Unlocking failure?

[mikeasa]

I have an Abit KX7-333 and an Athlon XP 1600+ AROIA stepping CPU. I unlocked the CPU and have been running it at 10x166 for about a month.

In order to boot the PC, I have had to reset the CMOS, make my changes to it and then boot up. As long as I went through that procedure the PC has worked and been very stable at 1.66GHz.

Today when I tried to boot the PC, the only speed I reset the CMOS, made my changes and tried to boot. The boot failed. I tried over and over again, with different settings. I tried stock settings and stock voltages as well as many other settings. I did get the PC to boot, but only at 650MHz. I reset the CMOS, the PC beeps and begins to boot at 650MHz. Before it will go into Windows XP it gives me a message about my settings being incorrect, but allows me to hit F1 to continue.

My theory is, that maybe the conductive grease that I used to unlock the CPU has touched where it should not have and now the L1 bridges are messed up, forcing me to boot at 650MHz. I do not know for sure if this is the case. Does anyone out there have any experiece with this? I want to ask before I pull off my monster Alpha heatsink and fan and redo everything.

 

[mikeasa]

Anyone? Please! Life at 650 is not as fun as life at 1660.

 

[Antisocial Virge]

You think thats a unlocking failure? Look at what happened to my friends machine Pic I almost fell off my chair till he said it was a mistake.

EDIT: sorry for the hijack but it seemed like a good spot to post the pic.

 

[mikeasa]

Yeah, 3000+MHz does seem a tad high for an AMD.

So, anyone else? No one's ever seen this before??

Anyone??:Q

 

[Bartman39]

No doubt the unlocking has gone bad... Feel lucky it even booted...? Most of the time when a connection is lost or a short of the L1`s you get nothing...

The solution would be to "re-do" the unlocking but use a different method...?

 

[mikeasa]

Well, I took apart the PC and the unlocking still looks fine. I am going to redo it anyway, but now I am concerned. If it is not the unlock that has gone bad, then it may be the motherboard or the CPU. I have excellent air cooling. I have monitored the temperature. It has never gone very high. About 51 Celcius during Prime 95 torture test.

Hopefully the redoing of the unlock will help it. I used the unlocking kit from highspeedpc, so it shouldn't be too hard to do.

If anyone else has any thoughts about why it will still boot, but only at a 6.5x multiplier, please let me know.

 

[mikeasa]

Well, it was a bad unlock. I carefully cleaned and re-unlocked the CPU and it runs fine now. I still think it's interesting that it would boot at a 6.5x multiplier only.

 

[Univac]

How long did it stay unlocked for before you had to re_do it???

I used that kit too.

Just wondering if this could be a problem to look out for.


Univac

 

[mikeasa]

The chip stayed unlocked for give or take a month. When I looked at it, it still did not look as if the bridges were done incorrectly, but it would not post at anything but a 6.5x multiplier. After I redid the unlock, the CPU posted correctly.