Cant get an old PC to work

[Maximilian]

Ok this pc is a little skewed in that some parts are far older than others. Heres the specs:

Abite BE6 II motherboard
Pentium II 400/Pentium III 450 have tried both
Radeon 9800 PRO
2x 256mb SDRAM
20GB 2.5" laptop HDD
generic PCI soundcard
generic 4 port USB PCI card
300w Seasonic SS-300GS 30A on the +5v rail and 15A on the +12v rail

It just wont work, i get nothing on the screen at all. I thought it was maybe because the 9800 isnt getting enough power, so i unplugged everything except the 9800 and the hard drive and still nothing.

Is it possible that the AGP slot itself isnt providing enough power? It is a "AGP 1X/2X (Sideband)3.3V device" Also there is no 4 pin plug to power the AGP port in this mobo, its simply not there.

For the record i had this working before with a different, case/psu/hdd and a geforce 4 Ti4400. Is the 9800 PRO too much for this to take?

 

[Zepper]

May not be able to use more than single sided, low density RAM modules on that mobo. Here is what Crucial says is compatible: http://www.crucial.com/store/l...ts.aspx?model=BE6%2DII

That mobo may also not support the voltage that the 9800 vid card needs to function. I see that the 9800 cards have a power connector for a floppy type power connector that must be connected. But you may still need a much older type vid card to work with that mobo. I'm not sure what the system requirements are for that one. I have a Radeon 7000 that supports AGP 2x at 3.3v and AGP 4x at 1.5V or a 2x/4x universal slot. I see that the 9800 pro requires at least AGP 4x support which I doubt that that mobo offers. Yup, it does need a card that supports AGP 2x.


Make sure the CPU, memory and vid card are seated properly.

.bh.

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

find a PC speaker and plug it into the motherboard.

Start with CPU only, plug it in and listen for beeps. lookup beep codes with google.
Add memory
add video card

make sure that you don't have ANYTHING else plugged in. No usb, no Keyboard...nothing.

If you don't get beep codes, try resetting your CMOS with the jumpers

Make suer that the jumpers are correct for your setup...an old system like this might have some wierd jumpers that need to be set properly.

If you can get video to come out eventually, then just keep adding stuff and see if you can get it all back together.

Some wierd things I have seen in the past include:

1) Memory issues with putting chips in one slot versus another...no boot nothing
2) Mobo shorting on the case, it worked with the Mobo out of the case, but not in the case
3) no boot with USB plugged in
4) jumpers messed up and fired CPU (oops)
5) Power supply just not working.

etc

hope that helps some. Troubleshooting can be so much fun!

 

[Maximilian]

Ok problem 1 solved, thanks for the suggestions guys. It turned out to be the 9800 PRO, as you say zepper and as fin pmed me, it needs more than AGP 2x. I put in a geforce 4 Ti 4400 and its working now.

Unfortunately theres another problem. Ive finally gotten it to recognize my 20gb 2.5" drive, took a while but i managed it. But i cant get it to recognize my dvd drive, the specific model is an "LG 6SA-4167B" Its a super multi dvd drive, writes cd's and dvd's as well i think.

What ive tried so far:

1. Putting it in IDE 2 as a master
2. Putting it in IDE 2 as a slave
3. Putting it in IDE 2 as a single drive

None of that worked, this is a fairly modern drive, it says "october 2005" on it, and im using a 40-pin IDE cable to hook it up. If anyones got any suggestions as to why this isnt working please tell, ive only got 1 thing left to try and if that dosent work im boned. Could it be that this drive needs faster than ATA33 speeds?

 

[Zepper]

I think that one controller on that mobo is a HighPoint chip - it is supposed to support up to ATA66 (HighPoint chips may not support ATAPI drives). So you'll have to find out what the drive requires for interface speed. IAC, I'm pretty sure you'll want to use an 80-wire cable for it. The board has IDE 1 thru 4 connectors - the IDE 1 and 2 connect to the integrated IDE controller that supports up to UDMA33 - connect optical drives to one of those. IDE 3 and 4 connect to the HighPoint chip, so use those only for HDDs. Also make sure you have the IDE channels you want to use enabled and properly configured in the BIOS setup.

I found a review on cdrinfo.com that says the interface is PIO4/UDMA33 (the review on CDRLABS.com says up to UDMA66) so it should work with a 40-wire cable on the integrated controller. If you have all the jumper (make sure the PCI bus is running at 33MHz) and BIOS settings set properly and still no go, try a different cable - the IDE cables in general are made so cheaply that you wonder how they work at all... Also check the connector pins on the mobo and drive to make sure none are squashed down. And the drive model is GSA..., not 6SA...

.bh.

 

[jackschmittusa]

Is IDE2 "enabled" in the bios?

 

[Maximilian]

IDE 2 is enabled yes, ive screwed with the bios settings and tried many different combinations.

Zepper, thanks for that in depth post that was great! However i absolutely could not get it working in a way that worked. I actually now believe that IDE2 is faulty, because nothing gets detected in it (either due to the crap cables i was using or the port is genuinely faulty ive still to ascertain that). The highpoint chip proved to be borderline useless because the windows XP setup didn't detect any hard drives connected to it, i tried what you said and having only opitcal drives connected and it didn't want to boot from them. The blue screen that pops up which is the high points BIOS i assume detects everything, but that was the only thing that detected stuff hooked up the the highpoint.

So i dug out an old 32xmax generic cd rom i never knew i had and slaved it to the hard drive so both were connected through IDE-1. I got windows installed fine now, and ive found a few IDE cables that actually have notches to signify the correct orientation they are supposed to be in, which could've been a problem before. The 80 wire cables i dug out couldn't be used in IDE1-2 because they didn't fit, and since windows setup dosent seem to recognize when a hard drive is hooked up to the highpoint it made IDE3-4 kinda useless.

Now all i gotta do is figure out how to make this thing physically work in an acceptable manor, i dont think the cables long enough to have the cd drive slaved to the hard drive, its lying on the floor in pieces right now, but its working. Ill figure something out.

 

[JackMDS]

May be this can Help,

http://bios-and-system-update.free-...66-and-HPT366-driver-for-Windows-2000-XP.html

 

[Maximilian]

Ok ive finally got it working, thanks for all the help guys! Im posting this post from it with the 450mhz PIII installed and im typing faster than it can display the text on screen, a vid is playing from youtube as well and DAMN this thing is slow lol. At least it works though, good lil backup rig if me or the parents ever need one.