I NEED HELP WITH MY NEW ATHLON 1.4Ghz SYSTEM

[bullion416]

Here is what i have...i have the AMD Athlon 1.4 Ghz processor (revision C) with 266 Mhz bus speed. I have 2 chips of Micron DDR memory of 256 mb each (PC2100), making my total 512mb. It supports 266 bus speed. For the motherboard I have the new MSI-MicroStar (MS-6380) which is also known as the K7T266 PRO with RAID and DDR support. The other details aren't too important, but i have a Maxtor 60gig Hard drive with 7200 RPM at ATA/100. Here is my situation, I think I have a problem and need your help diagnosing it. When i booted up the computer for the 1st time, it did not work and the motherboard (mobo) had D-LED lights which tell you what is wrong. They told me the memory was hung up, so i took them out and wiped them off and then thwey worked, i then installed windows 98 se plus..That worked fine. I then installed the mobo drivers cd. The processor was running hotter than it should i think, it was originall at about 69 degrees celcious, then i moved my fans and it droped to about 60 degrees celcious, i heard it shouild be around 55 degrees celcious. Then i decided to change FSB from 200 mhz to 266mhz, which it is able to handle and then it locked up. In the bios, it is actually listed as 100 MHZ, but it is doubled to make 200 MHZ and to get to 266 Mhz, you bump it up to 133 MHZ....so the mobo still said the memory was hung again, then after tinkering with that....it has left me where i am at this time....the D-LED lights tell me the processor is damaged. I also noticed that the mobo came with software that lets you change FSB through windows instead of the BIOS, would that have been better to use? I am trying to find out whether the processor is bad or the motherboard or if none of them are. Is it possible that the athlon is dead from running too hot and if so, why...b/c this was the heatsink and fan amd gave me. Thanks for your help.
-brett-

 

[JoeDaddy]

what bios are you using? are you using the r126 or the r127 board?

Heres a site that you may want to make your favorite. Msihardware

 

[OCnMan]

The 1.4's are all unlocked, so if the first time you booted at 14*100=1400MHZ, the next time you didn't change the multiplier and tried to boot at 14*133=1862MHZ, and that sounds a little high, if I do say so! So, it sounds to me like your processor is probably fine but not ready to run that fast. This may not be the case, but I can assure you, the BIOS is the problem here.
I'd jumper the BIOS re-set jumper, then set the multiplier manually to 10.5 so you can run with a 133MHZ FSB at 1400MHZ.
You have a good mobo, but they in my experience the MSI's are a little problematic with different multiplier and FSB settings. In other words, the MSI's seem to like certain settings irreguardless of what the CPU can really do. So, while you may seem to be having CPU problems, this is probably not the case. The MSI will take you where you want to go, but you will have to tinker a good deal with it to get it there.
I am attempting to say that MSI needs to work heavily on their BIOS implementations, but I am not saying that they don't have a great mobo, they do. Once you beat your head on the wall a little, and tweak a lot, you will have a great, and very stable system. But you will have a headache getting there until MSI fixes some obvious BIOS issues.
OCnMan

 

[bullion416]

I tried the processor in a friends computer and it does the same thing, which leads me to think it is definately dead/fried. This sucks, b/c it was not used, I will try to exchange it out, but does anyone have advice on how to prevent this from happening again?

 

[bullion416]

I was told to get the one with R126, so I called around until i found on with that. So, yes I have the R126 board....what does that tell you?