asus tx97 error

[rmx77]

i happen to have gotten a computer with an old asus tx97 board it in and it has an award bios and it boots ok but once it checks the ram it freezes and doesnt do anything it doesnt even allow me to go into setup. above the ram it says #401A0-0108e what can i do? is this board able to use simm ram and pc133 together or just simm or pc133 and do all the ram slots have to be filled up to work

[cp]

since it's an Intel TX chipset you always need to install 2 identical SIMM modules. on DIMM it doesn't matter, you can install as much (or less ;)) as you want. it can take SIMM and DIMM at the same time but i'd recommend to install only DIMM (cacheable size is restricted to 64MB anyways).
freezing at that stage often means ram timings too aggressive. my advice: throw out the SIMMs and retry. if you are using DIMMs already install the fastest and set the CAS LATENCY to 3. or if you can't enter the bios at all clear the cmos and start over with the default settings.

[rmx77]

well i did get the thing to run but i dont have any big hd's i could use with it other then a 1082 mb hd thats old all the other internal ones i got rid of and such. what would be a good hd to run with the computer and what os would u say

[KachiWachi]

What CPU is installed?

Thanks.

[cp]

depends on what you are planning to do with the rig.
i'd recommend linux for everything that does involve serving purposes. if you're planning to run Linux then there are virtually no restrictions on the hardware itself. All IDE HDDs run fine regardless of their size (500GB, 750GB whatever you want), all PCI devices should work (like SATA controllers) and even ISA devices are supported. there are no known issues with CPUs or RAM and power saving options (they make the cpu run very cool on idle) are available out of the box.

for old games and such i'd recommend DOS, Windows 98. with those you'll have to care about the HDD selection since they rely on the BIOS reported size of the HDDs. 128GB is max. with a patched bios. additionally there might (with DOS for sure) be lacking driver support for newer pci devices. some tools might be helpful to properly activate/configure certain cpus. power saving options might (on DOS: not sure...sorry) be used but they need special tools.

if you need a very simple workhorse i'd try a Linux that keeps a low profile. there is tons of modern configurable software that plays nice on older hardware. keep in mind that you'll have to avoid all the fancy standard stuff like KDE or GNOME. Fluxbox is a nice start but requires extensive configuration in the first place.