I find it hard to believe your computer is that much crap. No-one is stupid enough to use a VX for gaming in the 21st century!

Trust me, I bring a whole new dimension to the definition of stupidity. I plan on keeping my little ISA cards when I go to university, and then I'll use it still if I ever start a family, and then I'd probably be buried with it in a casket looking like a BabyAT tower case or something. And just to tell you all how completely pathetic my mainboard is, I've made a little FAQ here. I own a bloody PcChips M537 or something mainboard (betcha you've never heard of that company, because neither have I...) that's based on Intel's locked away and swallowed the key i430VX. I've always detested MMX because it barely even helps those uselsss 2d graphics that it was supposed to make shine, but lots of game music today actually use MMX to speed up sound/music, & considering I still use an ISA sound card, me would like MMX in a sadistic sort of way(it's always fun in May to release those school tensions by ripping Intel transistors off of their little wafers). But my stupid mainboard can't even take a MMX core without one of those stupid voltage regulator thingies & I'm not willing to sawder and cremate my motherboard with extra resistors and all that other weird stuff just for a stupid Pentium 233MMX CPU to fix in that socket7 slot. I can't overclock my board because it's unstable enough at 60MHz bus speed! At 66MHz, games freeze after a few dumb minutes of useless playing and at 75 MHz, the now 38MHz PCI bus seems to start frying my cards one by one until only dorothy and that little dog of hers is left alive. I have a BabyAT board which was so badly designed that my PS/2 port was blocked behind the metal casing; as I probably blurted out so many times on this webpage, I actually had to take a powersaw and cut through my casing to let my Ps/2 see the light Unfortunately, that process not only cut through a big slab of my mainboard's edge (bye bye little Parallet port...) but the sparks did a little extra bit of sawdering work on my brand-new, poor little Savage4 card, which out of complete laziness I just left in the top PCI slot. Oh boo hoo, right... It also turns out that my USB ports don't work; they were disabled by PcChips because the USB on my board is not up to the specifications demanded by Intel or something. Crappy crud, right? And I'm sure as hell not buying one of those PCI USB ports (unless I really need USB 2.0 because no Super7 board will have that built in).

To add further insult to injury, I looked into my 1994 or something bios and learned that it was not Y2k compatible or something, so I desperately went to places like Unicorn or something and asked them for a new bios. But doggone it, they refused all of my 60 or something pleas because a) PcChips is, um, not the most legal of distributors and Award will give them no support and b) who the hell would use a PcChips motherboard for 5 or 6 bloody years anyway? So months before the oh-so not exciting Y2k night, I set my computer's date to the year 2002, I close my eyes, shut the little tramp computer off, switched it back on and wh would've thought? It worked perfectly! The stupid Y2k thing was all a hoax from the beginning and here I sit today, gnawing at my thumbs with a 1994 bios stuck in my whore computer. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Oh, and before I forget, my bios battery has never worked properly. A second in real life counts as either 0.8 or 0.5 seconds on the computer, depending if Widnows is on or not. If I ever set my computer to the proper date, I just have to come back a month later and notice that date hasn't really changed. And no, for all those people who know me, I did not screw up my bios battery. It never bloody worked once since I got my computer. The first day I got this howling machine, the date was already off and pssing the hell out of all my shareware programs (which was kinda of good thing before they got their own clocks installed...). I swear, if my computer were a chicken keiser bun that tasted a lot like chicken, I would bite its head off with my feet.

Aw, C'mon! What are you whining about? I'm stuck with a damn TX and you only heard me complaining 3 times a week!

I would die (and come back as me in anothet life, of course) for a TX board! Those things were everything that every little one of those Al-bundy disfunctional VX boards wanted to be! Here's a list of what each can do:

Both the TX and the VX can store as much as 512kb of L2 cache at some kind of weird, messed up clock speed that's probably way below my CPU's frequency. But while the TX has a brilliantly gastly fast 3-1-1-1-1-1-1 something cache timing ratio, mine has a bunch of 2s in there to slow down the whole sluggish-already process. Both the TX and the VX can only cache 64MB of RAM with their L1 cache therefore it's not really suitable to exceed 64MB on either board. And both boards can handle EDO RAM, the ancient bye-bye birdy FPM RAM, and 66MHz SDRAM. This all seems fair, right? Not at all. Not bloody all at, uh, all. While the TX can easily use 64MB of SDRAM, when I put a 64MB module in my board, it fried every circuit in that RAM chip! It can't take more than 32MB of bloody SDRAM (go che ck the Intel support site if you don't believe me)! And then what am I supposed to do to even run Starcraft with more than 1 dumb opponent? Replace the 32MB Pc-66 SDRAM that I payed for with, uh, sort of my own money and replace it with 64MB of harry EDO RAM that will have to, uh, sort of come 0ut of my pocket too? No, not for me. This is the reason I need a new mainboard. I want my 256MB of Pc-100 RAM to make everyone with a bloody gig of Pc-133 RAM to be oh-so- not very jealous. Ah, heck, at least I'm getting closer to matching them than I am with that 16MB module I'm left with now...

To add even more salt to my wounds, I've just learned that the TX has that turbo PC-66 mode because it uses a 5-1-1-1-1-blah blah something SDRAM caching bit while my dumb VX does a 7-1-1-1-1 and some other weird number bashing tune. It sorta gives me comfort that the TX doesn't have an EISA bus (neither do I, but if I'm going down, I wanna take everyone else down with me...), but then I check and notice the TX has that annoying UDMA33 IDE channel and I'm stuck with the usless ATA16 format! I've benchmarked my hard drives & I don't think they can get past a 2MB transfer rate or something! I can't even enable DMA mode in the bloody Windows9x system panel for Willy Lowman's sake! And to top it all off, while the TX has built in ACPI functions, mine has nothing and seems to overheat after sitting idle for a bloody few minutes! I have to use a CPU cooler just to keep my computer running to type this stupid article! So no-one unless you've got a PcChips i430VX board, you can't in good conscience complain to me, 'cause I'm the king of the odf squirrels!

But in all honesty, I'm going to feel so bad departing with my VX board. Me have so many memories with it... not good memories, mind you... just memories...

Okay, show me the moneyboards! Show me the Moneyboards!... Uh, I get chessier ever line I type...

Okay dokay, before me start, let me just tell you all that everyone of these boards have ACPI Win98 functions and Wake-on LAN stuff that make my VX board look more primitive than Australopithecus and those people like me who can't seem to spell that species properly. Anyhew, the first up to the bat where everyone goes on strike is Soyo's little baby, uh, Baby AT something yadda motherboard. Um, I sorta forget its name so I'll just list what kind of chipset it has on board. I think it likes to be called the ETEQ 82C6638AT/6629 AGP chipset but I think I'll just call it 'Danny' for short. I already forget if it uses a Via, Ali, or SiS chipset on board so I'll sort of pretend like that doesn't matter... Anyhew, here are the material matter data thingies on the Danny motherboard:

-supports all Intel ZIF Socket7 Pentium 1 (yes, we do remember that 1 series, don't we yall?) CPUs, all Cyrix 6x86 (yes, we all remember Cyrix's heyday too... right...) MX & MII processors, all AMDK5 (vhat? There was AMD before the Athlon?), K6s, & K6-2s with 3dnow! (& I bet we can fit thta K6-3 in there somewhere if it still exists in stores)

-it has 1 AGP 2x slot, 3 PCI busmastered (vhat else is there these days?) slots, & 1 ISA slot (goes 8.33 MHz, me thinks, like every regular ISA thingy); one of the ISA slots is a shared PCI/ISA one, but who really needs to use ISA these days except me?

-it has a whopping (okay, not that whipping but still good for me) 1MB pipeline burst SRAM cache on board (yup, that's right; there was a time when the L2 was not on board the CPU...); it can take 2 SDRAM SIMM modules or nudge in 2 72pin DIMM modules for all us EDO worshippers out there; it can recognize as large as 256MB DIMM modules and can hold as much as 512MB of RAM in total annihilation (God, I hate that game - Victor, why do you still play that thingy?)

-the I/O (You know, input output stuff) includes 1 floppy disk port, 2 16550 UART compatible serial ports (vhat else is there?), 1 EPP/ECP Parallel Port, 2 PCI Busmastered EISA hard drive ports, 2 USB 1.0 thingies, a PS/2 circle dot thing, & an infrared IrDA Port for God knows what kind of uses

-the Soyo Danny has a 100MHz bus speed (but can run at 66 of course if you're using PC-66 RAM like me), uses UDMA 33, and straight from the Booker T bookend, it's a "4 Layer PCB, 22cm x 23cm, AT form factor"

Now tis time for my two useless Canadian cents... The Soyo Danny doesn't have anythingy spectacular on it except that 1MB of SRAM cache (which you need since the cache runs at what? Just a third of the processor speed or something? Me forget), which should allow me to upgrade to a full 512 MB of RAM when I actually earn some money. However, Soyo has kept a pretty unknown but still not very tarnished image in my head at least, so for now I'll trust that their motherboards are pretty compatible with most add-on cards out there. I'll keep checking if people claim that their Soyos come alive at night and nibble at their nipples (huh?) but I haven't heard any reports on the SDN forum of Savage4 cards not working on Soyo boards (and we all have Savage4 cards... right...)...

