Brownz killed my media centre PC!

OK not literally, but it refuses to come back to life after plugging in
the lovely hard disk I relieved him of. I suspect the AGP slot, as
sometimes it'll do one long beep then four short ones & shut itself
down again, but if I re-seat the graphics card (or stick another one
in), it'll occasionally get to the 'hit del to enter setup' screen - &
then just hang.

I've tried unplugging everything, & resetting the bios, but no cigar.
Is it likely to be anything other than the motherboard? It doesn't do
any beeping during booting when it gets as far as the 'hit del...'
screen - just the one long four short when it won't even get that far.

Assuming it is the motherboard (an Abit AV8), what are my chances of
getting another one that'll take all me bits - so socket 939 ATX,
DDR400, AGP, & optical out?

--
Krusty

'03 Tiger 955i
'02 MV Senna (for sale) '96 Tiger (for sale)
'79 Fantic Hiro 250 (for sale) '81 Corvette (for sale)

 

Take it you've tried re-seating the memory?

 

Of all the chicken sacrificing rituals, it always amazes me this works 3
out of 4 times. Old Sun boxes in particular, they seem to spend 5 years
trying to shit memory cards before finally expelling them.

On another note, corrected typo on that post was exspelling. If that's
not a word I want to know why not!

 

I have - re-seated, switched slots, left some out etc.

--
Krusty

'03 Tiger 955i
'02 MV Senna (for sale) '96 Tiger (for sale)
'79 Fantic Hiro 250 (for sale) '81 Corvette (for sale)

 

Have you tried clearing the cmos ?

Find CCMOS1 jumper, disconnect AC power cable from PSU, move jumper from pin
1-2 to pin 2-3, pop out the bios battery, hit your on/off switch a few times
to drain all power from the board, pop the battery back in, move the jumper
back to pins 1-2, re-insert power.

 

I have, but...

....not to that extent. I just unplugged the power & stuck the jumper on
2-3 for a couple of minutes, then moved it back. It definitely did
something as I now get the full screen logo, which I had disabled
before.

--
Krusty

'03 Tiger 955i
'02 MV Senna (for sale) '96 Tiger (for sale)
'79 Fantic Hiro 250 (for sale) '81 Corvette (for sale)

 

Hmm, did you say you have pulled it back to *just* the system board
(inc video card if not also onboard) especially no HDD cables plugged
in etc?

If it finishes the POST but then hangs it sounds like it's seeing a
bootable device but can't get any sense from it (or you would get a
'Missing operating system' type message). The fact that it's beeping
an error suggests it's not dead_dead but is obviously unhappy with
something (good news actually).

If you press Del at the prompt does it ender the CMOS setup screen?

Is there a CD/DVD drive in there, do you have any bootable media, Live
Linux or XP CD?

Bit late now but did you take precautions?

T i m

 

10:1 that he was going for 'the morning after' pill.

 

Ah, as with not taking static precautions not can all be a bit risky.

T i m

p.s. Not saying he didn't do either or both of course. ;-)

 

No, it totally locked after that screen appeared. It's doing something
different now - bringing up the full screen logo as before for a few
seconds, then showing the usual BIOS boot screen & saying 'CMOS
checksum error - defaults loaded' under the list of drives. At the
bottom of the screen it says 'Press F1 to continue, DEL to enter SETUP'
but won't do anything else no matter what I hit.

I've tried with & without an XP CD in the drive, but it doesn't get as
far as checking if there's anything in there.

Yes, I kept a pillow between my knees at all times.

--
Krusty

'03 Tiger 955i
'02 MV Senna (for sale) '96 Tiger (for sale)
'79 Fantic Hiro 250 (for sale) '81 Corvette (for sale)

 

On 25 Apr 2009 22:33:21 GMT, "Krusty" <>
wrote:

Do you have a USB keyboard in there at the mo? If legacy USB support
was or has now been disabled in the BIOS then it might simply not
seeing your key presses.

If it's not USB (but PS2) or only has support for USB kbd / mouse and
you are hitting the prompted keys quickly enough (it's not a reaction
test as such though) then it's not sounding good.

