Update on Quantum service and a couple of Abit questions

[Danzego]

Hey gennamen!! How's it going this fine night? Mine is pretty cool as I just got the replacement drive from Quantum (6.4 Fireball ST). I opened up my door this morn and was shocked to see the drive back so fast. I fully expected to wait for at least another week. So basically I mailed it ground service on a Wednesday (UPS said it would be there by the next Tuesday latest) and I recieved my replacement drive 12 days later. They even sent it Fed-Ex 2 day. I would say that type of response is prompt and I can live with the fact that they didn't cross ship it at the same time I sent mine to them being that I had a back-up (which got burned by my BH6 if all recall; I have another backup which I'm going to run on that replacement board I got today for about 3-4 weeks so I don't risk killing another 6.4GB). Now for the Abit questions: I'm building a 'puter for a bud and I read you have to flash the BIOS to handle a Celeron 400a. Is this true? I don't understand as you don't have to do this if you OC; aren't the 300a retail and 400 the same chips? My other question is I also read for maximum performance and least probs, you have to tweak the holy hell out of the BH6. Any suggestions for this and/or Bios settings advice? TIA!!
Danzego

[Isos]

The newer BIOS will allows proper identification of your Celeron. If you want, you can still use the Older BIOS (not really advisable) by manually setting all the CPU parameters.

[Joel Kleppinger]

Well, I'm not sure how you can run a Celeron 400 since it requires the 6x multiplier. The highest multiplier supported by my BH6 is 5.5x, meaning a Celeron 366 is the highest it can do. I don't have a Celeron 400 handy, so I can't prove this right or wrong, but it should be correct.

Joel

[Danzego]

Well Joel, I do know that a BIOS flash will enable the BH6 to support a multiplier of up to 8, so that would take care of that. What I don't understand is if a Celeron is clocked at 400, why wouldn't the bus speed be 100MHz? I mean being that the architecture of the Celeron IS a PII with less cache and the PII's run 100MHz starting with the PII 350MHz, why wouldn't a 400? I know that it's the same chip as my 300a retail, but that runs safely at 100MHz (although I haven't OC'ed it yet); why didn't Intel just set it at 4X100MHz? I heard something about the Celerons only supporting 66MHz even at 400, but I never really read up about anything over a 300a, so that was news to me. I take it this is true, huh? So should I be flashing the BIOS on my board for a 300a running at 450 when I get better RAM, or does it really matter in that case? TIA !!
Danzego

[kwai]

aaah. you're getting into intel marketing schemes now and logic does not apply. the only reason the celeronAs dont use the 100 fsb is that intel wants to sell them as the bargain chip without cutting into their high-end profits.

even your 300a wasn't supposed to run at 100, but with the clock multiplier locked, its the best celeron to hit the 450+ mark. anything with a clock multiplier above 4.5 will push the chip too far at the 100 speed (usually).

remember the 486sx/dx? the sx was a fully functional dx until intel burned the math co processor out. so the "math co" upgrade you bought and plugged in was just another fully functional dx that disabled the old crippled cpu onboard. all for a few dollars gain. amazing isn't it.