Okay, I've heard of a company called Anus & all my friends buy from them. What do you think of them?...

Um, you mean 'Asus', right?... Well, Anus is what my brother called the company when I had to choose which laptop computer to buy for my sister at university. She was torn between Asus and some other company, while I was going for Eurocom or the company we all know and love: Ultinet (huh?). She ended up buying a Eurocom, which was my second choice, but it's been plagued with problems that have luckily been fixed by good technical support and a long warranty... And no, Sebastian, I didn't really touch her computer when it died. I may be a walking computer virus, but I ain't stupid enough to touch that laptop... yet... I guess I just have the best track report for picking the best companies... Go Savage4! go Savage4!... ugh... Anyhew, I'm here today to report on the ASUS P5-99B which, because my friend likes this company oh-so much, I'll name it in his honour: I'll call it the 'Victor'. It is based upon SiS530 with the 5595 Super South Bridge or something (I think that is meant for communicating between the ports and the system bus, but me probably wrong as always). Moving along with Gone in 60 seconds, here are the Anal (uh, I mean the Victor's) features:

-supports all AMD K6-2 & K6-3 CPUs, Cyrix MIIs, and I think all Pentium MMX processors; I acchume (uh, I mean assume...) that it also runs AMDK5s (I actaully have one of these in my pokcet right now - I kept it around for bad luck), regular Intel Pentiums, and whatever CPUs Cyrix made in their little Javscript sad lifetime (God, I hate Java... who's with me? Who's with me???)

-it has a built in 2d/3d 8MB AGP2x VGA that doesn't seem to have a brand name on it (and who in God's name who wanna use a 3d card like that?... well, me mean besides my cousin, but I won't get into that...); it also has a built-in ESS-Solo1 3d audio card on board & though I do love ESS (my first sound card came from them for a massive 10 bucks), I think I'll skip out on this option

-it has 1 USB port (but we all know that we can split into 127 or something pports by gnawing away at it with out teet), 1 infrared thingy, & UDMA66 support

-it can hold either 512kb of L2 cache but if you're lucky, you can stash up to 1MB in there; it has 3 DIMM slots to hold as much as 768 MB of PC-100 SDRAM which would probably cost more than an arm, leg, or nickel or something

-I'm guessing here, but I think the Victor only has about 2 or 3 PCI slots and 1 AGP slot; Asus hates ISA because it just looks so beautiful, so I bet there's only one of those 16-bit mastercraftpieces on the Victor

Okay dokay, the Victor seems to hold a ton of RAM but it's hard for me to believe that the tortoise L2 cache at only 512kb can actually read from all 768MB of transistors biting away at its legs (sounds just like childhood to me...). It's main cat prowess or something comes from it's UDMA66 support, but I'm really turned off by the fact you have an onboard VGA card, which really makes adding 3d accelerators and pain in the buttfers. Its really easy to just change around jumpers, but who amongst us is actually incited enough to look in the bloody Asus manual? No, wait, me stand corrected; what really turns me off is that this board is a Asus. Asus gives quite a lot of tech support if what me've heard tis right. Out of all the companies here, Asus is really the only one that releases new drivers. But on most Asus boards (not all 'cause some of the P3 ones really fly like Mike Tyson), games chug at subsonic speeds (ah, too bad...) and sparks fly from bad chemistry and overheating. But if you want expansion card compatibility, nothing beats the Anus.

Epox know Motherboards. Epox know Super7. Epox know what time of day it is. Epox is bloody smart.

Um, I'm getting scared at what I write now... But I have to concur that Epox does make brilliantly fast motheroh-yeahboards that usually have excellent designs. Me thinks today I shall review the Epox EP-58MVP3C-M which for no apparent reason will be called the 'Conor'. It is based upon Via's weed-sweet-smelling MVP3 chipset that is actually my choice to be the best Super Socket 7 chipset out there today (um, I mean when there was a Socket7 day). Well, let the showcase showdown begin:

-supports all Socket7 Processors, from the Pentium 166 (that would be me!) all the way to the AMDK6-3 550MHz (I wonder if AMD is rich enough now to bring it any higher, but then again, who would want a K6 when the Delaware-exciting Duron is up for grabs?)

