6 year old motherboard

I turn my pc off at night lol.
your wasting energy!
try to be good for the environment
i think im gonna do less software testing since my pc is running great atm.
just need to get rid of Spysweeper in January and just use superantispyware as on demand.
then my pc will be even better.
then i shouldnt have any problems.
where can i get a little dial that tells me how long since the last reboot?
like system uptime?
i know there are widgets but there can use alot of resource.
what about a tool that i can just open and check how long its been up with out a reboot needed.
if i stop the software testing it will be up for a long time without reboot lol.

ok lodore's trip down memory lane now,
my first pc had a 1gb Harddrive and ran windows 95 in the 4 years i used it for my main pc i had to reboot it three times only. that was because of a scratched CD.
second pc had to reboot about 4 times a day due to not knowing that my pc ha tons of spyware and Trojans on it.
but now im a safe surfer
this pc is pretty rock solid atm.
lodore

 

I am good to the environment. I do not own a TV and power down my scanner and two printers. I run my swimming pool filter and pool sweep as little as possible.

 

I am 89 and don’t see to well any more. That is why I have a 20 inch display for my main monitor (CRT) and a 19 inch secondary display used for monitoring the stock market.

 

We just use hibernate.. the power goes all the way off, but without shutting down. It writes everything in memory to the hard drive, then puts it all back when you power on. Give it a try (you might need to go into the Power Options and enable it) I agree with you, though, that more people should take care and save the energy. I also take advantage of features that throttle down voltage when not needed, spin down the hard drive, now use LCD screens exclusively, and so on.

I use StatBar. Everything I want in a status bar across the bottom of my screen. Right now my longest uptime (among the systems I run, not my all time longest) is 7 days, 3 hrs, 53 mins.

 

I think hibernate does turn the hard drives off which is what you do not want to do. Correct me if I’m wrong. I think by board has that plus green power which runs the drives at half power. Never was interested in it because my firewall will not allow any of those things to work. I would have to bring the firewall down but then I would forget to bring it backup.

 

Hibernate actually turns the power all the way off.. standby, however, heavily reduces the power consumption without turning the power all the way off, and I believe it will turn the hard drives off. I actually set mine to power down the hard drives separately when they're not in use for some time. No real reason against it except that write operations could take an extra second or two for the drive to spin up again.

Running as green as possible is definitely a great thing to do, though, and modern computers are definitely getting better. Now they just gotta start making them with green materials

 

thats why i wish i could afford a new pc with a good intel core duo 2.
im glad intel finally make cpu's for the desktop that use less power and better for the environment.
lodore

 

Definitely, it's a win-win for everyone The Core 2 Duo's are actually relatively cheap, too. I've also got an X2 that does similar, and I also use the "Cool'n'Quiet" feature. Although I don't use it, my motherboard (for the X2) even has an option to overclock only when needed, which is very cool. Also the nice thing about Windows Vista is that it has better power saving options that make it more reliable and come back much faster ("Sleep" works like hibernation, but the system comes back on as quickly as Standby).

 

ive always been a fan of Intel Centrino mobile processers due to lighter laptop with more battery life.
my next pc will probably be Intel core duo two unless they release core duo three by then
my 3200 64bit amd seems so slow since dual core has been out ages.
and now intel have quad core.
lodore

 

Centrino's are great that way, too. Indeed, laptops are by far the most energy efficient of any computer... they have to be to conserve battery life.

Sorry, GroomLake, if this is beyond the scope of what you were looking for, but hopefully there's a few insights in the conversation that you can use

 

The first thing to prolong the life of the system is to replace Win 98 with eiter Win 2000 or Win Xp.

I too have thought about the potential of having to replace a mobo:

1. I would never by a used mobo.
2. I would only purchase from the manufacturer or a well known retail/online seller.

3. One of the problems with older mobos is that they have, e.g., slots, and you will have a hard time finding a replacement for such a mobo. For example, Ihave perfectly good internal Courier modems, but they are not PCI.

I have an even older mobo (SE400BX), so I'm in the same boat.

 

I am also a user of win98se "tweaked big time" and like GroomLake I have very few problems ( and also I am getting on in age). I had to add my two cents, all my friends and family use XP and their computers all "crash" or "freeze" more often then my computer does. I am sure that if I owned XP and tweaked it as much as I did WIN 98 it would probably "crash: a lot less too.( Not sure) They are all amazed at the speed of my computer and how stable it is.
But, after saying the above, I will soon be updating, because as time goes on I am finding more and more that I can not use the software that is coming out. I have so many programs on my computer that I have my desktop almost full of folders which are full of shortcuts to various programs.
I had to move programs into folders on my "start, programs" because when I went to "start, programs" the list went off my screen I had so many programs. My win 98 just keeps running!!!

