Sony VAIO PCV-W20

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This system actually boots, but has problems crashing for obvious reasons. I'm going to do a poly mod on this thing, and refresh the PSU, even if it looks fine.

Something I'm curious about is the possibility of upgrades. There is no info on upgrading the CPU, which is a 1.8 Northwood, I guess. The RAM has been maxed at 1GB. And that is a point of contention for me--I really need to see if it will boot long enough to run CPU-Z because I can't find any SiS chipset (which this has AFAIK) that would limit it to 1GB as well as PC2100.

[Logistics]

Re: Sony VAIO PCV-W20

All right, this board has the SiS 650 northbridge and SiS 962L southbridge, which appears to be an odd combination.

Any suggestions for an upgraded CPU cooling solution would be great, especially if I can get away with a better CPU--I noticed there is a 3GHz variety of 400MHz FSB fare. A suggestion for an upgraded cooling solution for the northbridge would be welcome as it houses the video processor.

[Uranium-235]

Re: Sony VAIO PCV-W20

theoretically, if the bios supports it, it would support a 3.06/533 chip, no Prescott support

cooling doesn't look too bad, just make sure you clean it and get some good quality compound on it

[Logistics]

Re: Sony VAIO PCV-W20

Well this site: http://www.motherboards.org/mobot/chipsets_d/SiS/650/

says it only supports 400MHz FSB, but 3GB of RAM vs the 1GB Sony claims. But there is the SL6YH, which is a 3GHz 400MHz FSB CPU, but I don't know if the Sony motherboard supports a multiplier of 30.

The odd thing is that SPEC sheets always claim the SiS 961 Southbridge when dealing with the 650 Northbridge, but this particular board uses the 962L Southbridge. This should enable ATA-133, but only USB 1.1, yet the documents for the PCV-W20 claim USB 2.0! I'm assuming this means there is a separate USB controller on-board.

[Logistics]

Re: Sony VAIO PCV-W20

Well, here's the board with polys in the VRM stage, and a couple up north that are on the 12V rail, I assume because they were 16V. I decided not to poly the entire board because I wasn't sure how the PSU would react.

Only thing about the PSU that worried me was on the secondary side where all the outputs are, there was a 470uF 25V cap, and I ordered a 16V. I think I did this once, in the past, and everyone said not to worry, just one of those situations where the bean-couenters realized they could get this particular 25V cap for less OR it met a spec they couldn't accomplish with the 16V.

[Logistics]

Re: Sony VAIO PCV-W20

Well everything is up and running. I left out the modem and pcmcia board as I'll never use either, and I bypassed the 470uF output capacitors on the internal amp with small films since it was right there.

My cousin put XP SP2 on it, but I'm considering throwing SP3 or even 7 on it. Perhapps a light Linux distro would be ideal.

[XD Andy]

Re: Sony VAIO PCV-W20

Apologies if I'm stating obvious stuff, but have you looked to a modded bios?

Don't know if you will find one, but it might add a few features or even increase the amount of ram of can install if Sony locked it to 1 gb but chipset supports more.

http://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/ins...-more-0132292/

[Logistics]

Re: Sony VAIO PCV-W20

I haven't, but I appreciate you mentioning it because I would love to increase this things' abilities. I'll look into it.