A7V Booting: Probably a Newbie Question

[Farc]

I have had an A7V with a Duron 600 (OC to 950) for a few months now. Worked great initially but for the last two months I have had troubles cold booting. I hit the power button and wait for awhile...the power LED and IDE activity LED stay lit solidly, do nothing. CD-ROM drive is accessed, stops being accessed. LEDs still lit. Black screen. I used to be able to just hit the reset switch, and that'd make it boot normally, but recently (last two weeks) it's taken at least four, and sometimes as many as 10-20 presses of the reset switch. Restarting the computer after the first time works like a champ, but shut the power off and it's back to hitting reset till the cows come home. Any help? My setup:

A7V + Duron 600(900) (BIOS 1003, stock)
Win98 with all updates
300W Powersupply
128 MB Athlon-tested PC133 RAM
Voodoo3 2000 (PCI 1)
SB Live! Value (PCI 3)
Adaptec AHA-2930B Ultra-SCSI Adaptor (PCI 4)
3COM Etherlink NIC (PCI 5)
Maxtor 20 gig on Primary IDE
CD-ROM drive on Secondary IDE
CD-R Drive connected via Adaptec card

btw, I've looked through all the posts i could find about A7V, and couldn't find anything...if it's been said before and I missed it, forgive me.

 

[SemperFi]

Does it ever boot into the BIOS into the advanced section with operating frequency hilighted?

What is the cpu voltage you are using.

Have you tried to lower the speed ie: 800 or 700 with the same result?

 

[Farc]

One time and one time only it booted into the BIOS with the RAM frequency highlighted, changed from 133 to 100, saying that the memory had failed a test on the last attempt to boot, but that's just once and i've never had any other problems. Voltage is at the default of 3.56 volts (didn't change anything when I got the board). haven't tried at a slower speed but the thing worked just fine when i first got it to 950, don't know why that would matter so much...i'll try at the default 600 though and see what happens, if that works maybe i'll have to drop to 900 or 850 even.

I should point out that other than this, the entire system works great, very stable.

[edit]

I tried at 600, 700, 800, 900, and then again at 950, and each time it only required one hit of the reset switch...so I think this problem only occurs at "very cold" boots or something. I'll drop it to 600 again tonight and then see what happens tomorrow morning.

 

[SemperFi]

It doesn't sound like you have the same problem I was having. I would like to point out that in order to overclock my Tbird 100mhz I had to adjust the voltage to 1.85V using the jumpers.

The only other idea I have is power supply. Is it capable of 20A on the +5V and 10mA on the +5VSB.

Hopefully someone else has some more ideas. Bump.

 

[Farc]

This morning my computer started up with no faltering whatsoever (hit the power switch and let it go) at 600...so why is that?

 

[Farc]

Okay I didn't mention originally that I'm setting the CPU speed via jumpers, if that makes any sense. Also, switching them to run the CPU at 700 mhz resulted in the same crappy reboot sequence (reset about 10 times this morning).

Any more ideas?

 

[SemperFi]

There is a jumper on the motherboard in the book they label it JEN. With the jumpers on pins 2 & 3 the run defalt multiplier determined by cpu. In this mode all the switches for oc'ing should be off. In this setup I had problems.

Put the jumper on pin 1 & 2 and set the switches for the original freq.

Is that what you tried?

If it is I would probobly try a differn't power supply. I don't know where to go next.

 

[qiu]

flash the bios to 1004* whatever & see if this clears your problems... BTW: you shoudn't have more than 1.7V on CPU voltage...

 

[jamesbond007]

Is it the power switch you are having problems with? It sounds like the same problem I had. What I did, was turn off the power switch in the back, hit the power switch in the front. (Nothing should happen) Then I would hit the power switch in the back, then everything works like a charm. See, my power switch was "off" by one. So when I clicked to shut down windows, the HDD LED and the Power LED would stay on, but the Turbo LED would go out. Then I would have to connect the two soldering points on the motherboard, near the battery, with the main power switch in the back off, to reset the BIOS. Then it would boot normally. I don't even think I've made any sense from this message, so I'll stop here. Good luck to ya.

 

[Farc]

Well, the fact that the startup sequence is mhz-specific makes me doubt that it's the switch.

And with the JEN setting, I have it set to manual configuration (NOT jumper-free) and at this point I am running at 600 mhz, since I like being able to start up in a reasonable timeframe. I guess I'm confused why this thing works flawlessly at 600 mhz but not at 700.

 

[SemperFi]

Farc,
From your last post am I correct in assuming that it is booting fine with the current setting? 600 mhz. I have not tried to oc mine yet. I set it back to stock to install my triple boot 98, 2000, and Linux. I am putting finishing touches to it. I didn't have this problem until after I brought the speed down to stock. When I did that I also flashed to 1005a bios and assumed it was that. I am thinking it is something else.

One note since I set the jumpers for manually 700mhz "stock" I can only recall having a boot problem once and it has been close to 2 weeks since I swiched from auto to manual.

 

[Farc]

Yeah, i'm running at the default 600 mhz (jumpers 1-4-5-6 on). I haven't flashed anything yet, probably should but i don't have time to mess with it until after this weekend. Anyhow that's where I stand. I'm very confused...

 

[SemperFi]

Farc, as I sit here and think about it my system did this before I flashed the bios was using 1002 "stock".

That would eliminate the bios version causing this.

When I get some time this weekend I will OC mine again and see if I have the same problems.

 

[cmaMath13]

I would recommend Bios 1005A instead of 1004. You may want to do a search on the topic (A7V Bios) and decide what Bios to upgrade to.

 

[SemperFi]

Farc,
I just upped my cpu to 800 MHZ and seems fine. I was not able to go any higher in 2000. I tried 900 would not boot in 2000 or 98. Tried 850 in 2000 no go. I forgot to try it in 98 but beings that I use 2000 as primary os it doesn't really matter to me if will boot to 98 at 850.

One other thing. I had to work on a friends A7V duron yesterday. had it over clocked 100mhz. Basicly system was dead no power up nothing. I used conductive pen to link L1 bridges. Somehow part of the material fell off and left one of the traces open. I cleaned it all off and reconnected them and it worked well. I really doubt that that is your problem but doesn't hurt to check. If you are using the pencil trick try recoating the bridges.

 

[LumMoose]

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