Any hope for this Motherboard?

[Malcolm]

Got a motherboard (Slot 1 PCChips BXPro), or its CPU (Celeron 300A), that has
apparently died - just stopped in the middle of a reboot. I've stripped it down
the minimum, just PSU powering the motherboard with the CPU installed.
Everything else unhooked, power and signal.

Basically when powered up (mains switched on because it is an old AT board),
the power light comes on, the fans spin, but that's it. No beeps from the
internal speaker, nothing out of the integral SiS graphics because the monitor
stays in standby if I plug that in. No difference with or without the RAM
modules. All the power rails from the PSU look right, maybe +12V a shade low at
11.5V but that's probably in spec. Not sure where to probe for any derived
(3.3V) rails.

Anything I could try before it gets dumped?


Malcolm (Fantrace).

Be happy.

 

[William R. Walsh]

Hi!

Try a video card installed a PCI or AGP slot if one is available. The
onboard video could have died, but without a POST beep that seems odd.

I'd say the board is probably bad if the CPU checks out OK in another board.

William

 

[Steve(JazzHunter)]

Got a motherboard (Slot 1 PCChips BXPro), or its CPU (Celeron 300A), that has
apparently died - just stopped in the middle of a reboot. I've stripped it down
the minimum, just PSU powering the motherboard with the CPU installed.
Everything else unhooked, power and signal.

I could suggest a couple of things, look for shorted capacitors, -
the 1000Mfd or 1500Mfds. They'd show leakage around the base and/or
bulging. CPU failure is rare, but it has happened to me once.
However, the fact is that the PCChips BXpro is a terrible chipset, so
I'd save the celeron and look for a junked Slot1 Intel board
somewhere.

. Steve .

 

[Steve(JazzHunter)]

I could suggest a couple of things, look for shorted capacitors, -
the 1000Mfd or 1500Mfds. They'd show leakage around the base and/or
bulging. CPU failure is rare, but it has happened to me once.
However, the fact is that the PCChips BXpro is a terrible chipset, so
I'd save the celeron and look for a junked Slot1 Intel board
somewhere.

I forgot to mention that inexplicably the Bios can become scrambled,
in any computer, and it usually happens during boot or a system
crash. The symptoms you describe would also fit that situation. The
M/B won't boot and indeed appears dead if the Bios has failed. If it
were an Intel you could swap the Bios with one from a similar board
(after checking that the chips are compatible) however for a PCChips
you probably wouldn't find another board. There is no way to flash a
Bios if the system doesn't boot, except by hot-swapping once the board
has booted with a good Bios, then putting in the bad Bios and flashing
it, or with an external eprom writer.


. Steve .

 

[Ixnei]

Got a motherboard (Slot 1 PCChips BXPro), or its CPU (Celeron 300A),
that has apparently died - just stopped in the middle of a reboot. I've
stripped it down the minimum, just PSU powering the motherboard with the
CPU installed. Everything else unhooked, power and signal.

Basically when powered up (mains switched on because it is an old AT
board), the power light comes on, the fans spin, but that's it. No beeps
from the internal speaker, nothing out of the integral SiS graphics
because the monitor stays in standby if I plug that in. No difference
with or without the RAM modules. All the power rails from the PSU look
right, maybe +12V a shade low at 11.5V but that's probably in spec. Not
sure where to probe for any derived (3.3V) rails.

Anything I could try before it gets dumped?

That chipset isn't as bad as others make it out to be, and I believe it
can even run a coppermine 66 or 100MHz bus CPU, if a slotket is used with
the voltage increased to 1.8V (slight over-volting). The UDMA driver
support for Win2K is horrid, though, from PCChips...

At any rate, re-set the BIOS. Either use the jumper, yank out the battery
for a while, or both. NOTE - do this with the power OFF and the power
cord disconnected from the power supply.

