M571 Mother Board?

[thekidjfm]

Hello all,My Stepson came over last night with a computer under each arm,asking if I can buld him a surfing machine out of the two!
He tells me which box he want's to use,it has a M571 TX PRO II Mother Board(PCChips UGH!!!).It has 2 DIMM slots and 4 SIMM slots,with 1 PC100 64 Mb installed.My question is can I add the 128Mb of SIMM memory from the other box to increase the memory?Can DIMM and SIMM be mixed on this board?
This board has a socket 7 AMD K6-2 300MHz processor,the other a socket 3 Pentium 486.I can't find the manufacturer of the other board, but it has the SiS 85C496-497 chipset.My stepson got both for free,and can't afford much,raising 2 little one's of his own.
I might tinker with the other one so the 2 little one's here have something to play on.Can never start them too young.

[morriswindgate]

No you cannot mix the memory types. And that is a PC66 slot, but PC100 will run fine in it.

[thekidjfm]

Thank's Morris.

[glc]

Yes, ram can be mixed on that board in certain combinations. I was just working on a M571 last night and downloaded the manual from Amptron's website. Look in the corner of the board by the keyboard connector for the circuit board version to get the correct manual - this one was a V 3.2 which crosses to a PM9100A. If you have V 7.0, that crosses to a PM9100B.

With what you have there, put the dimm in slot 1 and put one pair of simms in slots 3 and 4. This will give you 128 megs. If you are using any dimms, you cannot use simm slots 1 and 2. If you are using the onboard video, you must have ram in dimm slot 1 or simm slots 1 and 2.

Considering that if you mix simms and dimms, it wil slow down to the speed of the simms, you might as well pull the dimm and just put all 4 simms in - and reuse the dimm somewhere else.

Now that I read your post more carefully - the simms in a 486 are probably old fast page mode - which is even slower than EDO - this will make a BIG performance hit - you might as well just use the 64 meg dimm all by itself, I think I would prefer 64 megs of fast memory to 128 megs dog slow memory. 64 megs will run Win98SE quite well. If you have $20 to blow, just get another 64 meg PC100 dimm. Max dimm size on that board is 64mb, 128mb dimms won't work.

I hate PC Chips as much as anyone, but the M571 wasn't really a bad board except for the doggy SiS chipset and the lousy onboard video. It seems to be one of the more reliable ones. If you need to chase drivers, the sound chip is a CMI8330, the driver at http://www.cmedia.com.tw/ works. I used a video card last night, so I didn't have to chase a video driver, but I assume the drivers for the SiS 5597/5598 at www.sis.com would work.

[thekidjfm]

Curcuit board version is 3.2A,Not using onboard video,it has a Diamond 2794 installed.I think I will get him another 64 MB PC100,sounds like a better solution.The bios on this machine are password protected,is there anyway around this?

[glc]

There's a cmos clear jumper on the board, I think it's called CRTC or something like that. Download the manual.

[thekidjfm]

Thank's GLC, Iwas at Amptron's site Friday night,but kept getting"page cannot be displayed-64 host not available",and the same thing all day yesterday,I finally got it this morning though.
It sure make's it easier when you know what you're dealing with!

[glc]

You think Amptron's site is bad - just try the pcchips site sometime! They don't have diddly for older boards and very little for newer ones and it usually acts like it's connected to the Internet with a 9600 baud modem.

[thekidjfm]

Yeah, I was there,They didn't have diddley for this board!
Pretty bad when they can't back-up what they manufacture!
Still waiting to see if my stepson can find out the password for the bios.If not I'll just discharge the CMOS RAM.The guy gave him this machine because the modem didn't work.The best part is when I went to my granddaughter's birthday party today, my stepson asked me if this manual the guy gave him would help any,(the same thing I just downloaded)DUHHUH!!!