Gigabyte GA-5AA problems (Super 7s)

[Chaotic42]

Yo, yo, yizzle motherboard forumers.

At work we've had 4, *4* GA-5AA based systems die in one month (Ok, one is an extended version of the board with more PCI slots). Has anyone had any problems with these boards? We're a low budget radio station and having 4 systems die is not cool. I've taken 3 of them home and I can't get them to POST. Nothing.

I've tried changing out everything with parts that I know that work. Video, CPU, memory, everything. Does anyone have any advice or tips? Maybe something I've overlooked?

These are Super 7 boards.

 

[Chaotic42]

Bump?

 

[mechBgon]

You tried known-working PSUs too, right? (I know, stoopid question )

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
You tried known-working PSUs too, right? (I know, stoopid question )

Yeah, I did.

Thanks for replying! I was worried that no one here would remember Socket 7

 

[mechBgon]

My first PC was a refurb CTX from the local Egghead store, with a Cyrix PR166, a Quantum Bigfoot 3GB hard drive, and 16MB of EDO. I upgraded it to 32MB and thought I was a baaaaaaad dude... So yeah, I remember 'em. If you can't find any other way of fixing them, I'm sure For Sale & Trade would yield you stacks of working Socket 7 boards for next to nothing. Good luck!

 

[KF]

Yeah that's strange. 4 mobos that have been in use for many long years all going completely dead at nearly the same time. It is hard to imagine them having a design shortcoming that would cause that. Are you sure some conditions haven't recently changed to bring this about? Drastic overheating? Static electricity? Some kind of upgrade, like new CPUs?

So you are saying nothing at all comes up on the screen, I guess. No beep? Do the fans spin? How hot are the heat sinks?

Only fixable thing that you didn't say you tried is resetting the CMOS. There aren't any swollen or leaking capacitors, are there?

What CPUs were in them, and what was the known good one?

 

[Chaotic42]

Here's the low down:

We're down to three of them. I think the 4th accidentally got destroyed or misplaced... I dunno.

With the others:

-The heatsinks heat appropriately.
-CPU fans spin.
-Jumpers are set correctly.
-Video has been tried in PCI and AGP slots.
-Power has been tried with ATX and AT power supplies.
-There are no obviously swollen or leaking caps.

I'm going to pull the CMOS chips here in the next few days (when things calm down).

Thanks for the reply!