More Dilemnas with TBird 1ghz/KT7-RAID. Please help.

[Modeps]

UGH. Problems problems problems... Please help if you can.

Im really getting tired with these problems I have. I just bought an AMD TBird 1GHz, KT7-Raid motherboard... and I cant seem to have any luck... First problem was the processor, they sold be a faulty one. They replaced that and I was happy because it looked like it was going to start working... I get it home and of course, it dosent work properly... here are the symptoms I have been having.

1) Enter the BIOS and make some changes, SAVE AND EXIT, Video is lost... To get video working again, have to remove the power cable while computer is still running... Plug it back in and I've got video again. Enter the BIOS and dont make changes... DONT SAVE AND EXIT, Video is lost again... repeat removing the power cord to get video working again.

Troublshooting Ideas tried:
removing all cards except my video card...
changing video cards
resetting BIOS
tried different monitors
changing AGP driving control to DA or EA as suggested by ABIT

2) When booting off a floppy, it seems to boot fine... until I try to do anything else. Trying to run fdisk to just set up my hardrives, it will either a)memory alocation error, not enough system memory to perform... system halted. OR b) Looks like it is running, floppy drive stays lit but the system is locked.

Troubleshooting Ideas tried:
different floppy drives
different floppy drive cable

3) Trying to boot off the CDRom drive, Begins fine... Then just hangs with no error message

Troubleshooting Ideas tried:
different cd drives
different operating systems

It was suggested to me that the powersupply may be bad... I highly doubt it. 300W Brand new. Found here: http://www.3dcool.com/300wattatx.shtml

here are the total system specs:

1ghz AMD Thunderbird
256MB PC-133 Ram
ABIT KT7-RAID Motherboard
Tornado1000 case with 300w PS (found at 3dcool.com)
Leadtek GeForce2 GTS 64mb
Kenwood True72x
2x30MB IBM Deskstar 7200RPM (right now NOT on RAID controller

a motherboard should NOT be this hard to get working properly.

 

[jfall]

damn, now i'm scared to order my computer, it's pretty much the same as yours except with a tbird 900 and the asus geforce II 64meg card... what about the hard drive? have you tried anything with that?

 

[Modeps]

Nope, I really dont think its the hard drives at all... seeing as I cant do anything with them without fdisking. (i updated my first message to include what type they are)

 

[Remedy]

Exhcange the motherboard then come back.

 

[dkozloski]

Start with your most basic problem, which seems to be the first one. If you can't get it fixed, it makes no difference what else you can do. Try a different power supply. Try different memory. Try a different keyboard, try a different mouse. I don't know how many times, after the problem was solved, I have heard the refrain "I didn't think THAT would make any difference". Make sure that floppy and hard drive cables are unplugged.
Have the Mother board out of the case and sitting on a piece of cardboard on the table with just the keyboard, power supply, video card and memory. If you can't get the most basic setup to work, it might be a bad motherboard.

 

[Modeps]

im tired of it so tired. im used to screwing in the board, attaching the devices and going... not having to deal with crap like this...
I'll just send it back and see what the company says is wrong with it... blah blah.... layter I'll let yall know what i find and what they find

 

[Modeps]

thats nice of them, i just called the company i bought it from and they will replace it, but if i want help, they will charge me for it... grrr i love business

 

[zerogear]

I have that same exact problem. Though I just need to shut down the power supply, wait for a few seconds, then rebooting. I'm contacting the company I bought it from too for a replacement (maybe these are a faulty batch?) It also does the same thing if I use the reset button.


When you get the new one, tell me did it fix it or not. TIA

 

[CAMS]

1) No video without unplugging power supply, invalid CPU clock see page 3-5.

No idea on the other 2.

 

[Modeps]

umm... see page 3-5 of what? the manual?
Where'd you get your info, just out of curiosity?
Perhaps all problems are linked together... I shall check/adjust my clock speed when i get home.

 

[zerogear]

Adjust it to what?

 

[Modeps]

To what it's supposed to be... i believe I saw that under softmenu that it was set at 500mhz and my processor is 1ghz, but i though it was just a default setting because during the post, it said it was 1ghz... hmm.. we shall see

 

[zerogear]

It was 700MHz, I set it to 1GHz.. still had that problem.. I will probably try user define to see if it solves anything.

 

[Modeps]

damn.
i wish that guy would respond again where he found it, and where the pages he is referencing are from.
Zerogear: did you check your manual on page 3-5? (in case thats what hes talking about?)

