By all means get yourself an ATA133 controller with an ATA133 hard drive and you're rocken like dokken...that was bad I know...
Or get an ATA133 controller and put an ATA100 on it..they're phasing out the ATA100 drives and replacing them all with the new ones!! Same price too!
You can put an ATA100 on an ATA66 bus..it just slows down to that speed..wont cause a chernoble even that's for sure :p
Opus

Your AT100 drive won't even pass 66mbs in a burst, so not only will it not matter, you won't notice a speed difference. Unless, of course, you're comparing it to an AT133 drive that happens to have a faster seek time, or rpm, or whatever else. It won't be the interface speed that makes the difference!

Ok, well then I am still at a lost, something is causing this thing to shutdown, and I don't know what. I put my old computer back on line, it went down once, I changed out the power strip(the other was about ten years old, and barely gripped the socket). After that, it ran for a week and no problems, so I put this one back on and it started dropping pretty rapidly. three times last night(which was the first time I put it back on).
I checked the system information sheet in windows, and I have Irq 9,10,11,14, and 15 sharing stuff, but in device manager, nothing shows to be in conflict.
The main one that worries me is irq 11. it is being shared by the video and the soundcard. I have had it in different solts before, and it pretty much did the same thing. but I would still like to get them on their own IRQs. I have 3,5,&6 free, but I don't know how to chnge their IRQs. Windows won't let me.

So Mr. best, you are saying don't bother with the PCI IDE card?

Jon is saying that the IDE bus is fine and that getting an ATA 100 controller with all those shared IRQ's is silly!! Man, take everything out but the video card and see if the issue still happens..if not you know you have a bad card or bad configuration with the cards.
If issue does happen then you know it's got to be the Power supply
Opus

I know this is five days after that last post, but just to clarify. I also added another post, with pretty much the same string.
My thinking is that if I take out all the cards, and run with just the video card, then it could shut down in the middle of the night, and I just wont know it.
It happens randomly, whenever it wants to, I know because when I set up down loads from Audiogalaxy or whatever, through the night, when I get back in the morning, I see that it must have shut down, because Audiogalxy has stoped. also windows task manager which I shut down after start up pops back up.
However, I can force the issue, and make it shut itself down, by recording music into it, sometimes it'll go down during the first track, sometimes during the second. sometimes I Could just be playing back a few tracks. Sometimes it will shut down if I am listening to real player. And sometimes, I could be surfing the internet, and it will just go down.
If I don't have a modem in the machine, or a sound card, then all I could do is play freecell, and I don't know if that will cause whatever prroblem that is there to surface.
So instead, what I have done, is swap cards, I have put them in different slots, I have bought a new modem, a new sound card (a cheap game card, just for testing) and I have installed an older AGP video card. none of which solved the problem completely. A few of the things helped.
I also tried to install Windows XP over the weekend, but the machine would shut down, during the install. I reinstalled 98se, and noticed that in the system information window, where the AGP wideo card was assigned an IRQ, that has gone away. I was curious about that already, since I believed with it's own bus, it shouldn't need an IRQ.
I should have tried recording audio and all that then, but instead, I pushed the issue, and went ahead with the XP insatll. It installed fine, and I was up and running.
I was able to record audio, playback audio, I only went as far as three tries. I tought everything was fine, I thought I solved my problem, but later I got onto the internet, I think I was going to activate XP, and the computer restarted it self for no reason.
I tried to install a new harddisk, thinking that could have been my problem, but I can't load XP onto it. Silly me, I bought the upgrade. so by putting in the new harddrive, and booting to the cdrom, Windows setup comes on and asks me for a raid or scsi driver. I don't know why, I am not using raid or scsi.
I cannot put 98se on it either, because it to is an upgrade, and I don't have another copy of windows to get past the verification process(I loaned out my 95 cd, and it never came back).

Opus, I don't mean to be an ASS, but I know this is something I did wrong, and I am starting to believe buying more stuff won't fix the problem(unless I go and buy a Dell-dude you're getting a Dell) And I am sorry for thinking you can figure this out. But there is no pressure or anything on you, if you can figure it out, if you have an idea, let me know(this goes for any of you out there) but don't tell me to 86 this thing and go buy something else.

No, I don't believe I am silly. Go through system information, under system tools in your start menu. look at shared IRQs, most computers I have seen, show IRQs 10-15 to be help by some kinda of irq steering device. for the PCI cards. mine for some reason also show IDE controllers, which I don't know if they should be there. Maybe when I updated my bios, I did something wrong, but I don't know how to get back to my original bios.
Also, windows, and gigabytes websites say there is nothing wrong with devices sharing these IRQs, and therefore do not show up as conflicts under device manager.
I still don't like it, and would like to change it, especially when I have 4 IRQs free.

does anyone know how to manually assign IRQs in windows?

Guys, forgive me if I was out of line, and Opus ignore me(I still love you though).
I just got finished reading jetoney's post, about cpu voltages and so on. I think that thread might help me out a bit, let me go and give it a try, get back with yall tomorrow.

Interesting...seems as tho you have done everything under the sun so far man!! I'm curious to have you do this...in XP or Win2K right click on my computer and go to properties..select Advanced..under Start Up and Recovery deselect Automatically Restart...this will allow you to see an error message which may be causing your system to shut down..this will help us troubleshoot your issues better. If indeed it only shuts down with PCI cards installed than it is indeed system conflicts of some sort. What you shoudl do is startwith just the AGP card and add one card at a time and get each card to find it's own IRQ.
In the BIOS disable all Serial ports..USB ports if not being used and also make sure Plug and Play OS is turned OFF!!
Also look at the motherboads manual to see where the shared PCI slots are and try to avoid using two cards in that order.
Try it also without the modem installed too.
Let us know
Opus
P.S...I love you too man!! lol!! Dude...dont get a Dell!!! LMAO!!

Did I ever mention that I am an idiot. If not, you guys may have figured it out by now. But I have finally realized what my problem with my puter is. Just like jetoney, I had a guru help me put it together, even though this wasn't the first one I have put together.
Anyway, when I got the computer home, I was trying to install that damned Lexicon card and was having problems. The final fix to that problem was to install the card in the legacy slot on the top shelf in my closet :D

What Mainboard was that again? Just so we know for my FAQ that I will be compiliing from all this wonderful information!!
Glad all is well!!
Peace
Opus

That is a Gigabyte 7-IXE motherboard for the AMD Slot-A processor.
I just did some more thinking, about my CDROM. Windows probably doesn't see it, because I have it set up as the slave on the second IDE port, with a 40gig harddrive as the master. That particular harddrive has Windows XP installed on it with the NTFS setup. Since 98 cannot see the HD, maybe it is also blind to the CDROM, that is slaved to a drive it doesn't recognize. I'll check it out when I get home.

Just a general suggestion ...
When you put a puter together, start with just a HDD, FDD, CDROM, and Video card. Get the system up and running with just that ... the minimum. Then you only add one thing at a time. Each time you're going to add a component, shut down the system properly, and make sure you unplug the ENTIRE system from the WALL, including your monitor, speakers, anything connected to your puter. If you go to the AMD site, they have very good instructions for building your computer, and they will tell you what order in which to install your components. The AMD site provides a wealth of information ... take advantage of it!
If you really want to avoid less ongoing IRQ conflicts, you might want to go with USB keyboard, mouse, and modem. That's a very inexpensive way to thin-down the amount of devices that share and clutter your IRQs. ALSO, it is very important that you make sure that you are grounded at all times when you are working inside a puter!
Hope this helps...