-it has one FDD floppy controller, 1 ECP/EPP Parallet Port, & 2 average Canadian Joe Serial ports to be the best part of North America, 1 PS/2 port (but if my VX board has a Ps/2 port, then everything since the dawn of civilization has one in it too somewhere), 2 USB ports for more toe-licking fun, 2 UDMA33 controllers for up to the regular 4 Clark Kent My Secret Identity IDE devices to be hooked up and addicted

-it has just 512kb of onboard L2 SRAM cache and has 3 DIMM slots to hold as much as 768MB of PC-100 RAM (yes, there was a time when RDRAM and DDRAM did not exist...); you can easily set the jumpers for the Conor to run and be whiplashed at 66MHz, 75, 83, 95, or 100 MHz bus speed but of course, we won't settle for anything but that 192 or something Mhz speed

-it has 3 whole ISA slots and 4 incredible Batman meets Godzilla PCI slots for doing you know what under the living room sofa... and of course it's stuck with that AGP2x slot (I know, AGP8x or whatever Intel wants to call that useless piece of crap is coming out and its going to mangle and screw in the morning the AGP4x format or something, but kill that hype already! I'm sticking with my PCI mentotalannihilationtallity and no-one is going to stop me except the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, and maybe that rabbit across the street)

The Conor motherboard is a tempting buy because of its 4 PCI slots & it's supposed to be really easy to overclock successfully without putting some sort of junk Kyrotech water-based air conditionning system or something in your, um, system thingy. However, one of those PCI slots me thinks is blocked by a block on the motherobard or something, which prevents you from putting anything in that slot except one of those tiny, beenie-baby Ethernet cards or some other Antarctica foreign stuff like that. I've also read lots of reports of Epox boards messing up with the Savage4, so I kinda am led to believe Epox doesn't have the best track record when it comes to compatibility. Neverthefrigginless, if this board was sold anywhere in my area, I would buy it because it must be just a joy-joy to screw around with all the jumpers on-board. If I can't find either of the boards below, da Conor will be next on my list of things to screw... up, I mean. Screw up... wait, that still doesn't sound good...

I like Chicken, I like liver, Mow-Gigabyte, Mow-Gigabyte, Please Deliver...

Yes, Mr. Belvadire if that is really how you spell your name... I relly should've payed atention to all dose speling lesons becase me relly do suk at speling... Anyhew, I'm back with a grinchy frown and tonight, Seattle, me thinks me shall preview (uh, I really need to check the dictionary too) Gigabyte's baby AT GA-5AA Rev 3.2 which I shall call 'the Meagan'. It's based upon the ALi Aladdin V AGPset which means something that the French call a certain, uh, I don't know what. The Meagan was at the top of my list of buys a few months ago, so let's see how it fares against Canada's Wonderland, Disneyworld and those naked neighbours we always see crawling along the streets:

-and yes, me do know me am not funny! But cut off me some slack! My first IQ test said I was around the 60 mark!

-it supports all Socket7 processors from Intel's Pentium 166 or above (though it can probably stomach as low as a P90 and no, I'm not tlaking about a Pentium 90 5 GHz or something), all AMD K6-2s and K6-3s, and all Cyrix MII; the info sheet claims the Meagan can only breathe in MMX processors, which doesn't go well with me original Pentium thingy, but oh well, AOL, I guess I could get a new CPU to make the Meagan happy

-it is based upon the ALi Aladdin M1542 & M1543C which means something that I have no clue about

-I don't know how many DIMM or SIMM slots it has, but it can store 768MB of SDRAM so I acchume that it has somewhere between 1 and 50 RAM slots, it has just 512kb of PB SRAM L2 cache on board and I must be in Quasimodo mode or something because what the heck does PB mean? Puberty? Pelvic Banana?.. uh, wait, that didn't sound good either... Um, who's getting hungry here?

-the Meagan has 1 AGP 2x slot, 3 PCI slots, and is stuck with just two of those ISA slots I so love to ply out of shape; I have 3 ISA cards as of today so unless I get asn external modem or something, the Meagan is off-limits to me

-I/O wise, it has 2 UDMA 66 controllers to chug out those MBs when software is actually made good enough to do so, we all know it has a FDD port, a PS/2 port, 2 Serial thingies, but sadly, it has just 1 Parallel Port but makes up for it by sacrificing its integrity and pride and having 2 USB ports... but that's only optional... dognabbit, everything is just optional these days...