Re-seat the processor. Re-seat the memory. Using only the processor and
memory (and built-in video), try again. These sorts of BIOS problems can
be illusive, and appear identical to a fried no-POST motherboard - I've
seen it happen on MSI slot-1 and also on Gateway socket 370 boards. If
you have an older P2 processor, it might be worth a shot testing it in the
board as well...

--
We HAVE been at war with Iraq for 13 years now, bombing their
country on at least a weekly basis.
"U.S.-led sanctions have killed over a million Iraqi citizens,
according to UN studies" - James Jennings
3,000+ innocent Iraqi civilian casualties can't be "wrong"...

 

[Peter de Vroomen]

I forgot to mention that inexplicably the Bios can become scrambled,

in any computer, and it usually happens during boot or a system
crash.

I have had this happen to a motherboard that got killed when somebody
switched the little red 'reset button' on the power-supply. The
'reset-button' that reads 220/110 :+). The power-supply killed itself with a
blue flash and a bang, taking out the mobo and the harddisk (why allways the
harddisk!??!). After replacing the power-supply and harddisk, the board
would beep, everything would start, but no (on-board) video. When I inserted
a PCI video card and reset the NVRAM, the board would boot and give me a
picture. So I thought the on-board video was smoked.

But Windows found the on-board video after reinstalling, and lo and behold,
when I added a second monitor, I had a picture on both (dual-monitor), so
the on-board video was still working. After working a few weeks like this, I
thought I'd see if there was a BIOS upgrade for this machine. Don't remember
what the reason for that was. I flashed the BIOS and reset NVRAM again (as
you allways should after flashing). And when I booted the computer, it would
boot from the on-board video!

So the conclusion was that the BIOS of the on-board video was damaged, and
that flashing the new BIOS also repaired the VGA bios. So I can second your
story.

This was a Compaq Deskpro computer by the way. Don't know the chipset type
(though I think it's an Intel) , but it's a super socket 7 board (100MHz
FSB) with an AMD K6-2 450. It's now running as my burn-station and soon will
be my internet gateway/FTP server.

PeterV

 

[Peter de Vroomen]

That chipset isn't as bad as others make it out to be, and I believe it

can even run a coppermine 66 or 100MHz bus CPU, if a slotket is used with
the voltage increased to 1.8V (slight over-volting). The UDMA driver
support for Win2K is horrid, though, from PCChips...

Uhm, the on-board video is also horrible. It slows down the system to the
speed of a slug. I'd throw it away and look for a cheap Intel BX board. Or
possibly sell it to people like you :+).

If you use a plug-in video card, the system does perform a lot better. But I
think this chipset doesn't have an AGP slot, so you'd need a PCI video card
and the on-board video has better specs (resolution, color depth) than most
PCI video cards I know. So it's a bit of a trade-off, a choice between evils
. Unless you get a nice PCI videocard with enough on-board ram (8Mb or
more), but these are hard to find.

PeterV

 

[Ixnei]

Uhm, the on-board video is also horrible. It slows down the system to
the speed of a slug. I'd throw it away and look for a cheap Intel BX
board. Or possibly sell it to people like you :+).

If you use a plug-in video card, the system does perform a lot better.
But I think this chipset doesn't have an AGP slot, so you'd need a PCI
video card and the on-board video has better specs (resolution, color
depth) than most PCI video cards I know. So it's a bit of a trade-off, a
choice between evils . Unless you get a nice PCI videocard with enough
on-board ram (8Mb or more), but these are hard to find.

I had a PC-Chips board, AT format with both slot1 and socket370 -
everything built in except video. It did have an AGP slot, which handled
a voodoo3 3500 pretty well (P3-550, it's long gone, but managed 60+FPS in
Quake3 timedemos).

A geforce2/4 mx PCI card would prolly do OK, but you pay a premium for
those these daze...

--
We HAVE been at war with Iraq for 13 years now, bombing their
country on at least a weekly basis.
"U.S.-led sanctions have killed over a million Iraqi citizens,
according to UN studies" - James Jennings
3,000+ innocent Iraqi civilian casualties can't be "wrong"...