking.

Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 6:59 pm
by Jim
Oh I got it done Ken. Some of it I had to do myself , but the parts that I could not do I finally found a place to handle. Actually the problem was not the size of the job, lots of places do custom work. The problem was the complexity of the bends required to fit in the convoluted space available.

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2011 7:42 pm
by tazwegion
Oh... me likey! :twisted:

So it's now officially 2011 where are you at with this system build Jim? any revised components/modifications? :D

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2011 8:01 pm
by Jim
Apart from the dust filters and ducted fan setup for the HDDs, this one has not got much in the way of mods. It is currantly my main machine and has to be reliable. The new one I am building in the HP case, is a different story. But it is going slowly, no rush, and my currant job doesn't leave me much time for it.

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2011 8:25 pm
by tazwegion
I totally understand without working there'll be no funds for PC upgrades/modifications, still you beat me to a Quad core well done!... I'm still running a single core Athlon64 :lol:

Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2012 7:11 pm
by Jim
Might also add that the way I have this machine setup, makes it SUPER RELIABLE. It has 4 HDDs, 2 of which are internal SATA drives, mounted in my home made ducted fan cooling setup. These, (Disks 3 & 4 in the photo below), are each divided into 5 partitions.

Disk 3 has an XP boot partition called "XP Backup" on it, which is "D drive", and 4 storage partitions. In order to boot from "D drive", I just go into the bios and reset the boot sequence of the HDDs so that Disk 3 is the first boot drive..

Disk 4 has my software installation partition on it, which is "E drive", 2 more storage partitions, and 2 backup partitions.

(I don't like to install software on my windows boot drives if I can avoid doing so, because it is almost invariably the "C drive" - with Windows on it that gets screwed up. - So I install my software on "E drive", and some of it doesn't have to be reinstalled, even if I have to format "C drive"; - add to that it makes the computer run faster, because instead of having one set of read/write heads on 1 HDD, chasing back and forth across "C" Drive between "Windows" and the program you are running, you are using two sets of Read/Write Heads on 2 different HDDs, one accessing "Windows" and the other accessing the program you are running..)

The other 2 HDDs the machine has live in "Hot Swap Trays". These are Disks 1 & 2 in the photo below.

One, (Disk 1), is an IDE Drive with 2 removable storage partitions on it. The other, (Disk 2) is another SATA drive with the "C drive" boot partition on it, and my "User Files" partition, - "F drive", my "Misc Temp" partition, - "G drive", as well as another 2 storage partitions.

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Since "Disk 2" lives in a "Hot Swap Tray", I can easily replace it with an identical HDD with identical partitions, and identical data, which also lives in a "Hot Swap Tray" that I keep sitting on a shelf in reserve.

In fact, I have a total of 13 HDDs, living in "Hot Swap Trays" that can be used to replace the 2 living in "Hot Swap Trays" that are in the machine.

Some, but not all of the are in the picture below.

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Add to that, the fact that one of said reserve "Hot Swap Trays" has an Hdd with 2 partitions, one containg a Norton Ghost image of my "C drive" and the other containing a set of Backups; and you can see why this machine is SUPER RELIABLE.

Re: SCX (My at-X Box)

Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2014 3:19 pm
by Jim
Just thought I would say that SCX, (My 2.4 GHz AT-X Box), is still my main machine, (with three Boot Partitions available on 5 HDDs - 2 in Hot Swap Trays), and it continues to run PERFECTLY RELIABLY !!!

Re: SCX (My at-X Box)

Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2016 3:55 pm
by Jim
Microsoft has blocked my e-mail on Supperpuppy 3 because I have forgotten the Code they want me to enter to gain access to e-mail. Help please !!!

Re: SCX (My at-X Box)

Posted: Sun Apr 24, 2016 12:45 pm
by Jim
Well, I remembered the code they want and once again I have access to my email.