The Meagan's saving grace is that Gigabyte is using the Ali chipset and people who use this card will probably get quite a few driver updates (Via gives out lots of updates too, but how many actually work?). I do like how it has UDMA66 onboard, but I was considering buying a ATA-100 PCI card sooner or, um, sooner, I don't really care right about, um, around now. But the biggest problems I see are that it only has 521 kb (um, you know I meant 52, right?... Dognabbit, me mean 512!...) of cache and um, I seem to forget the other problem right now so let me bang my head on a locker to remember... since I'm probably only going to get 256MB of RAM (oh, boo-hoo right?), 1MB of cache won't matter but... I just hate the number 52... Uh, I mean 52... Dognabbit, I mean that bloody 512! That number is unbalanced by having that dang 1 in the middle and it's too hard for me to bloody type! It's like the bloody AOL of integers!

And now, tis time to unveal the best of the best of the best, sir; with honours, sir!

Right... I'm starting to fall asleep and drool on my baby pillow so please bear with me, folks. Ok, the last board standing to put the grrr in swinger, baby, is Tyan's Trinity 100AT, and because it's the best business/gaming Super7 solution I've seen thus far, I'll name it after my, ahem, rival that I feel overshadows me, Mr. Sebastian. Just for the record books, I tried to buy the Sebastian in April but apparently, it's not being made anymore. If you want this card and you find a wholesaler that might keep it as a foot messager or something, the Sebastian is a Trinity 100AT S1590S with a UPC UPS GPS serial number of 6 35872 00423 0, me think. Like the Epox, it's based on the Via Gansta Apollo MVP3 that runs at 100MHz bus speed. And just in case you have a -5 second memory like me, all Super7 boards are supposed to run at 100MHz so, um, whoop-de-do or something, however you spell it, because 100 MHz ain't very much to brag about these days. Well, let's see why I think the Tyan has lots to brag about:

-it has full compatibility for all Socket 7 boards from I think the Pentium90 to the AMDK6-3d 550; it has 3 DIMM slots onboard but can only hold 384MB of PC-100 RAM, not like I'm complaining or anything; it has 2 SIMM sockets and it would be really neat if you could mix and match SDRAM and EDO and run them at the same time, but I guess I should've learned my lesson after I fried my VX board... twice... or more, I can't really remember; but here is the best part: it has a full 1MB of SRAM L2 cache to go along with its full compatibility and other happy crap

-no, wait, here's the best part: it has 4, yes, 4 PCI slots, 1 AGP 32-bit AGP2x slot, and wait, hold the presses! It gets bloody better here: it has an awe64-inspiring 4 ISA slots! Yes! Yes! Oh Endoplasmic Reticulum www.YES.com.org YES!!!; however, one of those ISA slots is really a shared one with the 4 PCI, but am I complaining? YES!!!.. uh, I mean, no I'm not...

-it has 2 bus-mastered UDMA33 controllers w/ DMA mode2 support, it actually has 2 floppy controllers and 2 16550 UART serial controllers if I'm still starstuck with a 9-pin mouse in the future; it just has 1 ECP/EPP Parallet Port because it has an Infrared port header too; it has 2 USB 1.2 ports (wait a sec, when did 1.2 come out? I never heard about that under my rock...) and that always stubbornly lovely PS/2 port to ward off that stupid Survivors show

-I haven't reported motherboard sizes for a while, but I will here: the Sebastian is a Baby-AT-thingy-Mini-AT design (11.1"x8.75"); it comes with a 3 year warranty me thinks and even comes with IDE cables in the total EASports 3-game package

As Keanu in the Matrix once said, 'Whoah'... Sign me up for boot camp because I'm getting me a Sebastian! The only thing I'm worried about is what kind of power supply I need for this thingy, so I guess I'll just collect a bunch of 1980s ATX power supplies, nail them together, and see if that works. All of the PCI slots are free for teeth usage (though 1 ISA slots is blocked by a circle thingy) & I just love the design of the motherboard so much that I keep it as my Win9x background. There is a whole lot of room around the CPU for me to add massive heatsinks or fans if I'm ever bored enough to screw around some more... with a screw driver, of course... but my only complaint is that the IDE slots are a little too far away from the hard driver bays. Oh well, AOL, the Sebastian comes as close to perfection as a Super7 board can which, um, isn't very close to perfection. I haven't heard of a real case where the Tyan doesn't work with the S4, but I'm not sure about its compatibility with my future PowerVR wife... But I can hear those cranks moving in my head right now and by God, I will get my IQ up to 90 by reading everything on this internet with my new Tyan board! When I do upgrade to whatever board I pick, I'll post it underneath this post. Let's just see what fate has in store for Danny, Victor, Conor, Duarte, Meagan, Sebastian and me...

