The PC-Chips/Alton MB-577: Adventures in Motherboard upgrading
Pros:
Low Price, AGP port, Impressive features, Super Socket 7 (up to 500 MHz), BAT-form Factor.
Cons:
Lifespan, dead PCI, poorly made, drivers, useless onboard sound and USB, features disappoint, BAT-form Factor.
The Bottom Line:
With the huge variety of inexpensive and superior Baby-AT motherboards on the market, the PC-Chips MB-577 (and other PC-Chips motherboards) should be avoided.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
You get what you pay for!
In late 1999, I decided that my Pentium 150 MHz was just too slow: It could not even run the hot new Mech Waririor 3 game! Since I was on a relatively tight budget, a new system was not really in the cards, but I had always wanted to do a processor or motherboard upgrade.
After doing a bit of research, poking around ebay, and with some blind luck, I ended up with the PC Chips/Alton MB-577. It came bundled with a Cyrix M2 300 and 128 MB of PC 100 RAM, all for $165 (a bargain at the time, the RAM alone was that much!). I quickly upgraded the Cyrix CPU to an AMD K6-2 450 MHz, and after I did the BIOS upgrade, it seemed to run more or less stable. I also needed to upgrade to Windows 98, because the original Windows 95 did not support the K6-2 over speeds of 350 MHz or USB.
The fact that no PC Chips/Alton Motherboards are sanctioned by AMD did not bother me at first, and I came to regret it!
Pretty impressive stats for a lousy MoBo
The MB-577 is a Baby AT-form factor Motherboard and is equipped with the following:
- Super Socket 7, available clock speeds: 60/66/75/83/100 with up to 5x multiplier.
- Supports AMD K5, K6, K6-2, K6-III (up to 500 MHz), Intel Pentium MMX, Cyrix M2 and M3, WinChip, and IDT
- 1 AGP Slot, which is supported by the PC100AGPpro chipset (or VIA MVP3 100Mhz chipset), and required a driver from VIA to work properly with Windows 95.
- 3 PCI Slots
- 2 ISA Slots
- 3 DIMM and 2 SIMM RAM slots
- 3D Sound On-board
- An optional ATX-form card: 2 x USB, PS/2 and I/R ports.
- Ultra DMA/33 IDE support
- A 1MB L2 Cache
- The Award BIOS (flash upgradeable)
- Both AT and ATX power adapters
It came with a decent manual, which described all the jumpers, but did not go into deep detail about what BIOS settings actually do; and a driver CD-ROM, which included PC-Cillin antivirus and some other utilities, as well as a full set of drivers that turned out to be pretty buggy.
On paper, those stats are quite impressive. In fact, when I first installed the MB-577, it worked great. It was indeed a massive speed increase over my old Pentium 150 MHz.
Since the MB-577 had an AGP slot, I ventured out and bought a (then) high end accelerator: The Diamond Viper 770 Ultra (also reviewed at epinions), which alone had as much RAM as my original system, so I felt like I was speeding along.
Some Quirks:
Even silence can be annoying
The first thing I noticed when I installed this MoBo was that the 3D on board sound never worked. I went to the PC Chips web site, which was (and still is) a VERY slow site, and found the newest drivers for the soundcard, as well as a control panel for the sound chip. Still nothing: Not a peep, just low-level static that was probably system noise.
To overcome the deafening silence I disabled the on board sound in CMOS and installed my old legacy soundcard. Eventually I upgraded it to a Diamond Monster MX 300, to compliment the Viper 770 graphics card. Ahh, the sweet music they make
USB? A reality or a pipe dream?
Next on my list of technical issues to overcome: I spent the extra 5 bucks for the ATX form card, which had the USB ports, the PS/2 mouse connector and an I/R port; it better work!
So, back to the BIOS, which, by this point, I was becoming very familiar with, to enable the USB ports. The only USB device I had at the time was a joystick, so after Windows 98 installed the proper USB software, I installed the joystick, and all hell broke loose: No more mouse action, and intermittent system freezes.
After several attempts to get the USB to work, I disabled it again, and thought to myself that USB certainly did not live up to the hype! But, I took that attitude back, and I have several USB devices hooked up to my current system.
PCI: Two out of three aint bad
A friend had an extra PCI USB adapter, so I tried to install it, only to discover that if all three PCI slots were occupied, the system would not boot. Actually, I tracked the problem down to one of the PCI slots, which was obviously defective. If any PCI device occupied the slot, the system would not boot.
Upgrading: The Obsession
Since the initial install of the MoBo went quite well, I decided upgrading was my bag, baby: I had all 4 IDE channels taken up by something: The primary HD, a zip drive a second HD (later swapped for a CD/R) and the CD-ROM drive. In installed a new PCI soundcard (the aforementioned MX 300), and a PCI Network adapter.
All of the upgrades were fun to do, but I think I may have overloaded the MoBo, because it died on me after a year! In retrospect, it is hard for me to say exactly what happened
It may heave been a bad HD or IDE controller: Windows began to act very erratically, and eventually refused to boot at all. All POSTs went fine, so I assumed it was fine. I had fortunately backed up all my data, so I reformatted the Hard Drive and reinstalled Windows. And, the same thing happened. Twice.
I ran a full diagnostic on every imaginable component, but to no avail, so I chalked it up to a learning experience, and went out and bought a new system: the e Machines eMonster 600 (another one of my reviews), which was a nightmare in itself!
Phew, Im glad thats over! But, it was a good experience
Upgrading a Motherboard is a huge project! Windows 98 is pretty good about identifying the new MoBo resources required, so assuming you will keep your current OS on your hard disk, and that you do not have perform a full reinstall of the OS and software, it will still take at least 4 hours from the time you open the case to the time the system is truly useable. If you know what you are doing, it may only take 3 hours.
Since I bought this MoBo as OEM, and it came with minimal support, I was pretty much on my own. Learning to configure the BIOS as you go is a daunting experience, but it is a god one, because then you truly know whats where and how your computer is configured.
As for the Alton MB-577, I would not recommend it to someone wishing to do a Motherboard upgrade. Notwithstanding its age, it is just a lousy MoBo: None of the onboard devices worked for me, one of the PCI slots was dead, and from what I have read about this board, even if you do get the sound system to work, it sounds pretty bad. In my upgrading frenzy, I became pretty friendly with the local computer store, and they later told me that about 1/3 of the PC Chips Motherboards they sold were returned defective, so they stopped carrying them.
Instead, Id go with a FIC 503+ or one of the other AMD sanctioned MoBos.
