Hi everyone,

I have recently been given a computer tower, complete except for the hard drive.
It has 512Mb of RAM, and the mobo is an:

Asus A7A266 1.10 Socket A DDR

Can anyone give me any further information about this mobo?
And possibly tell me what size the processor is likely to be.

I would like to fit a new hard drive and get this computer up and running, any advice on the
type of hard drive that would be suitable would be most appreciated.

Thanks

Here are the specs on that motherboard:

Technical Specifications

*

Socket A for AMD Athlon / Duron 550MHz ~ 1GHz+ CPU
*

ALi M1647 266MHz FSB chipset with ALi 1535D+ South Bridge
*

266/200MHz Front Side Bus
*

2 x DDR DIMM Sockets (Max. 2GB PC2100/PC1600 DDR SDRAM)
*

3 x SDRAM DIMM Sockets (Max. 3GB PC133 SDRAM)
*

1 x AGP Pro slot, 4 x PCI 2.2 slots, 1 x PCI 2.2/AMR Shared
*

2 x UltraDMA/100 IDE ports
*

C-Media CMI-8738 PCI Audio Controller with 4/6-Channel Integrated sound (optional)
*

3Com 3C920 100/10Mbps LAN Controller (optional)
*

4 x USB 1.1, 1 x Parallel, 2 x Serial, 2 x PS/2, 4/5 x Audio I/O (Optional), 1 x Game/MIDI (Optional)
*

SIR (Integrated Serial Infrared)
*

2Mb Award BIOS, PnP, ACPI, SMBIOS 2.3, Trend ChipAway Virus (TCAV), Green, Boot Block, BIOS
*

WfM 2.0, DMI 2.0, WOL, WOR, Chassis Intrusion, SMBus
*

Power Loss Recovery, ASUS® JumperFreeTM, CPU Throttle, SFS (Stepless Frequency Selection)
*

ATX Form Factor: 9.6" x 12.0" (24.5cm x 30.5cm)
* Ready for Asus iPanel

You can read the article that this excerpt came from here.

As for the hdd, Seagate and Western Digital both have good products and both have a five year warranty, I alos like Maxtor, but it only has a three year warranty. With most major manufacturers you will be pretty safe in just giong with the best deal that you can find. I'm currently using a 200GB Maxtor that I found on sale for $80.

You can check them out here, and here.

Thanks for the information

BTW you need an IDE hardrive not a SATA unless you install some king of raid controler or something to get SATA.

Thanks Klinkaroo

Just did a little poking around on the Asus website. This is a fairly old motherboard. If you want to install a HD bigger than 128 GB you may need to update the BIOS. The FAQ says v. 1011 or later is required.

If you plan to use a bigger HD I would suggest starting up the computer with a boot floppy in the drive and using the Pause key to freeze the screen with the BIOS information. This usually is right after the video card logo is displayed.

I would _not_ suggest updating the BIOS unless there is a specific reason for doing so. Hard drive support qualifies.

Hi Dave.

Thanks for the information. I don't think i'll go much higher than 80Gb, so no worries about the Bios.

Thanks again