B
Brooks Moses
My computer isn't booting, and I can't figure out why, and I want to get
some outside advice before I spend more money and time going up blind
alleys. Apologies for the long saga that follows, but I'm not sure how
to shorten it without leaving out things that might be important....
So. First, the specs: 2.53MHz P4, 4x 256MB PC1066RDRAM, Gigabyte
GA-8IHXP motherboard, 1 CD-RW drive, 2x Maxtor 80GB hard drives, Antec
case with 300W power supply.
I built this computer in early May, and it ran well for a month or so,
and then the motherboard died -- no beep codes, nothing. I returned it
under warranty, and it came back a month later, and worked fine until a
couple of weeks ago. A couple of weeks ago, it stopped running one day
while I was out, and wouldn't turn back on.
That problem turned out to be the power supply -- I pulled it out,
measured voltages with a multimeter, and discovered that it had a
perfectly find -5VSB, but wouldn't do anything if I shorted the power-on
lead to ground. So, I emailed Antec, and sent the power supply off to
them for fixing.
Meanwhile, I wanted to use my computer. So, I stopped by Fry's, and
picked up a cheap power supply to use in the interim. It was even
cheaper than I expected -- $14.95, with a $5 mail-in rebate. It's also
a 300W supply, made by "Linkworld". It does specifically specify that
it "fully supports" Intel P4 processors.
So, I hooked this up to my computer, and turned it on. The result was a
low-high repeating beep, which I would have looked up in the motherboard
manual except that Gigabyte in their infinite wisdom does not mention
beep codes in the manual. A Google search indicated that this sort of
beeping means that the CPU is dead -- although that was the code for an
Award BIOS, and this purports to be an AMI BIOS, but there wasn't any
evidence of any other BIOS doing that sort of beeping....
I pulled out the CPU and put it in my friend's Dell P4 machine, and it
worked fine. I put his CPU in my computer, and it did the same
beeping. I put everything back, and his computer still worked, and mine
still beeped and failed to boot. (It may be relevant to point out that
it would, however, turn back off when I pushed the power button.)
Perhaps at this point I should have disconnected all the drives and
started removing components, but the beep code seemed to imply fairly
clearly that this wouldn't help, so I didn't.
I shall avoid telling the whole story of the very long and involved
attempt to find a replacement GA-8IHXP motherboard, since I knew from
experience that Gigabyte would take a month to repair the one I had, and
I didn't want to wait a month to have a working computer. Eventually I
found one, and installed it this afternoon.
As sort of a check on how I was installing things, I tried powering
things up as soon as I'd installed the motherboard and CPU and hooked
them up to the power supply and case power switch and speaker. I was
rewarded with a repeating sequence of three long beeps, which seemed
familiar as possibly a memory or video card problem. Moreover, it
wouldn't turn off with the case switch; I had to cut power on the power
supply.
So, I put in the memory, and it continued; I put in the video card, and
it still continued. At this point, I was fairly sure it had enough
stuff in it to try to boot, and so I did a Google search to see what the
issue was. There aren't any cases of three long beeps listed, though,
and three short beeps (on an AMI bios, which this is) apparently
indicates a problem in the first 64kb of ram.
So, having four RAM chips and a pair of continuity RIMMs handy, I
replaced a couple of the RAM chips with continuity RIMMs, and tried
again. Still three beeps. So, I pulled those two RAM chips, replaced
them with the other RAM chips, and still got three beeps. And still no
turn-off at the case switch.
Oh, and I also noticed that the power LED on the front panel was
blicking furiously.
I tried swapping things back over to the old motherboard. This time I
got exactly the same symptoms -- none of this low-high stuff it was
doing earlier.
And so here I am, wondering what to try next. I don't have any other
Rambus computers handy to test out my memory, but I can't imagine that a
c-RIMM would be bad, and I did try out two separate pairs.
There are a lot of things that strike me as weird:
* Neither set of beeps matches what this BIOS ought to do. The low-high
thing is an Award BIOS beep, not an AMI BIOS beep, and I don't think I'd
mistake three long beeps for three short beeps. Additionally, replacing
the supposedly affected part (if I assume the closest beep code to what
I'm getting), in both cases, doesn't solve the problem.
* With the first round of beeping, the computer would turn off with the
case switch. Now, with this beeping, it won't turn off except by
cutting the power -- even though this is the same motherboard and
processor involved. I can't see that attaching a keyboard and drives
ought to change whether it can intercept a power-off command.
* It doesn't seem likely that a power-supply failure, particularly one
that wasn't even traumatic enough to damage the +5VSB output (which is,
I note, only 0.01V off what it was before the failure), would cause
sufficient other system damage to cause these symptoms if the problem
really is multiple dead RAM chips and something weird with the drives.
The thing that's seeming most likely as a problem, at this point, is
that the replacement power supply I bought is junk, and that the rest of
the system is perfectly ok except for being hooked up to a junk power
supply. However, if that's the case, why did the system behavior
change?
As I said at the beginning, any advice will be gratefully appreciated.
Particularly with respect to whether it's worth trying to buy a better
power supply or not....
Also -- although I don't really expect this -- if any of you happen to
have one of these motherboards and wouldn't mind trying to boot it
without drives attached (and, possibly, without memory and/or video
card) so that I have some baseline to compare to of what a _good_ system
will do in those cases, I would be very grateful.
Thanks much,
- Brooks
Oh, and as a last, unrelated, question -- the serial number on my two
boards are 0305000252 and 0305000441 -- and I think the 441 board was
rather late in production before they were discontined. Should I take
this as evidence that there really were only a few hundred of these
boards made? (Is that normal, or way low, for motherboard production?)
some outside advice before I spend more money and time going up blind
alleys. Apologies for the long saga that follows, but I'm not sure how
to shorten it without leaving out things that might be important....
