Hello all,
This is my first post in the forums, so I'm pretty much a Newbie here, though I've been working on building, upgrading, and maintaining PCs since 1995 (and possibly some before, but in 95 I built my first one).
Anyways, I have recently upgraded my main system at home with a TYAN Trinity KT-A motherboard with the VIA KT-133A chipset. I purchased this board from a seller on Ebay (probably my first blunder), and when I received it, I had not yet purchased a Processor. So, I got a retail packaged Athlon 1.4GHz thunderbird, took all the necessary precautions with connecting the heatsink (I did my homework on this one, seeing as Athlons are pretty picky on heat dissipation) and setting everything up (as I said, I'm not a novice when it comes to building a PC). The first time I powered the board on, During the BIOS post, it was showing an athlon 1.0 GHz processor instead of a 1.4, but it was running fine, in fact, it booted up to windows that I had previously installed on my old system, loaded the correct chipset drivers and whatnot, and was generally looking fairly happy. So, still concerned with the speed problem, I looked on Tyan's site and found the most recent BIOS (my motherboard already had the bios version that was supposed to support the 1.4 GHz), and put it on a floppy. Anyways, when I went to reboot the system to install the upgrade, it never successfuly booted up (I didn't even get a chance to flash the bios, not even to boot off the floppy).
Now, being the case that I got this board from someone on Ebay, when I did receive it, I noticed it was a returned motherboard (to Fry's electronics, had a return seal on it stating the board was checked out and was okay, not that I trust that) which I wasn't so happy with. But I guess that's sometimes what you get when you get stuff from there. Not so bad though considering this would be the first time I haven't been satisfied with something I've purchased on there.
I'm assuming the motherboard is in some way defective, because I've tried a lot of different troubleshooting ideas (clearing the CMOS, reseating the processor, reseating the RAM, trying different RAM, stopped short of trying a different Processor, don't have the money to play with getting another one). Though there is no easy way to make sure it is or not, short of buying another processor or another motherboard.
So, to make a long story short, I'm just looking for anyone else that has had experience with this particular board and any speculations as to what might be going wrong? The only thing I found on Tyan's site and troubleshooting (btw, they never responded to my emails when I tried to ask them about it) is that the clock multiplier might not be functioning properly. Sometimes, if I fiddle with the board and reseting/reseating things enough, I can get it to post, and even at that it'll stop halfway through.
The Processor never got too hot, at least from when I was able to boot it and look in the bios at the temps plus the thermal probe I stuck in next to the heatsink never went over 38 degrees C. I might still try to buy a cheap duron processor (40 bucks just to test out a theory, ouch) to see if I can get the board to power up with that, but my instincts tell me it isn't the processor.
So, any thoughts anyone? I'll gladly answer any questions needed if someone can help me diagnose the problem before I waste a ton of money on parts to find the culprit.
Thanks!
This is my first post in the forums, so I'm pretty much a Newbie here, though I've been working on building, upgrading, and maintaining PCs since 1995 (and possibly some before, but in 95 I built my first one).
Anyways, I have recently upgraded my main system at home with a TYAN Trinity KT-A motherboard with the VIA KT-133A chipset. I purchased this board from a seller on Ebay (probably my first blunder), and when I received it, I had not yet purchased a Processor. So, I got a retail packaged Athlon 1.4GHz thunderbird, took all the necessary precautions with connecting the heatsink (I did my homework on this one, seeing as Athlons are pretty picky on heat dissipation) and setting everything up (as I said, I'm not a novice when it comes to building a PC). The first time I powered the board on, During the BIOS post, it was showing an athlon 1.0 GHz processor instead of a 1.4, but it was running fine, in fact, it booted up to windows that I had previously installed on my old system, loaded the correct chipset drivers and whatnot, and was generally looking fairly happy. So, still concerned with the speed problem, I looked on Tyan's site and found the most recent BIOS (my motherboard already had the bios version that was supposed to support the 1.4 GHz), and put it on a floppy. Anyways, when I went to reboot the system to install the upgrade, it never successfuly booted up (I didn't even get a chance to flash the bios, not even to boot off the floppy).
Now, being the case that I got this board from someone on Ebay, when I did receive it, I noticed it was a returned motherboard (to Fry's electronics, had a return seal on it stating the board was checked out and was okay, not that I trust that) which I wasn't so happy with. But I guess that's sometimes what you get when you get stuff from there. Not so bad though considering this would be the first time I haven't been satisfied with something I've purchased on there.
I'm assuming the motherboard is in some way defective, because I've tried a lot of different troubleshooting ideas (clearing the CMOS, reseating the processor, reseating the RAM, trying different RAM, stopped short of trying a different Processor, don't have the money to play with getting another one). Though there is no easy way to make sure it is or not, short of buying another processor or another motherboard.
So, to make a long story short, I'm just looking for anyone else that has had experience with this particular board and any speculations as to what might be going wrong? The only thing I found on Tyan's site and troubleshooting (btw, they never responded to my emails when I tried to ask them about it) is that the clock multiplier might not be functioning properly. Sometimes, if I fiddle with the board and reseting/reseating things enough, I can get it to post, and even at that it'll stop halfway through.
The Processor never got too hot, at least from when I was able to boot it and look in the bios at the temps plus the thermal probe I stuck in next to the heatsink never went over 38 degrees C. I might still try to buy a cheap duron processor (40 bucks just to test out a theory, ouch) to see if I can get the board to power up with that, but my instincts tell me it isn't the processor.
So, any thoughts anyone? I'll gladly answer any questions needed if someone can help me diagnose the problem before I waste a ton of money on parts to find the culprit.
Thanks!
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