Amusing problem with Tyan dual athlon mb

[Trygve]

So, I get in the parts to build my first dual-CPU athlon system: Tyan Thunder K7 s2462ung mainboard (w/ dual uw160 SCSI), two Althon MP 1200, each with dual-fan CPU coolers, four 256 Meg registered PC2100 DDR DIMMs (Thunder K7 only works with registered DDR memory), a couple of 7200RPM ATA100 drives, Inno3d dual-monitor 64Meg GeForce2 MX400 graphics adapter, Pioneer 16x DVD, Yamaha 2100s CDRW, and the official Tyan-approved NMB power supply (the Thunder K7 has a "new and improved" power connector design incompatible with both standard ATX and P4-style connectors).

Whew!

Toss everything together in one of the Yeong Yang 15-bay cube server cases, plug in the power, and ...

... nothing ....

Tear everything down, check all the cards and cables, swap anything swappable and reseat everything else; reapply power and ...

... nothing ....

After exploring the depths of Tyan's "technical issues" page, I find that if the power supply thinks that there is not enough current being drawn when it fires up, it'll shut down again immediately.

And all the hardware described above isn't enough load on the power supply? (Yes, there was a reason I listed all those parts up there.)

Fortunately, I just happen to have a moderate-sized collection of older hardware lying around, including a pile of full-height Seagate Elite-9 hard drives, and I sat one on the desk next to the case and ran one of the four-pin power connectors to it. That didn't make the system come up, but with one drive so attached, it would run for half a second before shutting down.

So I added a second full-height Seagate drive. Then the system would power up and stay up. Sorta like the story of Swamp Castle in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, except that this beast whirrs a lot more. At least it's working--and coming up with a new use for a couple of old full-height hard drives should surely count for something--but sooner or later I'm going to be tired of needing to have a couple of noisy hard drives running on the desk just to be able to get the power supply to turn on.

On the other hand, if the NMB supply will be satisfied with the extra loading put only on the 12volt line, I might be able to get away with mounting a couple of KC lights on top of the case, or maybe installing a headlight in a couple of the exposed drive bays. As long as I remember to switch it to "high beams" before hitting the "on" switch, I bet it'll work....

 

[Buz2b]

LOL! Good story! Keep them coming!

 

[Hoholi]

I heard the same problems and the problem lies with the PSU : I read some stuff about it at : The Register the best solution is to search for the DELTA psu with does not have this problem .

i know also that the first boards wher witdraw becausse there was a problem with the socket's : you can recognice if you have the earlier board by looking at the lever of the socket : If you have the metal-ones you have a faulty board, if you have the board with plastic levers you're OK. There was also a issue with a printing fault concerning some jumper that affect's the FSB or something.... Have bad memory

Sincerely,

 

[Trygve]

<< I heard the same problems and the problem lies with the PSU : I read some stuff about it at : The Register the best solution is to search for the DELTA psu with does not have this problem .

i know also that the first boards wher witdraw becausse there was a problem with the socket's : you can recognice if you have the earlier board by looking at the lever of the socket : If you have the metal-ones you have a faulty board, if you have the board with plastic levers you're OK. There was also a issue with a printing fault concerning some jumper that affect's the FSB or something.... Have bad memory
>>



Thanks! I got the NMB supply because it was cheaper ($109 - still not cheap for a power supply) so if I can just come up with enough add-on hardware to keep it happy, I probably won't worry about replacing it. The other hair-pulling adventure was the Windows 2000 drivers for the two built in NICs; unfortunately, installing the driver would very consistently switch the OS from &quot;Windows 2000 Professional Edition&quot; to the ever-popular &quot;Windows 2000 BluScreen Edition.&quot;

Called the guy I was setting it up for today (I'm doing this for the guy who's helping me with Dolby 5.1 surround engineering) and he doesn't have a network at home anyway, so I just disabled the on-board NICs for the time being.

Fortunately, the levers on the ZIF sockets are plastic, so we're okay there. The board is definitely a little rough around the edges, at least inasmuch as there are still all these messages and comments along the lines of &quot;be sure to fix this before the production version&quot; still in the BIOS.