Drum Roll Please - Vhich vone did IvanF buy? Vas it the Tostitos? Veally? No, not veally. Hah Hah Hah!

And here we are at the end of the Miss Universe pageant, where every single one of the participants gave up college for a chance to win 15 more minutes in the spotlight but gosh-darn it, the judges can only pick the one who bribed & breasted best. Geez, tough luck and too small of purse, but there's always next year. Anyhew, you could pretty much guess that I wouldn't pick the Soyo or the Asus considering I rated them more down under than Argentina & Alaska. I've also, behind the scenes, looked at a bunch of Houston Technologies, PcPartner and Chaintech boards, but considering I still don't know exactly how or why they're able to stay afloat in the motherboard industry, I didn't bother reviewing their products. I would've looked at Microstar's boards if their name wasn't so damn close to Microsoft's, & Abit could've been a top contendor if I could ever log into their website. So that leaves just 3 Super7 contendors for the heavy-weight ear-chewing title: Epox's Conor, Gigabyte's Meagan, or Tyan's Sebastian... And is it me, or did I already give away the answer a thousand times or something in this article, because naturally, I ran over to the Computer Edge nearby and ordered a Tyan board right away.

I actually checked at 2 small stores in Mississauga before I left to beg at Computer Edge; Comp. Edge has okay but not the greatest prices out there, but unfortunately for me wallet and valet (poor little bugger...), the others stores hadn't even heard of the American-based Tyan company. The bastards were just all so wrapped up in Asian companies like Anus and Bell Canada, but I guess I can't blame them because they were both in the midst of Chinatown. Well, I ended up ordering a Tyan Sebastian with just 1 MB of L2 cache; I learned not long after that it could go up to 2MB, but I figured to forego it after realizing I didn't have enough drool left to grovel for another hour. Edge told me that there were only 30 Sebastians left in Ontario, which could be true; I mean, what company in any frame of mind, psycho or not, would be stupid enough to keep making Super7 boards?... Well, I would, but I'll just shut up there. Well, that Nick guy at Edge didn't have to try selling it to me at all; after a year of waiting, me finally got me motherboard on Monday. And my drool was back.

Read here if you want to know how to install a motherboard, but everyone probably knows anyhew.

Now, I wasn't going to use the Sebastian to build a computer system from the bottom up. You see, that's what everyone brags about, but really that's nothing to spout about because installing a new board is just oh-so easy. To me, a good computer builder should not brag about what millions of people in the world can do (like build a computer from the bottom up); the only bragging rights that I will admit have merit are those for accomplishing what is just too stupid for anyone else to think up and try (like eating Eggos for breakfast or somthing). Throughout the whole installation of the Sebastian, the hardest part was to get the bloody old motherboard out of my computer. I first backuped all my essential files (you know, like those pictures that start with a "p" and end with an "orn"...) which took me a bloody hell 6 hours or something. No, I don't have that many pictures (actually, I had no jpegs or anything, but a hell of a lot of warez .rar files... ok, me should shut up now...), but it turned out my Excitebike64 filez was corrupted and everytime I tried copying it to CD, it would freeze the whole process & I would lose the whole, damn 80min CD. I lost 3 of my roundest friends that day until I started looking for the busted zip file; God rest their little, corrupted souls. The next thing I did was disconnect all of the plastic power crap from the motherboard. Even though they were the only AT power cables that had Klingon like ridges on them, I labelled the 2 cords that plugged into the old motherboard; you know, just in case I lost them in the middle of the road or something... Next on the list was to unplug all my hard drives; I had to move one out of the way later because my motherboard kept getting jammed on it (who knew high CPU temperatures could sawder the RAM to the bottom of a hard drive?... heh heh... uggh..). I gnawed out everyone of my precious, baby expansion cards from their PCI and ISA homes, and then came from my favourite part of the day: removing the RAM and the CPU... oohh, scary right?