So. First, the specs: 2.53MHz P4, 4x 256MB PC1066RDRAM, Gigabyte
GA-8IHXP motherboard, 1 CD-RW drive, 2x Maxtor 80GB hard drives, Antec
case with 300W power supply.
I built this computer in early May, and it ran well for a month or so,
and then the motherboard died -- no beep codes, nothing. I returned it
under warranty, and it came back a month later, and worked fine until a
couple of weeks ago. A couple of weeks ago, it stopped running one day
while I was out, and wouldn't turn back on.
That problem turned out to be the power supply -- I pulled it out,
measured voltages with a multimeter, and discovered that it had a
perfectly find -5VSB, but wouldn't do anything if I shorted the power-on
lead to ground. So, I emailed Antec, and sent the power supply off to
them for fixing.
Meanwhile, I wanted to use my computer. So, I stopped by Fry's, and
picked up a cheap power supply to use in the interim. It was even
cheaper than I expected -- $14.95, with a $5 mail-in rebate. It's also
a 300W supply, made by "Linkworld". It does specifically specify that
it "fully supports" Intel P4 processors.
So, I hooked this up to my computer, and turned it on. The result was a
low-high repeating beep, which I would have looked up in the motherboard
manual except that Gigabyte in their infinite wisdom does not mention
beep codes in the manual. A Google search indicated that this sort of
beeping means that the CPU is dead -- although that was the code for an
Award BIOS, and this purports to be an AMI BIOS, but there wasn't any
evidence of any other BIOS doing that sort of beeping....
I pulled out the CPU and put it in my friend's Dell P4 machine, and it
worked fine. I put his CPU in my computer, and it did the same
beeping. I put everything back, and his computer still worked, and mine
still beeped and failed to boot. (It may be relevant to point out that
it would, however, turn back off when I pushed the power button.)
Perhaps at this point I should have disconnected all the drives and
started removing components, but the beep code seemed to imply fairly
clearly that this wouldn't help, so I didn't.
I shall avoid telling the whole story of the very long and involved
attempt to find a replacement GA-8IHXP motherboard, since I knew from
experience that Gigabyte would take a month to repair the one I had, and
I didn't want to wait a month to have a working computer. Eventually I
found one, and installed it this afternoon.
As sort of a check on how I was installing things, I tried powering
things up as soon as I'd installed the motherboard and CPU and hooked
them up to the power supply and case power switch and speaker. I was
rewarded with a repeating sequence of three long beeps, which seemed
familiar as possibly a memory or video card problem. Moreover, it
wouldn't turn off with the case switch; I had to cut power on the power
supply.
So, I put in the memory, and it continued; I put in the video card, and
it still continued. At this point, I was fairly sure it had enough
stuff in it to try to boot, and so I did a Google search to see what the
issue was. There aren't any cases of three long beeps listed, though,
and three short beeps (on an AMI bios, which this is) apparently
indicates a problem in the first 64kb of ram.
So, having four RAM chips and a pair of continuity RIMMs handy, I
replaced a couple of the RAM chips with continuity RIMMs, and tried
again. Still three beeps. So, I pulled those two RAM chips, replaced
them with the other RAM chips, and still got three beeps. And still no
turn-off at the case switch.
Oh, and I also noticed that the power LED on the front panel was
blicking furiously.
I tried swapping things back over to the old motherboard. This time I
got exactly the same symptoms -- none of this low-high stuff it was
doing earlier.
And so here I am, wondering what to try next. I don't have any other
Rambus computers handy to test out my memory, but I can't imagine that a
c-RIMM would be bad, and I did try out two separate pairs.
There are a lot of things that strike me as weird:
* Neither set of beeps matches what this BIOS ought to do. The low-high
thing is an Award BIOS beep, not an AMI BIOS beep, and I don't think I'd
mistake three long beeps for three short beeps. Additionally, replacing
the supposedly affected part (if I assume the closest beep code to what
I'm getting), in both cases, doesn't solve the problem.
* With the first round of beeping, the computer would turn off with the
case switch. Now, with this beeping, it won't turn off except by
cutting the power -- even though this is the same motherboard and
processor involved. I can't see that attaching a keyboard and drives
ought to change whether it can intercept a power-off command.
* It doesn't seem likely that a power-supply failure, particularly one
that wasn't even traumatic enough to damage the +5VSB output (which is,
I note, only 0.01V off what it was before the failure), would cause
sufficient other system damage to cause these symptoms if the problem
really is multiple dead RAM chips and something weird with the drives.
The thing that's seeming most likely as a problem, at this point, is
that the replacement power supply I bought is junk, and that the rest of
the system is perfectly ok except for being hooked up to a junk power
supply. However, if that's the case, why did the system behavior
change?
As I said at the beginning, any advice will be gratefully appreciated.
Particularly with respect to whether it's worth trying to buy a better
power supply or not....
Also -- although I don't really expect this -- if any of you happen to
have one of these motherboards and wouldn't mind trying to boot it
without drives attached (and, possibly, without memory and/or video
card) so that I have some baseline to compare to of what a _good_ system
will do in those cases, I would be very grateful.
Thanks much,
- Brooks
Oh, and as a last, unrelated, question -- the serial number on my two
boards are 0305000252 and 0305000441 -- and I think the 441 board was
rather late in production before they were discontined. Should I take
this as evidence that there really were only a few hundred of these
boards made? (Is that normal, or way low, for motherboard production?)
