MoBo Wierdness

[Bowa]

Hi all. I just swapped in a new mobo (Gigabite k7-Triton) for my fried Leadtek. This is the very first hardware project of this kind for me, so naturally I was very nervous, and tripple-checked all the settings and jumpers. When I hit the power button, I got an LED light in the front, a little light went on on the mobo itself, and the fans looked like they wanted to spin, but never did - they just twitched.
I rechecked all the jumpers at least 4 more times, rechecked all the wires/cables/add-in cards, etc., Tried the RAM in all the other slots -- still no good. Any ideas what I should do next - before I lug it to CompUsa to see if their techs can find the problem?

Thanks a lot in advance!

BTW, my rig is as follows:

AMD XP 2800+ Barton
ATI AIW Radeon 9700 pro 128
512 DDR 400 RAM (getting another stick as soon as the rig starts working again)
80 gig HD (adding another one as per above)
CD Burner
DVD player

[channel1]

Okay, the fans run on +12 VDC, so something is probably sucking that down if the fans "twitch".

My intuitive guess is that you have an IDE interface cable reversed on either hard drive or CD. That will cause the 12V suckage, without causing smokage. (okay, I've done that myself, so I know what it looks like)

Best thing to do is disconnect all of the drives, leaving only the MB power & video connected. If you don't get into the POST then, you might have a bad power supply.

-rcv-

[Bowa]

Thanks for the advice - I'll try that when I get home tonight!
(is the red line always supposed to be on the right side of the IDE cablem when it's plugged in?)

[--Pete]

Hi,

The red line is the indicator of pin 1. Near the pins on the board, there should be a "1" silk-screened to show which way they go. There is no standard that I know of, and I've seen the floppy cable and the IDE cables go opposite ways on the same mobo.

--Pete

[Bowa]

I thought the wires could only go in one way - there's a groove in the connectors that only lets them go in a certain way, no?

[--Pete]

Hi,

There can be both a grove in the socket that matches up to a ridge on the connector and a missing pin in one position that matches up with a blocked connector in the header. However, in many cases neither is implemented. The most common ribbon cables are made with connectors that have no ridge and with all connections open. Often the row of pins they connect to do not have the missing pin and don't even have a shell around them (although this is getting better).

Also, I've gotten ribbon cables where the ribbon was inserted backwards and the grove was on the wrong side.

Ultimately, the safest way to be sure is to find the #1 pin on the board and the #1 pin on the devices and make sure the red stripe connects those two.

--Pete

[LochnarITB]

There can be both a grove in the socket

Is grove a technical term for lots and lots of pins?? I can really groove to that technical jargon, daddy'o! :lol:

[--Pete]

Hi,

No. And the technical terms are all screwed up :)

The pins were originally nothing more than jumper type pins on 0.1 inch spacing (standard spacing for most DIPP chips). Two rows of these side by side made a "header". Then someone came up with a connector for those. And a ribbon cable which could just be crimped into the connector. The "socket" is a separate piece of plastic that goes around the whole mess, and that many manufacturers (and almost all hobbyists) leave off.

The whole mess is sorta jury rigged -- never planned but it happened anyway and we're stuck with it. Much like the dancing bear, the amazing thing isn't how well it works, but that it works at all :)

--Pete

[channel1]

(is the red line always supposed to be on the right side of the IDE cablem when it's plugged in?)

The "Standard" for IDE connectors for some time has been to locate pin 1 nearest the power connector, which would be on your right, when looking at the drive with the connectors facing you. It's no guarantee, though. If I recall correctly, the last major drive manufacturer to locate pin 1 furthest from the power connector was Maxtor. That was a long time ago, though.

Ain't it great how everyone has finally gotten together to standardize the connector configuration on IDE, just in time for it to become obsolete? I wonder how many ways they will figure out how to screw up SATA...

Oh, and a last thing re: your 'puter. If you don't get life with the drives unplugged, try unplugging everything except a chassis fan. If the fan still doesn't turn, check the power supply: it may have a setting for 115V/230V, I have seen them shipped in the "230V" position, but that won't cause the problem you described.

[kandrathe]

I'd concur with channel1's assessment and suggestions. What are the spec's on your power supply? What brand is your ram? From my quick scan about that particular boards troubles, it seems to not be very friendly with Corsair ram or cheaper or weak power supply.

I saw a friend's bad PS smoke two mobo's berfore being found to be the culprit.