I bet you're all bragging or something about how easy it is to replace a Socket7 chip. Well, um, you're not far off. I have a habit of replacing good RAM with defective chips so it only took the usual 2 seconds to rip out my 32MB DIMM thingy. But the CPU; I've mounted motherboards before, but I've always somehow managed to avoid being the one who puts the CPU on... I was pretty damn afraid of twisting any transistors on the silicon when I picked up the Sebastian (uh, that doesn't sound good...) on Tuesday. I carefully unlocked the stupid fan (and no, if you've read my S3 FAQ, then you'd know I hate overclocking & no, I have no heatsink or Kyrotech air conditioner or fish bowl water cooling crap in my computer) which ket annoying me because it was attached the CPU's hinges through child-proofing methods (it took me 12 years to figure out how to open that Flintstones vitamin jar, but I'm proud it only took me half an hour to take off the fan...). And then came the point where I had to extract that dreaded CPU, the point where everyone would step right in, roll up one sleeve on their pants, and say how easy it is... So I spent about 10 minutes trying to yank my Pentium166 CPU off. Note to myself: brute force doesn't work. Okay, now what? And that's when I took out my age-old book: How to Upgrade Anything - for Computer Novices... uggh, at least no-one got a picture of me reading that thing. It's like putting diapers on in the middle of your PMS period... huh? Uh, I should really delete that...

Well, it told me that on ZIF /Socket 7 processors thingies, there is a little arm switch that releases the CPU... okay, yeah sure. Like I actually know what an arm switch is even shaped like... And just when I was ready to take out my gardening clippers, I noticed that there's this little gray stick on top of the CPU mount... Hmm... I thought about giving it mouth to mouth so I gave that a yank instead of down under, and what do you know? The CPU tumbled out and onto the floor just to piss me off. At that point, I would've given anything for a sledgehammer and a good fireplace to burn the ashes... But I settled for plopping the CPU and RAM into my new Sebastian motherboard that was enjoying being fried by a glowing incandescent lightbulb nearby. I then opened up the Tyan S1590 manual and went to the last page for the page with all the jumper settings. I set my core voltage to 3.3V & I'm not putting it lower until I get a faster CPU, so shut the hell up all you people who sawder resistors onto your boards. I AM THE RESISTOR OF RESISTORS, whatever the hell that meant. I heard in a movie somewhere, probably... um, don't hurt me... Okay dokay, I then set the jumpers to wipe out the bios for fun & set the motherboard's clock speed to 66MHz; I know, I know, default was 100MHz and I could easily go up to something like 115MHz if I just added another fan, but I wasn't willing to fry my PC-66 32MB DIMM chip for a third time in a month, so I foced myself to keep the board running at the same speed as my RAM. I set the CPU multiplier to 3.0x to get the same 200MHz I've always had, and then I just changed those jumpers around again for the hell of it; I have no clue what multiplier I'm on now, but hey, if it works, it works. And that's when I noticed the little P54C jumper in the corner of the board. I looked it up in the manual, & it turned out that for all non-MMX CPUs like mine, I had to put a jumper on that switch. The problem was, I had no extra jumpers except for me green Ninja Turtle underwear in the back. So I calmly looked at my old board, took a jumper off of it, went to my brother's computer, put my jumper into that, took one of his, and put that in my new Sebastian toy (uh, that doesn't sound good either...). And now my board was ready for the hell they call 'IvanF's Computer'... Or Windows, whichever one is worse. I was never good with animals.

And here comes the hardest part of any upgrade I've done in my life: trying to get my dang, VX motherboard out. You know those plastic doorknob thingies at the back of the board that hold it to the tower case? Yeah, well, they were sort of, uh, jammed... After getting rid of those screws attached to the board that I never saw, I tugged my hardest to slide my board up or down to get it out, but it didn't matter; the stupid plastic knobs didn't budge! They kept laughing at me and my Free Willy collection! I tried needle-nose pillars, but they couldn't shut up my old board either. My VX was possessed; it didn't want to leave. And that's when I reminded my old board about Microsoft Windows... and poof! The board slid right out - and sort of split itself into two when it cut through the AT power supply above, but I won't go there... Okay, about 40 minutes had elapsed throughout the whole installation process and I was now revving in the gauges (which I still cannot pronouce properly, for all those in my Grade12 English class) to race in the new, uh, hour with a new mobo. I used those pillars to take out those stupid, plastic knobs from my old motherboard & I twisted the Sprite cap to put them into my new one. I then carefully slid my new board to the back of my mid-tower case, nailed it in with a hacksaw, reattached the power supply and all hard drives, looked around, and wondered why the heck bikinis can't be unikinis or something, not like it matters to me... not much, anyhew...

