Biostar M7VKQ, won't post with 512sdram anymore

[kef7]

Long story but I'll try to be brief: I bought a M7VKQ, 1.33 T-bird, and a 512mb sdram from my workplace. The test department guys who bought the board couldn't get it to work and after gathering dust for over a year they offered to sell it to me--I didn't really need it but lowballed them $50 and got it (plus a case and a PC Power&Cooling 350 PSU!). After some troubleshooting I finally got the board to POST, not lock-up and be stable.
(turned out to be a very poorly fitting hsf with a thermal pad and a huge gob of thermal paste)

What is weird is that when I was first troubleshooting this board both at work and at home the board had the 512 stick in and would boot up and lock up at various times (right after POST, while in the BIOS, reboot on the windows splash screen, lock up while in windows)--but now that I got the board working stably the 512 stick will no longer work in the board at all--I get no video while powering up and get a long beep, long pause, long beep, etc.

I'm starting to think the the 512 stick went bad but I am looking for suggestions on how to verify that.

What I have tried so far:
clear CMOS
change cpu speed (from 133 to 100)
change memory slot
try 512 with another a 128 stick at same time

Any other ideas?

Should I try the 512 stick in my 815 chipset motherboard? I know the 815 doesn't support one single stick of 512 but would it at least POST? (I thought I read somewhere that a 512 stick shows up as 256 in an 815 chipset board, is that true?)

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

 

[jjyiz28]

continuious long beep is memory prob. try using a diff stick, se eif it works.

 

[kef7]

thanks for the reply--the board is working fine with different ram, I'm just trying to figure out how/why the 512 stick won't work anymore.

 

[Peter007]

I've used to have that board. IT was a major PAIN-in-the-ASS

All it need is 1 wrong jumper setting to prevent it from posting.
Meaning a 133fsb 1000mhz Thunderbird will only POST if the jumper is on 133fsb.
If you set the jumper to 100fsb (which is default for most motherboard on SAFE boot), it won't post.

To make the matter worst, the CMOS Clearing isn't reliable.
So if you swich from a Duron (100fsb) to a Thunderbiad (133fsb); you have a dead mb.

What I did is take the batter out, and let the mb set their for an hour in the ClearCMOS setting.
Then plug the 133fsb Thunerbird to get it working.

As for your 512mb, RIP.........
I would just count your pleasing that you were able to get it to work

 

[kef7]

Peter-thanks for the additional info. Lucky for me the board I have doesn't seem to be as troublesome as yours. (at least once I found the hsf problem). I'd probably keep it if it had an AGP slot.