Problems building a new Athlon MP system...

Chambered

Junior Member
Sep 16, 2001
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My roommate finally got all his parts in for his MP athlon system (Tyan Tiger MP S2460 w/2 1.2 ghz) - so we put it all together, but something is going wrong.

The system posts fine, detects all processors and drives, and will go through the standard boot-up procedures.. but whenever we try and install an OS we'll get seemingly random errors. Win2k spits out random stop codes right before it gets to the point of asking where you want to install it - it actually went through almost all the way once before, but then produced an error on some file at last minute and forced us to exit. In desperation we tried installing Win98 (so we could upgrade it to 2k) - but we get similar results with it. It'll act like it's about to install - then either not start copying files from the CD.. or spit out errors causing a reboot. You can read/write files to the HD fine, I tried copying all the installation files from the CD to the HD and running setup from there.. but still got the same error.

We've tried everything we can think of to get this system up and running. The only thing I -know- is wrong is my roommate ordered the wrong RAM. Instead of getting registered DDR he got normal un-registered. I've been told that this ram would only provide a problem if I was trying to use more than 1 stick, but I still get these errors with just 1. Was this person correct? My friend is going to call the place he got the RAM from tomorrow and see about sending it back and exchanging it.. hopefully they'll take it back. :/

We've stripped it down to the basics (motherboard/ram/processor, a hard drive, cd-rom drive, floppy, and vid-card).. but still get the errors. We've switched out the vid-card with another to make sure it wasn't the problem - still get the errors. I've tried changing the BIOS settings as the 2k manual suggests - but they Tyan board doesn't give you access to (m)any advanced features.

Does anyone have any suggestions, or know what's causing this?

Specs:

Tyan Tiger MP S2460
(2x) AMD Athlon MP 1.2
(1x) 256MB PC2100 DDR
Maxtor 40gb ata-100 HD
Hercules 3D Prophet III 4500 64MB (Kyro-II) - also tried with Diamond Viper V770 TNT-2 Ultra
Misc CD/CD-R/DVD Drives
 

Scootin159

Diamond Member
Apr 17, 2001
3,650
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76
Contact Tyan. Sounds like you tried all the reasonable fixes. My guess is either the board is dead (it could still POST but just have stability issues when windows starts taxing it), or that it has some freak incompatiblity issue.
 

Scootin159

Diamond Member
Apr 17, 2001
3,650
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76
I just noticed you mentioned he didn't get Registered DDR-SDRAM....that could be the issue.
 

Shnak

Member
Aug 4, 2001
146
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you HAVE to use Registred memory... that's what every review say... that's pretty much the only thing reviewers didn't like about the Tiger MP. that you have to use Registred memory...

Shnak
 

Athlon4all

Diamond Member
Jun 18, 2001
5,416
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76
I agree, Registered is a requirement even on K7 Tiger.

Note: Won't be needed by future 760MP boards though.
 

RagingGuardian

Golden Member
Aug 22, 2000
1,330
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You don't need registered RAM but you should get it. Some members at athlonmb had the same problem when using unregistered RAM and installing Win2K.
 

nortexoid

Diamond Member
May 1, 2000
4,096
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1 stick of unregistered should theoretically work fine....though apparently it isn't

your problem sounds like its stemming from: 1) memory; 2) memory; 3) memory...

i've similar problems cropping up from faulty/incompatible memory dimms...

try using a registered stick, if it doesn' work after that, try contacting tyan or your retailer and notifying them of a possible defective board...they may want to test it themselvse or for you for free....my retailer did this for me once...