Mark, I picked up one to the cheapie ECS boards (RS482) along with an AMD 3700+. Actually, it came with the chip. I had a broken ASUS A8N-SLI being RMA'd, so I wasn't too concerned about the MB. I did gave the MB a try while waiting for the replacement ASUS, though, and had a similar experience to yours. I couldn't (easily) get any of my 'nix distibutions to load or setup. I was able to get WinXP to run without too much trouble. Once the ASUS board showed up, I pulled the ECS board and installed the ASUS... every 'nix I had ran perfectly and setup fine. (FC4, Suse10, Ubuntu 5.10, Debian 3.1). My opinion is that the ECS boards are nice an cheap - and for motherboards, you get what you pay for. The Sermpron's are OK, but plan on a few extra bucks for an Abit, ASUS, or another one of the mid-tier boards. - Alan (Pratt - not THE Alan) On 3/6/06, Mark Jarvis wrote: > > First, sad story: A month or so ago I bought one of those ECS Nforce3-A > motherboard/Sempron 3100+ specials at Fry's. I was basically unable to > get it to boot from my existing Linux & Windows installations. After > fighting for a (hellish) week trying to find a way to force booting from > the existing installations, I finally gave up and re-did all OS > installations. Thank goodness most of my data was in a separate data > partition and remained pretty much OK. (To add to my confusion, I could > use a Windows multi-boot diskette to start the boot, using its boot.ini > to transfer to an installation, then complete a windows boot as usual. I > could then see all drives & windows usable partitions, so the disks were > see-able, just not bootable!) It didn't help that a diskette drive and > power supply died during that time and that half of a pair of 512MB 3200 > memory sticks was DOA. !@#$%^&*! > > OK, I'm now up & running, > > When Linux kernels started to get too big to fit on a diskette, I was > relieved to discover Smart Boot Manager and have used it extensively at > home and at school to boot into any available Windows or Linux > partition. BUT--SBM no longer works on my machine! It doesn't even > display the partitions! Obviously, there is some sort of horrible > mobo/HD interaction at work here. > > Has anyone else bought one of those ECS specials? What was your experience? > > I was hoping that my problems were due to my HDs. They're biggish--two > 120s and a 160, but not really all THAT big. Since Fry's has the same > offer on again, I was thinking of upgrading my wife's box, hoping that > her smaller, older disks--two Maxtor 80s--would not be a problem. That > SBM thing, however, really bothers me. > > Any comments, hints, experiences, and/or suggestions gratefully received. > > -mj- > > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss