BP6 worth resurrecting?

v65 · Post by **v65** » Fri Jan 16, 2004 5:48 pm

All,

Someone tossed a computer my way in exchange for some work I did a while back. I've just recently had a chance to go through it. Upon inspecting the contents I found some goodies inside like a 30G hard drive, 128M of memory, a functional CDROM and of course a BP6 m/b.

Upon cleaning things up with compressed air and firing up the computer for the first time I got some POST beeps. After playing with the memory (had to reseat it and cleaned the contacts) I got the computer to finally boot but now I was seeing a SOFTSET error message which I believe mentioned only 1 processor coming up. I forget what I fixed on the SOFTSET menu... but I eventually got things to come up clean... with dual 466Mhz processors. Sweet.

Now that I was getting the machine to boot... I wanted to see about getting those extra IDE ports (3/4) to work... in a RAID configuration. I've been doing a lot of reading on google and here about how the HPT366 is just not setup for this. Bummer.

I read about the guy on tweakhardware.com who flashed his HPT366 bios with bios for a HPT368 and his m/b remained silent/quiet/dead. I'm not about to take this chance with a functional m/b.

Seeing that hard drives come now in the multiple hundred meg capacities... I just don't see myself backing data as religiously as I used to. Knowing this, RAID1 seems highly desirable for me. If there's no hope in using the BP6 in a RAID config... what value can I get from this m/b except hooking up 8 IDE devices?

TIA.

Greg

InactiveX · Post by **InactiveX** » Sat Jan 17, 2004 12:59 am

Hi there Greg,

If you ask me, ignore the HPT altogether. In many cases it's buggy and may cause your HDDs to fail.

I use a Promise PCI IDE card in my BP6. If you want to go RAID, get a PCI RAID card, or better still, a SCSI or S-ATA card.

Stick around!

Wolfram · Post by **Wolfram** » Sat Jan 17, 2004 6:03 am

v65 wrote:If there's no hope in using the BP6 in a RAID config... what value can I get from this m/b except hooking up 8 IDE devices?

I use mine for Office work. Good response for an old board because of the dual setup. And I´m always running a lot of stuff in the background. (fax, answering machine, p2p software, dynamic ip service, video encoding etc.). Very quiet, because it´s easy to set up an almost silent cooling configuration. Many use the BP6 for (game/web) server or router purposes. And of course it´s just cool to have a duallie at home.

Worth resurrecting? What answer would you expect from people in this forum?

hyperspace · Post by **hyperspace** » Sat Jan 17, 2004 7:52 am

Welcome to BP6.com Greg!

A Dual processor system has a different feel than a single processor system. Everything is more responsive, even under load. Play music, burn a CD, surf the WEB, work on some HTML/PHP, edit a Word doc, etc.

I can't wait for mulitcore processors!

v65 · Post by **v65** » Sat Jan 17, 2004 9:25 am

InactiveX, Wolfram and hyperspace,

Thanks for your prompt replies and the welcome here. I concur about ditching the HPT366 altogether. The m/b currently has the RV bios (thanks to this forum!) and the HPT366 has the 1.28 bios. Despite these upgrades... RAID1 is not going to happen.

FWIW, I tossed in spare HD loaded Win2K, the HPT366 driver (again thanks to this forum

) and striped a couple of HDs on the 3/4 connector so I know I could use them if I wanted to in a pseudo RAID0 config. But w/o RAID1... I'd have to do some form of (tape?) backups with high capacity HDs.

I'll give a shot to obtaining a separate PCI IDE ATA RAID controller card. I've seen IWILLs and other generic brands selling pretty cheap on eBay. Before I decide to try a cheap generic I'll do a search here to find some pros/cons... otherwise I'll just spend a few more $$$ and go with the the PROMISE controller. I've got a PROMISE controller built into an ASUS A7V133 m/b and I'm very happy with it.

Again, thanks for your replies.

Greg

iSDn · Post by **iSDn** » Mon Jan 26, 2004 10:06 pm

You can use a software RAID on some disks if you want.

PDR60 · Post by **PDR60** » Thu Feb 05, 2004 11:48 pm

Hey v65 welcome to the BPer board. I have a couple of these boards running. If you're into hacking go for the dual p3 hack. I run mine the old fashioned way. Dual 366@500. I use one of mine for a web server. You fill it up with ram and put a SCSI raid card in there and that board will do a great job as a file server or web/ftp server. I have a couple of sites running on apache and this board has been super reilable. It use to be my main workstation but became a little slow. It has been up for a 150+ days without a reboot. the new site is generating quite a bit of traffic but the BPer just keeps on truckin.

http://www.linuxloader.com

hyperspace · Post by **hyperspace** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 1:31 pm

Very, very nice, PDR60!

Enlightening the rest of the World...

Those who understand, will follow.

kuun · Post by **kuun** » Tue Feb 10, 2004 11:10 pm

those who follow will understand

the bp6 is STILL a competitive mobo for it's time

it still has alot it can handle

Wolfram · Post by **Wolfram** » Wed Feb 11, 2004 4:31 am

Choir: "Those who follow will understand... those who follow will understand... those who follow will understand..."

[The dead BP6 rises, stretching its caps, demanding for fresh SETI units]

hyperspace · Post by **hyperspace** » Wed Feb 11, 2004 9:16 pm

Wolfram wrote:Choir: "Those who follow will understand... those who follow will understand... those who follow will understand..."

[The dead BP6 rises, stretching its caps, demanding for fresh SETI units]

Xcellent!

davd_bob · Post by **davd_bob** » Sun Feb 15, 2004 7:58 am

My first posting on ANY forum.

I have been interested in a dualie for a couple years but budget was not going to allow it. I even considered a socket5 pentium dualie for a little while, they wanted $250 for it. I setteled for a PPRO for my birthday last year, a gift from my wife off eBay $60. What a disapointment that thing was. Thankfully the board failed before I totally lost interest in dualies. I discovered the BP6 totally by accident late in December'03. I got one and it has been a joyride. Even with bad caps(which I plan to change) it plays, teamed with my wife, network version of Dungeon Seige smoother then my AMD K6-III. Its a keeper. The caps are really bad and it took several tries to get W2000pro loaded. Locks up when I increase FSB to 75. Yea, I really need to change the caps. Im going to try contact Jackson, email a couple shots of the swollen leaking cabs and see if they will send me some free as claimed by motherboardrepair.com.

Oh, I see in reading past posts that there is some small interest in old CPUs. I built a morphadited Compaq Luggable...wow. It started as
8088-8 640k ram(soldered to mobo)
20meg MFM hardcard / pair of HUGH 360k floppies
I added...
8bit memory could only use as expanded memory. Used that for 1.5meg disk cache.
8bit scsi card with an 80meg drive sounded like a helocopter starting.
8bit Intel 386-16 processor card it included 387co-pro with 1 meg of ram.
The jewel that crowned it was...486-40 that fits a 386 socket, had the 487 co-pro with it.
I had to manually configure any software I put on that puppy as NOTHING could figure how to install automaticlly on that weird setup. Supposedly portable, it must have weighed 80 lbs. Well, I have recently cleaned out most of my old stuff and got rid of a couple of the processors, Cyrex, 486overdrives, pentium233mmx, etc. but I kept that XT card which now has the 486/487 overdrive chips still on it.
Anyone interested?

BP6.Com

BP6 worth resurrecting?

BP6 worth resurrecting?

Re: BP6 worth resurrecting?