 

Buy a modern deskop with lots of memory (1 GB or more) and disk space .
Assuming that it comes with Windows XP installed, you then install the free MS Virtual PC. (watch the demo!)
In the Virtual PC you install Windows 98 and anything you like.

Sounds like win/win to me.

http://www.geocities.com/wilbert_vanbakel/graphics/01_win98.png

 

Recommended RAM (memory)
Win98 8MB
W2K 64MB
XP 128MB

running XP on older boxes has some serious performance issues if you cant get close to the recommended hardware requirements, the amount of bloat in resource use is substantial

XP is effectively W2K with alot of extra eye candy and is my personal choice for most of my boxes. you also do not have to activate W2K
if you do go with either (which I recommend simply for security) consider employing nLite or LitePC to trim down the operating system and reduce the resources it requires.

Alternately, you should at least try Knoppix as a highly secure LiveCD that will auto recognize and configure to the hardware, and likely has about 80% of the applications youd want to use. Makes a nice daily driver, and for special occasions you crank up the vintage OS for a trip around the block with some indispensable application.

Electromigration which is what kills integrated circuits (chips, from the CPU, GPU & RAM to the chipset and every other chip on the mobo & cards) happens in proportion to the temperature and the voltage\amps (current density). A power event (electrostatic discharge ESD or power supply failing to meet parameters, onboard voltage regulation modual out of parameters) is a primary cause fof premature failure. But temperature also plays a very large role in the reliability of any device in your box. MTBF\MTTF (Mean Time Before Failure and Mean Time To Failure) is generally worked up with the primary component being the Arrhenius Equation which in short say the more energy (heat) the faster things end up nose down in the kitty litter

for computers the general rule of thumb is
Each 10°C (18°F) temperature rise reduces component life by 50%
Conversely, each 10°C (18°F) temperature reduction increases component life by 100%.

Component Reliability Tutorial (PDF)
InDepth w\ Black's Equation (heavy wading)

Older boxes which employed far less energy than modern PCs have a surprisingly good life expectancy
if you practice strict ESD precautions the component I'd personally be most worried about are the typically cheap power supplies many OEM boxes got. I'd consider it as the probable weak link and first to fail, but when many of them go they take the rest of the box with em. Especially if youve added new components (drives, cards, upgrading video card ect) since its very rare for an OEM to build in "extra" capacity and the PSU has been working that much harder for some portion of its life. Really depends on the make and vintage. A good UPS makes the job of any power supply that much easier.

Its the temperature, and stability of the power all down the line (from the utility maintaining a stable voltage and Hz meaning the PSU isnt having to pickup the slack by pulling more amp in a brownout or dealing with a surge to its stability in staying with 5% on the nominal DC voltages to the VRM stepping down those voltages and the various capacitors on the board aging gracefully) that primarilly effect the longevity of the silicon. Drives get all that plus impacts, vibration, and bearing wear.

 

I have have a new box, motherboard and cpu just a little over a year old. My computer will be able to handle Vista when it comes out. ( I will have to get a larger video card but that's it) I am well above the specs recommended by Microsoft and even above the recommended specs by "Pitstop"

Yes wilbertnl that would be a solution now, but when I had the choice between WIN 98se and XP, I didn't know about "MS virtual PC" or I would have gone XP. Also mentioned earlier in this thread was mentioned by
bellgamin " Moving to WinXP guaranteed that I can wait at least 3 or 4 years before being forced to change operating systems again. That is, Microsoft will continue to provide security updates for XP for that long. (Security updates for Win98 have already been discontinued.

It was commanly known that "XP home"support was scheduled to run out sometime in 2006. If this hadn't been announced by Microsoft, I would have probably bent toward XP instead of waiting for Vista.

 

I will figure out how to migrate totally to Linux (and legacy or virtualize my W2K aps where necessary) before adopting Vista
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/hdcp-vista.ars
I have no need for DRM and no inclination to pay an outrageous amount of money to have it foisted on me.

http://www.lessig.org/blog/ > Free Culture > short flash version
(professor of law Stanford) http://fairuse.stanford.edu/

what have you done?

 

Funny you should say that Ice_Czar just last week I received the latest copy of "Ubuntu" and I am going to dual boot it with windows ( unitil I learn my way through it). The problem with Linux is that I use so many programs that are not compatible with Linux. But as I watch Linux grow I see more and more software companies including software for Linux.
You are so right, Vista is a power hungry, expensive operating sytem, I have apprehensions about buying and installing it. If I do install Vista, it will be after the public has tested it throughly.

 

Merry Christmas
(Santa came early this year, can be downloaded in Windows and Linux flavors)
you wouldnt want wilbertnl to have all the fun

 

I installed Windows 98 SE in both VMWare 6 beta and MS Virtual PC 2007 beta.
VMWare has more features, but my overall experience with the free Virtual PC is more pleasant.