KA7 Problems

[duerno]

Ok, hopefully someone here has a mystic answer to my problem. I have a classic Athlon 750Mhz processor on an Abit KA7 motherboard. I get random lockups that have yet to be explained. It doesn't matter what hardware I have in the machine, or which operating system I'm using.
Currently besides the processor a 128MB stick of PC100 ram is in the machine and a Diamond Viper V770 AGP video card. My hard drive is a 20 gig Maxtor ATA drive. Of course there are some fans plugged in too. My powersupply is a 300W Antec which is rated by AMD to a gigahertz.

Obviously I have more hardware, but the freezing occurs at even this basic level. And the problem happens in both Linux and Win2k. The lockups are random as far as I can tell. Sometimes after 15 minutes, sometimes after a couple days. So, here's what I've tried.

1) Every bios setting imaginable from the KA7 FAQ (so don't tell me to go there).

2) So I thought ram problem, but after swapping out my 128m stick for another, it still locked up after about an hour.

3) Unplug everything but the essentials from the PS in hopes that insufficient power was the problem.

4) I've tried the ram in every dimm slot, and reseated the CPU numerous times.

5) New bios version TY has been flashed to it.

Finally, before you suggest a heat problem, my CPU runs at a chilly 75 degrees F constantly. Last I checked this is well within operating specs.

At this point I'm at my wits end with this machine and I am desperately seeking help. I really don't want to have to buy myself a coppermine, but it may come to that.

Brian

 

[jsm]

I wish I could help you on this one. I too have a KA7 and I am having nothing but problems with it.

Not to go on a rant, but .. apparently the newest rev of the BIOS is supposed to fix the issues that the Award BIOS has with SCSI cards. If this were true, I wouldn't be using this damned IDE piece of crap. (Sorry IDE loyalists, but SCSI is far better.)

If I hop into MS FDISK, it sees 2 partitions - 1 96meg, the other, the size of my hard drive. FDISK will not allow me to touch the 96meg partition. I didn't make the partition. The funny thing is, I can take that hard drive, put it on my BX machine with the same SCSI controller and FDISK does not see the supposed 96meg partition.

So, why is this 96 meg partition a problem? Simply put, I cannot install any OS besides Linux on this machine. That's all fine and dandy - I like Linux. But, I also like to spend the good half of my day wasting away playing TFC. There is no Half Life for Linux.. so I suffer for now.

I thought the TY version of the BIOS fixed SCSI problems? How come sites like Anandtech don't bother to test motherboards with a SCSI card? Do you think that everyone uses an IDE drive? I know, I know .. I used to be in QA and I know you cannot test every possible configuration - but SCSI is more popular than people think. And I would have liked to know in advance that the KA7 had issues with SCSI so I would never have purchased this second rate piece of crap.

 

[classy]

Duerno, what drivers are you uisng for your video card? Try to use the nvidia 5.22 drivers for video card. Clear the cmos and start from scratch. Make sure your running your ram at just the host clock, 100mhz, and not at host+pci clock. Are you using a good brand of memory, Micron, Corsair, or Mushkin?