 

[zerogear]

Well, he means Chapter 3, Page 5 -- but it says the warning on Chapter 3 Page 4. Here's what it says.

Setting the working frequency higher than the PCI chipset or processor specs, may cause abnormal memory module functioning, system hangs, hard disk drive data lose, abnormal functioning of the VGA card, or abnormal functioning with the other add-on cards. Using non-specification setting for your CPU is not the intention of this explanation. These should be used for engineering testing, not for normal applications.

Solution in case of booting problem due to invalid clock setup (3-5)

Normally, if the CPU clock setup is wrong, you will not be able to boot. In this case, turn the system off then on again. The CPU will automatically use its standard parameters to boot. You can then enter the BIOS Setup again and set up the CPU clock. If you can't enter the BIOS setup, you muyst try turning the system on a few times (3~4 times) or press "INSERT" key when turning on and the system will automatically use its standard parameters to boot. you can then enter BIOS SETUP again and set up the new parameters.


---
This seems to be exactly what's happening.... Hrm.. I'll try it again and reply later.

 

[Modeps]

I honestly hate that manual. It's an obvious translation and its far too long for me to read completely
thanks for the info, im stuck at work so i cant try it out myself or investigate myself... we shall see when i get home or if you have any success

 

[zerogear]

Okay. I got it to work. I just set the CPU Setting to User Define and set the variables as a Gigahertz CPU should be:

x10
100/33MHz
0
Disabled

and everything else is default. Now it works fine... Strange Abit board. At leat it works now ~~ Now! time for some overclocking.

 

[Modeps]

YEAY!
I'll have to try that out when i get home!
SWEET... I just hope everything else works when i fix that problem.
are those settings in SoftMenu?

 

[zerogear]

Yep SoftMenu III -- I didn't have any of your other problems, but the floppy such and CDROM may be data cable reversed and such.

 

[Modeps]

i dont think they are, im just hoping this is the cause of the instability. thanks for being my guineapig!

 

[CAMS]

Intake 77

Sorry couldn't respond sooner, had to sleep. Zerogear spelt it out.

Got caught with that one myself, felt numb for a while, unpluged and open the case couldn't see a thing wrong, booted back up OK so I went straight into the BIOS and found the CPU speed wrong, then read the manual to confirm that's what is supposed to happen.

So I am not the only one who browses the internet at work.

This may not be your problem with item 3 but initially my BIOS was set up not to detect anything but C drive (IDE primary master)so CDROM didn't work. Enter each of the other 3 IDE setting and set to auto. (pages 3-8 & 3-9) couldn't they just number the pages?

 

[Modeps]

yeap, I feel pretty stupid about this one... when it booted up the post said: AMD Athlon running at 1000MHz(100x10.0) so I presumed, stupidly that the clock speed was set correctly in the bios. doh. so that problem down and the other 2 to go... everything is set correctly in the bios, and Im still getting memory allocation errors with the floppy and cd-rom boot... so I'm gonna swap the motherboard this sunday with the company that I bought it with at a computer show... I think just for saftey's sake, i'll swap all 3 pieces i bought from them (processor, mboard, and ram) just in case.

thanks to all that help us people that cant learn to read the manual

 

[GD695372]

I had pretty much the same exact problem setting up a friend's system, although slightly different. I think it's something to do with the controllers and the RAID. The only difference from the exact problem that you're describing was that I was having trouble getting the cd-rom drives to work and the hard drive worked fine. It took me about 60 hours w/o sleep to find a solution. First of all, I had to set all of the soft menu settings to the spec'd settings(eg. 1ghz processor to 10.0, buss to 100/33, pc-clk to FBS only, etc.). I then disabled the RAID array and enabled both of the IDE(eg. id1+ide2 and ide3+ide4). I found that my win95 osr2 startup disk work boot fine, while my win98se disk would hang. I would also check the jumper settings on the drives. On another note, I've seen a lot of info on problems with the gxp's and WinME(just soo you know for the future), as well as a few possibles with 98se. I hope this helps, and if it doesn't, feel free to e-mail me at vallen.rochester.rr.com. If I left out any other BIOS settings that I might have changed and have since forgotten about, my apologies and I'll do my best to find out what they were, if the need arises.

PS: Those retail heatsinks come with some pretty high-pressure clips don't they? I thought I was gonna crush the core putting that one on. I hope your's was truely defective and you didn't crush the core.

Just don't loose your patience, and if all else fails go bug a #linux channel on irc, or Abit.