Also, I've seen some mobo's ship with the bios reset jumper in the wrong position. Hmmm, that reminds me. You might want to reset the bios anyway to be sure it starts from the default config.

[Bowa]

Not sure what I did, but after taking EVERYTHING off the mobo last night and putting it all back in, it worked! However, now it doesn't recognize my CD Burner (which is not new - I've had it in my system since day1), and I'm able to "jump start" my comp just by hitting a random wire on the case, or touching the mobo with a screwdriver. That's NOT supposed to happen, right?

Also, after doing a WinXP "repair" installation with a MS rep over the phone, it looked like all was working fine, but when I started to install some drivers from the mobo's install disk (I think the only ones I did install were the nForce ones), I get some "not found...can't perform something chk" message very briefly, and the comp does a reboot. This loops and never completely lets me boot into windows.
Anyone know what's up and how I can fix that?

[channel1]

...I'm able to "jump start" my comp just by hitting a random wire on the case, or touching the mobo with a screwdriver...

It still sounds like a crappy power supply.
I won't get into details here, but 90% of the power supplies are garbage (IMHO). Pick up a cheap one to try (US$20 will get you something). It could solve some of your problems.

As for the failure to see the CD - that could be improper BIOS configuration. New motherboard, I assume that it has SATA as well as IDE interface, if you aren't using SATA make sure the SATA is disabled.

-rcv-

[kandrathe]

I'd spend $30 and get one like this.

As for the CD burner... When PnP recognizes hardware it is cool, but when it doesn't -- it seems like ten times harder to configure than it should. You need to go back and configure that component in the bios manually.

The last problem when the OS tanks -- it could still be hardware. When you moved the CPU onto the new mobo did you have to reapply thermal paste? Also, the GPU can cause a reboot if it fails when windows tries to go from VGA to another mode. I would try to boot the OS in "Safe Mode" first then try VGA only -- reapply the video, audio, and other hardware drivers correctly.

[Bowa]

Ok got it up and running again. Everything in Windows works fine - but very slow. No idea if I need to optimize the bios somehow.

It still won't recognize my CD Burner that's on the same IDE cable (slave) as my DVD player (master) -- I'll try swapping a different cable in later to see if its that, but I doubt it.

I ran SiSoft's Sandra, and the only yellow warning I got was that my PS is running at 66C -- which it says is too high. What can I do about that?
(Its a Turbolink Switching PS 420W, that has worked for me for over a year. There's a sticker on it that says "supports Pentium 4", but I have an AMD system - is that a problem?)

Yes, I did have to reapply thermal paste.

[kandrathe]

"Ok got it up and running again. Everything in Windows works fine - but very slow. No idea if I need to optimize the bios somehow." This sounds like a bus/memory configuration problem. Make sure all your RAM is working. You want to make sure you are running the FSB at 400 Mhz and DDR (PC3200) memory at typically 80% of that speed (a 5/4 ratio). There are many configurations that will work, some will be slow and some will fry your mobo, cpu or ram (that mobo has protections, so mostly the mobo will refuse to POST or will tank after a few seconds or minutes).

"It still won't recognize my CD Burner that's on the same IDE cable (slave) as my DVD player (master) -- I'll try swapping a different cable in later to see if its that, but I doubt it." I doubt it is the cable unless you plugged it in wrong. If you have another IDE channel available (or remove the DVD for now) I would try to isolate the CD burner for now and see if you can get it to configure as a master.

"I ran SiSoft's Sandra, and the only yellow warning I got was that my PS is running at 66C -- which it says is too high. What can I do about that?"
Well, first verify with your hand that the PS is *very* hot. 66C is hot enough to cook food and too hot to touch. Software is not very good at measuring heat, so be sure that the report is accurate. PS run hot either because they are drawing more current than they are rated for, or the wall current is "dirty". 420W should be sufficient so... APC has a very nifty low cost personal BackUPS that does a good job filtering the wall power.

" There's a sticker on it that says "supports Pentium 4", but I have an AMD system - is that a problem?" No. It can't tell who's drawing the power.

[Bowa]

Thank you all who took the time to try and help me!

As of this morning the only problem I have with the system is that it doesn't recognize the CD Burner. Other than that it "seems" to be back to normal. (Just in time too - got my WOW Beta invite last night!) Hopefully it will run the game - if not, I'll be back here begging for more help :P.

Thanks again - you are a great group!