Ok, so it's either not getting to that stage because the CD drive
isn't in the list of boot devices or it is actually busted.Is this
with *just* the CD drive connected to the system board and assuming
it's (ideally) a Master device (rather than cable select). Have you
tried the CD drive on the other connector on the system board? (Pri /
Sec)

Ah, you should have been fine then.

T i m

 

AFAIK the AV8 uses an AMI bios. "Four short" beep sequence indicates
memory problem. It could be a bad memory stick. Try another, or if you have
two then try each one separately in each different slot. It could also be
problems with the cpu (memory controller is integrated into cpu) or
motherboard circuitry.

If it is the motherboard you can still but new (but expensive) e.g.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/139612 However, there are used examples of
Socket 939 motherboards on ebay for substantially less.

 

I've been caught out by that one before, so I plugged a PS2
keyboard/mouse in before starting.

It's sort of come back to life now, after leaving it to rest overnight.
Plugged everything back in this morning & it booted up fine. Rebooted
it just to check I wasn't imagining it, & it went back to doing the
beeping again. Cleared the BIOS again, removed two of the DIMMs, & it
booted up. Rebooted several times, & it seems fine. So I'm leaving
those two DIMMs out for now.

Then I unplugged the old drives & hooked up the Brownz drive, & the
BIOS refuses to see it. It's spinning up OK, so I suspect the problem
is the drive's SATAII but the mainboard only supports SATAI (which is
what the other drives are). I believe the SATAII drive should be able
to clock itself down, so I guess it's just an incompatibility. I have
got another PC with SATAII so I'll try the drive in there when I can be
arsed.

Installing XP now (I'm fed up of NVidia's shitty Vista drivers -
particularly their inability to remember the flicker filter setting),
so fingers crossed.

--
Krusty

'03 Tiger 955i
'02 MV Senna (for sale) '96 Tiger (for sale)
'79 Fantic Hiro 250 (for sale) '81 Corvette (for sale)

 

Looks like TMack was spot on then. ;-)

Have you checked for a BIOS upgrade?

http://tinyurl.com/ddwu8b (the latest being 2006/05/07) ;-(

Not sure you can get a PCI to SATAII card (you can easily get PCIe to
S2 but don't think you have PCIe slots on there).

Yep, XP is for the best. Anyway, glad it was only (hopefully) some
iffy RAM rather than anything more expensive or messy.

T i m

 

What version of the A8V have you got and what is the new hard disk?

 

Ahhh .... your board has a VT8237 Southbridge with SATA I (150) controller,
and that drive is SATA II (300). Doh !

 

Not sure what revision it is, but it's an earlyish non-3rd eye one. The
drive's an Hitachi Ultrastar 500GB, 1997 vintage.

--
Krusty

'03 Tiger 955i
'02 MV Senna (for sale) '96 Tiger (for sale)
'79 Fantic Hiro 250 (for sale) '81 Corvette (for sale)

 

Maybe, but I had those two DIMMs out last night too & it didn't make a
difference. I still reckon there's something dodgy on the mainboard - a
dodgy connection that's affected by the flexing of pushing cards in &
out.

That's the one I've got.

Hasn't got any.

I can leave the new drive in t'other PC if it works, & just stream
recordings to/from there, so not a major problem.


--
Krusty

'03 Tiger 955i
'02 MV Senna (for sale) '96 Tiger (for sale)
'79 Fantic Hiro 250 (for sale) '81 Corvette (for sale)

 

Your motherboard can't recognise SATAII. Hitachi disks don't have a jumper
to change from SATAII to SATA1 - it has to be done in firmware. You need to
find a SATAII computer that can recognise the hard disk and which has a
floppy drive, then use Hitachi's "Feature Tool" (runs from a bootable
floppy) to change it from SATAII (3.0Gb/s) to SATAI (1.5Gb/s). With a bit
of luck your bios will then "see" the disk and you will be in business.

 

Crikey, Hitachi were a bit ahead of the game, weren't they?!