Epox 8RDA Problem

[Fr0st]

Well I finally got my board, got everything mounted and installed. Fired it up and it gets video, posts fine, no beeps. Right off Ive noticed one big thing there are HUGE delays. It pops up and reads the proc and counts the mem, then gets to reading the drives and takes about 35-40 sec to read the drives then if I hit DEL to get to the BIOS it takes another 40 sec or so to get to the bios. The bios works fine, the menus move and changes fine, saves and exits fine. I set everything to failsafe options and it does the same thing. If I try to boot to my boot disk the delays continue, after the Drive detection it goes to the screen with the blinking cursor, waits about 20 sec there and then gets to the device listing and waits there for about 40 sec then loads from the floppy and sometimes the prompt comes up or sometimes theres a delay getting to the prompt. Ive never run into this before and havnt found a similar problem yet in my forum searches. Anyone have any idea?
EDIT: I forgot I did flash to the latest BIOS and it does the same thing.

This is the new stuff:
Athlon XP 2400+
Epox 8RDA (No +)
1 512mb stick of Corsair pc3200 XMS
WD 120gb special Edition

My old stuff:
Gainward GF3 Ti-200
Plextor CD-RW
Philips AE
Netgear NIC
Antec 1030B with 400w Antec PSU

 

[mechBgon]

Hmm, how about try unplugging all your drives from the board's IDE and floppy ports as a troubleshooting step. What temperature does the CPU report in the BIOS if you let it idle for 5 or 10 minutes?

 

[Fr0st]

Yea thats my plan for tonight remove all the cards and drivers and see what I get. Maybe clear the cmos again. The chip is running about 38-40c idle. Im using a volcano9 with artic silver3, and the fan is running at about 3800rpm using the heat sensor.

 

[SpideyCU]

never run into this before and havnt found a similar problem yet in my forum searches.

I have. In my case, some IDE components were improperly set (for example, one device was on 'Cable Select' and in the position on the cable for Slave, while the other drive had its jumpers set to 'Slave'. Oops). While it could be any number of things, do check that. Considering it pauses for your RIGHT when it tries to search for ATA devices, it could be one place to look. If you still get this even with all IDE devices unplugged, then it's time to search for another culprit.

 

[Killrose]

I agree with Spidey, you have some sort of problem with a Cd-rom or something. I've seen this exact same problem due to a bad drive, or one not configured correctly. And MechBegon is right, un-plug your drives.

 

[Fr0st]

Yea it was the jumpers, set them both to cable select and it worked normally, YAY! But It took some damn work to get my HD working to install win98. Thanks for the help guys.

 

[SpideyCU]

Ha, I think people do that by accident more times than we realize.