Upgrading from K8T800 939 to ASRock 939A785GMH

[b wizz]

Thinking of upgrading from a k8t800 system that has served me well over the years, to a ASRock 939A785GMH .mainly for the sata 2 and PCI express, I am quite happy with 939 format

I currently use the MSI promise raid 20579 via 2 ide and 2 sata 1 drives I really don't want to re install xp , what are the chances of 1 sata 2 drives waking up in the asrock raid facillity and booting normally.
I supose I will still be limited to 200 mhz speed of 2 X 1 gig double sided ddr 1,s
I use norton ghost to copy partitions/drives. this has also served me well
Thanks in advance

[parsec]

Re: Upgrading from K8T800 939 to ASRock 939A785GMH

Thinking of upgrading from a k8t800 system that has served me well over the years, to a ASRock 939A785GMH .mainly for the sata 2 and PCI express, I am quite happy with 939 format

It would be nice to know which K8T800 board, since K8T800 is a VIA chipset used by multiple manufactures. Seems you have a MSI board from the hint below.

BTW, the Promise RAID is provided by the VIA chipset, whom also provide any drivers and software. VIA is long out of business, their products obsolete and no longer supported.

I currently use the MSI promise raid 20579 via 2 ide and 2 sata 1 drives I really don't want to re install xp ,what are the chances of 1 sata 2 drives waking up in the asrock raid facillity and booting normally.

The chances are exactly zero. The AMD SATA chipset on the ASRock 939A785GMH board, using AMD RAID drivers, has many years separating it from the VIA RAID implementation.

I supose I will still be limited to 200 mhz speed of 2 X 1 gig double sided ddr 1,s
I use norton ghost to copy partitions/drives. this has also served me well
Thanks in advance

The ASRock board supports memory as slow as 266MHz, which you might be able to clock down more.

Even if the VIA RAID would boot on the ASR board, every driver and utility you have now is worthless on this board. Not to mention dozens of other things. Your XP installation would fail up, down, and sideways. Copying partitions won't help.

Your old system is about 10 years old. XP is no longer supported by MS. Time to start over, which will take more than a mother board.

[b wizz]

Re: Upgrading from K8T800 939 to ASRock 939A785GMH

I did not know that msi had gone bust , Their support forum is still active ?

I assume that the proposed asrock board raid is installed in the same way as previously, ie floppy driver at F6 key.
I've no intention of changing from XP yet as it does most things I want to do.

Not sure whether to go down this route or look into a board with solid state drive support. just a whim at the moment
thanks for imput

[parsec]

Re: Upgrading from K8T800 939 to ASRock 939A785GMH

I did not know that msi had gone bust , Their support forum is still active ?

I assume that the proposed asrock board raid is installed in the same way as previously, ie floppy driver at F6 key.
I've no intention of changing from XP yet as it does most things I want to do.

Not sure whether to go down this route or look into a board with solid state drive support. just a whim at the moment
thanks for imput

Why did you think I said or implied that? They certainly are still in business. I said VIA is no longer around, which is not related to MSI, except that they and other mother board manufactures used chips made by VIA at one time.

[b wizz]

Re: Upgrading from K8T800 939 to ASRock 939A785GMH

Why did you think I said or implied that? They certainly are still in business. I said VIA is no longer around, which is not related to MSI, except that they and other mother board manufactures used chips made by VIA at one time.

I never was sure who made my board , "K8T Neo 2 Fir". says msi on first screen. The upgrade idea is rapidly going on the back burner , as ,besides the raid install issue ,I will still be limited by the memory controller of the 939 cpu.
After a PSU failure and replacement, all is well again

[- wardog -]

Re: Upgrading from K8T800 939 to ASRock 939A785GMH

I said VIA is no longer around, ....

Au contraire, VIA Technologies, Inc. and Arena: Main News

And b, swapping boards wouldn't be that awfully hard other than a little work on your part. Besides, my experiences with XP showed it(underlying OS) benefited greatly from yearly fresh installs.

Other than that, in the swap of the two boards mentioned you would be benefiting with getting away from the notoriously buggy/slow VIA chipset, gaining SATAII, gaining PCI-e, while still keeping some legacy ports like IDE and floppy.

[b wizz]

Re: Upgrading from K8T800 939 to ASRock 939A785GMH

Au contraire, VIA Technologies, Inc. and Arena: Main News

And b, swapping boards wouldn't be that awfully hard other than a little work on your part. Besides, my experiences with XP showed it(underlying OS) benefited greatly from yearly fresh installs.

Other than that, in the swap of the two boards mentioned you would be benefiting with getting away from the notoriously buggy/slow VIA chipset, gaining SATAII, gaining PCI-e, while still keeping some legacy ports like IDE and floppy.

Not really had any OS issues "other than self induced" with xp. as the system is ok again after psu change . Change for its own sake is not a good reason.

My overall thinking on this is that the 939 cpu with memory capacity and speed limitations . will be a longer term bottleneck.
The asrock board has some good features , very tempting

[- wardog -]

Re: Upgrading from K8T800 939 to ASRock 939A785GMH

Change for its own sake is not a good reason.

I wholeheartedly agree. Then it seems you've answered your own question. If there's no benefit to be gained, it's throwing good money away.

[parsec]

Re: Upgrading from K8T800 939 to ASRock 939A785GMH

Au contraire, VIA Technologies, Inc. and Arena: Main News

Oops, bitten by my own lack of correct terminology. VIA is in business of course, and they do claim to be in the chipset business. I said earlier they were not selling chipsets to support CPUs anymore, but if you check their website, they list Chipset products. Well what do you know...

Checking those chipset products, we find listings like this:

F:

VIA PT890
VIA PT880 Ultra
VIA P4M900 (IG)
VIA P4M890 (IG)
VIA P4M800 Pro (IG)
VIA P4M800 (IG)

*Note: VIA no longer sells some or all of these chipsets

[- wardog -]

Re: Upgrading from K8T800 939 to ASRock 939A785GMH

The VIA P-Series chipsets

heheh yea, I should have clarified too. They've moved on from them old days. I don't even know if the lower boards like Foxconn and their ilk even use VIA anything anymore. Big into USB controllers now I see.

[parsec]

Re: Upgrading from K8T800 939 to ASRock 939A785GMH

What really matters is the potential support for the VIA RAID chipset, that can be tracked down with the VIA info you found.

I'm not aware of any boards that used the VIA chipsets for Intel CPUs. That might be caused by Intel not offering to share CPU information needed by a mobo manufacture if they don't buy the Intel made chipsets. AMD did not seem to mind, and I know some of the Nvidia chipsets for mother boards were used on some Intel CPU boards. Nvidia buggy chipset products killed that business for them a while ago.

[b wizz]

Re: Upgrading from K8T800 939 to ASRock 939A785GMH

Many months on now I took the plunge and upgraded to the asrock board, I managed to save my system settings and programs which saves a lot of re finding some of my stuff aquired over many years. Now using 3 sata 2 drives in raid 0 using a removable rack for ghost back ups.
How I did it may not be ideal but . my system is as I hoped faster and stable (So far).

I have some queries about the graphics card set ups which I will ask in anotherpost