opinions on FIC AZ31 Motherboard

[psabi]

I have a chance to get an AZ31 for about $40 new. Anybody have anything good or bad to say about it?

This is for a "secondary" system; I know it lacks the nifty ata/100, 266mhz bus, and has only 3 pci but like I said, it is a secondary system.

The reason I ask is that I have had to dig deep to find info on it; it wasn't listed on the FIC site (yet they listed every socket 7 board they ever had). Was the AZ31it a first generation aocket A that was "bad"?

It has a 686A southbridge; read some tidbits that it has trouble with ACPI - that ACPI was dropping the cpu fan speed down or something and processors were getting fried. Is this BS?

[Whyzman]

psabi,

Was just checking for a friend, along with for myself, on iisbob's well thought of ECS K7S5a which I just found at Royal Computer for $54+9s/h....new board, accepts DDR RAM...

Not much more for a brand new situation!

You didn't mention about a CPU...

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May all your dealings in life be win/win!

Whyzman

[This message has been edited by Whyzman (edited 01-30-2002).]

[diurnal]

In my experience with FIC was not good, however my building skills was not the best then. I still have it running now , but unplug it cause it would lock up every other day. I would get errors left and right. I not sure about the newer ones , im sure theyre ok. As long as Via is making the chipset.

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Murph's Law: 1.Everything takes longer than you think
2.If anything can go wrong it will
3.Nothing is as easy as it looks

[psabi]

whyz-

The cpu I'll be using in the secondary is 750 Duron.

In an ideal world, I would use my current system (FIC AZ11) as a secondary and then upgrade to a mobo in the $150 range that supports ATA100, 266mhz bus DDR, athlon XP 1900+ and all the other good stuff. For me to enjoy all of that, gotta get DDR (minimum 256 stick to start), an Athlon that runs with the 266mhz 'bus', as well as a new ATA 100 drive (my 2 "best" drives are ata/66). On a more personal note, I'm bouncing between different contract jobs for work (feast or famine) so I can't justify the expenditure.

With the FIC AZ31, I can reuse all of the components from my current secondary system (a socket 7) with only having to pay for the board ($43) and s/h ($4). It would work out to be a 750 duron with 256RAM, an ATA66 HD, 4MB AGP video - running win2k. This system isn't used for games; it would be used for music downloads, CD burning, shareware/beta software testing, and a (basic) print server.

I couldn't find the AZ31 on the FIC site; I actually had to go thru google and that pinned the AZ31 page on the FIC site! Not sure if its the bastard stepchild of motherboards or what, just thought it was strange...

The reason I am ditching the socket7 system (among other reasons) is due to the current problem (posted in system troubleshooting)


many thanks owed to ranchdog...

[BigBlue66]

Hey,

I have been using the OEM UWAVE version of the FIC AZ31 in the wife's machine for about a year now, give or take. I have had no issues with it whatsoever. It's fast and stable. Boots every time.

There is a problem with the power management, in that, it won't shut down by itself from Windows. I have to wait for the all is safe message, then just shut the power bar off. No big deal.

There also is no temperature monitoring ability, unless you were to use a third-party add-on thermister (sp?) or make one yourself.

Currently, I'm running an Athlon 1.0GHz 200Mhz FSB with 768mb PC100 SDRAM. Like I said, it's rock solid stable.

You could do a lot worse.

Edit: Just recently installed an MSI Starforce GeForce2 Ti AGP 64mb DDR SDRAM on that board. With the latest VIA 4n1's, 4.37 I think, it's working pretty sweet and I'm getting way over 3,000 3DMarks.

Cheers,

Big Blue 66

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This space reserved for highly intelligent observations and witty remarks.

"From up on the roof top there came such a clamor, I ran to the window and threw up"
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[This message has been edited by BigBlue66 (edited 01-31-2002).]