First post, by MrKsoft
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I have a box with a GA-5AA Super 7 motherboard a 450mhz K6-2 processor, and 128MB RAM (the maximum it can cache). I'm using it for DOS games since it's the best match (compact and has ISA slots) I can come up with out of my computer stock. In terms of cards, all that is in there is a PCI ATI 3D Rage II and an ISA Sound Blaster 16 PnP (Vibra based). It runs DOS 7.1 with a side of Windows for Workgroups 3.1 (rarely used).
Anyway, darn thing is extremely unstable and I can't figure out why. I'll be playing games and the thing will either just restart out of the blue, or the game will crash. Also applications like Open Cubic Player that I'm using for MOD playback will crash without reason. A few games won't start at all (but I credit that to the K6 not being a 486 or Pentium). It's never predictable, except that it never happens when sitting on the command line, or within Windows 3.1. Previously this machine ran 98SE for a year and had no issues, even running DOS games inside 98. The only change is that I migrated it to a different case.
I've checked several things. I ran memtest86 to see if the RAM was bad-- nothing. I though perhaps I set the voltage on the processor wrong, but it's set to 2.4v just like is printed on the chip itself. Checked the CPU fan to see if maybe it was restarting because of overheating, but the fan is running just like it always has. Even checked the BIOS settings for anything awry, and looked for possible device conflicts. Nothing! What gives? Is the GA-5AA just an unstable board? I thought it (or it's extremely close companion the GA-5AX) had a pretty good reputation.