Is my NV7-133R dead also?

[beatle]

I'm on my last nerve with this hardware I purchased on the FS/FT forum. After losing one CPU to a backwards heatsink clip, I am now faced with the possibility that the motherboard is also dead for an unknown reason.

I put my 1700+ tbred b in and used the a retail barton HSF. It posted ok as an unknown CPU @ 1100 mhz (yeah I know it's supposed to run @ 1466). I go into bios and see that the temp is ok @ 37C, whew! I adjust the cpu speed to 1700+ and set the ram ratio to 1:1 since I'm using PC2100. As I'm adjusting some other things in bios, it locks up hard. Keyboard goes dead and I have to reset. I hear several long beeps before I turn it off and then back on again. I don't have a floppy drive in the system at this point, but I'm going to need one to flash the bios from DOS. I hook one up and boot it up. It posts ok, but it's not detecting my floppy. I manage to get into bios and and reenable the floppy drive, save changes and exit before it hard locks again. I reboot and it still doesn't recognize the drive... sigh. After trying a few different floppy cables with no solution, I take a break and come back. Now when I turn on the computer it doesn't post at all. No beeps. I've removed the floppy, reseated the ram, and I'm about to try my tbird in this mb (again) before throwing it out.

PSU is a new 300w Forton, FWIW.

UPDATE: After clearing CMOS, I was able to boot and actually get the floppy to start reading, however it locks up and stops before getting to a prompt. I tried my memtest86 disk to see if I could get it to run since it loads much faster than DOS. Not long after the first read did I start getting a bunch of numbers running down the side of my screen:

@X:1000
AX:0212
BX:1A00
CX:0001
DX:0100

UPDATE 2: I burned memtest to a cd and was able to boot to that. It ran only for a few seconds before spitting out a whole bunch of errors in the 320 meg range. I pulled the dimm from the 2nd slot (I'm running 2x256) and rebooted. It failed to post, locking at the video card screen, but after resetting a few times it got back into memtest and ran for 2-3 minutes before hanging.

 

[beatle]

Bump!

 

[beatle]

Bump! Do I need to give more information to determine the problem? If so, what?

 

[fell8]

Vid card may not be seating properly. Reinstall it, but don't screw it in (have to be careful when attaching monitor), see if that helps. PS also could be the culprit.

 

[beatle]

I'll reseat the video card, though I'm not getting the video card error beeps. How can I test the PSU? It obviously comes on, and the rails in bios look ok.

 

[beatle]

Bump!

 

[beatle]

Still nothing?

 

[anomaly]

 

[anomaly]

Like I just told you via aim, tear it down, rebuild it. Since it did it with the other PSU the mobo is bad in my opinion.

 

[beatle]

At the advice of the seller I will try my TwinMos PC3200 in it as a last ditch effort. This will be my 3rd stick of memory.

 

[beatle]

I cleared cmos again and tried the TwinMos. It worked ok. I tried the kingston and it worked. Kingston + Kbyte = ok for 22 hours on memtest! Since this was just a test case, I put it into my gf's case along with the PSU that was powering the mb. And it had the same problems as it did before!!!

I also have a stick of Crucial PC2100 that was originally working on this motherboard. It also does not work now. I have also tried this mb on the old PSU that was in my server, an unknown 300w from 1999. Even my 1.1 tbird does not work. ARGH

 

[beatle]

I gave it another try today just for poops and laughs. I got the former, but none of the latter. I am now not even able to post, as I get

Award BootBlock BIOS v1.0
BIOS ROM checksum error

Detecting floppy drive A media
Drive error. System halt

This is immediately following the video card "post." I do not even have a floppy installed. I've tried clearing the bios to no avail. I STILL don't know how it was able to run memtest for over 22 hours last week.

 

[mechBgon]

Sorry to see your troubles beatle I have one quick & easy suggestion: look at the rear of your new PSU and confirm that the slider switch is set for 110V and not 220V. If anything else comes to mind I'll post it too.

 

[mechBgon]

LOL, something else came to mind CMOS battery... could it be getting weak? They're about $2 at a supermarket, not a big gamble to take.

 

[beatle]

The switch is indeed set for 115v (why 115 and not 110?)

I'll give the battery a shot since it's so cheap. I had one go bad before on my BH6, but that would just cause the settings to get reset whenever I booted up after having it unplugged. Once it booted up there were no problems.

Another weird thing: if I left the computer alone for a while and then booted it up, it would sometimes last a minute or two longer than if I powered it down and then back up. This wasn't always the case, so perhaps it was just a coincidence.

 

[mechBgon]

Well, could it be an overheat situation? After the last cooling situation... The main concern is to get the stepped end of the heatsink at the solid-plastic end of the CPU socket, of course, and to have some thermal compound in there, but I doubt you'd have overlooked either of those.

The other thing I can think of is a possible short-circuit of some kind. What case is it in, any model you'd have a link to, or a model number?

 

[beatle]

It's plenty cool. I made sure of that this time around. I have my SK7 on it right now with an L1a on top. CPU temps are 30-35C with the case open (Nikao X-Jazz). I had my KT7a-raid and NF7-S in this case before I retired it (it really sucks!) I also tried it in my Q500 and its old 300w PSU that powered the tbird in my sig. The nb heatsink gets barely warmer than room temp... it crashes before it can heat up. System temps are ~17C (obviously erroneous since the room temp is ~22-23C).

 

[jarsoffart]

Update BIOS?

I had an new NV7-133R and it died within a few months and I had to RMA it for a new one. When I went to the RMA building (I live near Abit), they said something about that motherboard having lots of problems. The new one they gave me hasn't given me any trouble though.

 

[beatle]

I'm not even able to boot the computer ATM. I'd actually be afraid to update bios, as the machine could lock up while reading/writing to the bios ROM.

 

[beatle]

I tried a new battery. I get the same problem. I have a bad feeling I should just pack it in and scrap it.