Ok, the board was in so now it was time for the easy part: I plugged in my S3 Savage (and surprise surprise! Unlike my VX board, it didn't require Sueprhuman strength to push in a PCI card), booted the computer, and oh joy-joy! The bios came up! I turned it back off as soon as that 'No keyboard installed - Press F1 to continue without a keyboard" message came up to annoy the hell out of anyone who sees it. Ok, I unplugged my computer again, took my trusty Adaptec 1542 or something ISA SCSI card and put in into the top ISA slot; I rebooted the computer to see if I got any conflicts, and what do I end up seeing? Nothing. ...okay... I checked my Savage card and I found that it popped out... okay... I popped it back in, rebooted the computer, and guess what? It said there's no SCSI. So I check my Adaptec card, and what do you know; it popped out too. I banged that card in with my subwoofer system, booted the computer, and I was instantly greeted with that user-friendly blank screen all over again (Well, the black screen of death is always prettier than the blue one). Again, the Savage had popped the loom. Damn fruit commercials.

It turned out those plastic door hinge things at the back of the board weren't just to mount the board upright so you can screw stuff in; I was supposed to put those plastic thingies on the back of my board in the right order, or else the motherboard will shake everytime I tapped it. Okay, that was bad English there, but I just can't sit here deleting stuff in the summer... You see, whenever I put in my SCSI card, the motherboard would shake and loosen all the other cards... Oops, um, I wonder if any of those people that I've installed motherboards for would like a refund now... So I had to disconnect everything, remove the board, take out all the plastic things, reorder them, and put them back into the tower case. I then plopped in my S3 Savage followed by my SCSI, and Holy Testicles, it worked! But that's when I tried installing my Sound Blaster Awe64 Gold; I tried putting it into the bottom ISA slot, but guess what? The board kept shaking at its roots; the damn card wouldn't fit in! ARGGHH!!! If only I had gotten a free taser with the board or something, I could've really ripped out my hair. So it was time to improvise; I made a huge ball of bubblegum and tape, attached it to the bottom corner of the tower case, and whenever my board tried to piss me off and shift backwards, it would get stuck on the gum! Brilliant, eh? Now that's something stupid enough to brag about, because it actually worked!

After that, I just had a few minor bugs like the floppy disk not working and, um, my 24X CD-ROM closed with my hand inside...But when all was said and done, I booted to Windows and was pleasantly greeted with a 16 colour background! Oh Hercules, Hercules, Hercules! I was afraid that a new motherboard or, um, an accidental cut of the IDE cables by me would've screwed over and formatted my hard drives, but everything was just the same as I left it! The C drive still had no room left to put a swap file, the D drive was still corrupted from random bad clusters (from Excitebike, of course...), the E drive was still only was accessible once every 3 tries, the F drive was still corrupted from a gig of bad clusters, & the G & H drives refused to show up in Windows Explorer. God, me love my computer!

Have I noticed any improvements in speed? Nope, although my C drive runs at least 200kb/sec faster with its 14 ms access time or something. I bought my board to get more RAM, so I'll report on speed improvements when I can run my Sebastian at 100MHz (I really need to clean my sentences...). My computer is a bit more stable now; I don't get crashes anymore from CPU-hogging programs like Unreal Tournament and Microsoft Notepad. I haven't found any conflicts between my board & my hardware, except that my serial ports and my modem don't mix anymore but I always hated those com ports anyhew. I do have a few complaints: the RAM slots are in the most awkward position you can think of; right behind the hard drives. When I get another 2MB of RAM or something, I'll be forced to open up my tower case from the back, pry out the chain mesh fence, take out my motherboard, and put in the RAM while the Tyan takes a lap dance in my, uh, lap. Oh, and the floppy controller & the UDMA controllers are too close together & I ended up cutting my pinky finger in 3 parts while figuring out if the IDE cables are supposed to be plugged in right side up or upside down (I was never good at cards). I think I'm safe, though; computer viruses are pretty Sonic-the-Hedgehog bad these days, but I don't think my motherboard has AIDs, Hepatitus C or anything ... yet... But it'll soon have worse... I'm going to install Windows98...