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Are these symptoms of a bad / weak power supply?

A

AncientPC

Golden Member
I have an Antec SX 1040 Case (i.e. the SX1030 with a 400W PS). My system is crammed. I have every single PCI slot filled on my mobo, 4 hdd's, DVD, CD-RW, and about 6 case fans.

The problem is, my IBM 60GXP's are really finicky about power. It seems like if they don't get enough power they just won't work. If I hook up any of the case fans the IBM drives won't work. If I hook up my 4th hdd the IBM drives won't work.

I'm assuming I need more power, right?
 
A 400 watt PSU should be more than happy to run that load just fine....

Sounds like it could be a wiring problem or a short or something...

So i suppose it *could* be a defective PSU.

How old is it?
 
IBM 60GXP's are really finicky about power .................. I think they are just plain finicky.....😀

But actually it sounds like your bottoming out your 12v rail (which you shouldn't be with your rig). Are they not spinning up or are they giving I/O errors? It might also be your IDE controller not getting enough I/O voltage to supply the outputs. Use MBM (run full load) and let us know what your voltages are running. It should be pretty easy to see if its a rail drooping.

Also don't the Antec 400's have pots to adjust the rails?
 
When the IBM hdd fails it's usually during BIOS initialization, and at that point it's a big iffy. Sometimes they initialize, sometimes not. It's more or less pressing reset continually until they do. From experience, I have a higher percentage of getting them to work if I do not have the case fans plugged in.

Sometimes one IBM drive will initialize but the other won't.

They occaisonally make a whirring sound and IBM gave me their answer:

"We have seen a combination of circumstances cause problems with the drive that make the drive appear bad. When the drive is used on some of the newer, faster systems, running Win98SE or WinME,WIn2K, Win XP, Linux or using an ATA100 controller, perceived bad sectors can occur. These bad sectors are only software corruption and are completely recoverable. They are caused when the system shuts down faster than the hard drive can write the cache. When this happens, you get "Write Splice" errors. These errors turn into bad sectors, software corruption, data loss, etc... This is not caused by one specific component and is not a sign of a defective system or drive. You can read more about this here: http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/dataloss.htm

Currently patches are available for Windows 98SE, ME and 2000."

I running WinXP Pro so I'm SOL. What do you mean by "have pots to adjust the rails?"

Thanks for all your help.

 
WinXP has the write cache 'fix' included. Anyway, that problem wouldn't cause your initialization failure.

What was meant by adjusting the rails is that some powersupplies have pots inside them that let you turn up or down the voltage on the different voltage lines (rails). What was suggested that you get a copy of Motherboard Monitor from here and check what it reads your voltages at when you have the system at full load. If you see that the 12-volt line is low, and your powersupply has adjustable pots, you could open it up and bump the voltage up a tad.
 
AFAIK, well I can't modify the voltage; don't see on the PSU unless it's done software side.

I'm running Asus PC Probe now and here are my voltages:
+12V = 12.281
+5V = 4.972
+3.3V = 3.2
Vcore (2.5V) = 1.76

The only one that seems to be abnormal is the Vcore seems to be running a tad low.
 
Pots = potentiometers (sp?) and they will be found inside your powersupply. Are those voltages at full load? The answer you got from IBM was nonsense and relates to a totally different problem than the one your experiencing (man they are sure trying to make sure you understand that their drives aren't bad...🙂). By those measurements, it sure doesn't look like you have any problem with your 12v rail. But the having problems when adding fans sure sounds like it (since thats the voltage they use).

If you bios has this option, you might try increasing the I/O voltage.

Good luck.

 
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