Hello again
After more than 14 days in RMA I finally got my P4C800 Dlx back.
The same board - they say .... repaired.
As I see it's working good.
As Paul said - it was Southbridge fault.
One thing I noticed - replaced SB chip.
Earlier was 82801EB and now is 82801ER (ICH5R ?)
P4C800 doesn't have ICH5R by default.
So I can't use 'R' features
)
Is it so easy to replace Southbridge ??
marecki
"Is it so easy to replace Southbridge ??"
It is easy if you have the right tools. It is
even easier if you do hundreds of these chips
per day.
I've never worked in manufacturing, so cannot
tell you about any fancy machines. I know there
is a hot air system, where you place a custom
head on the end of the system that just fits
the size of the chip to be unsoldered. Using
hot air, a chip can be heated in a controlled
fashion, until all the solder balls underneath
the chip are molten. Then, the chip can simply
be picked up.
As I understand the soldering requirements for
BGA balls, the solder volume must be carefully
controlled. That means after the old Southbridge
was removed from your board, the board would be
inspected for permanent damage, and the solder
cleaned off the hundreds of pads. A controlled
amount of fresh solder paste is applied to the
clean pads. That way, when the solder paste meets
the solder balls on the bottom of the new chip,
the volume of solder on each pad will not be too
much for the job.
With the chip in place, there are a couple of options
for heating it. Strong infrared light is one way to
heat. That might be preferred to using hot air. The
soldering sequence goes through a preheat phase,
hold at solder temperature for some number of seconds,
and then controlled cool down. When the solder balls
melt on the bottom of the chip, the capillary action
helps to actually pull the chip into precise alignment
with the motherboard. (So, even if the chip is rotated
by 0.5 degrees, it will snap back into exact alignment.)
The board then might need to be washed with something,
to remove any non-solder residue from the operation.
Some manufacturers now use water for the cleaning step,
while in past years, alcohol or chlorinated compounds
were used to remove residues.
In a high tech facility, it is possible to use an X-ray
machine, to inspect the solder underneath the chip. The
X-ray shows whether all the solder connections are
solid or have voids in them. A boundary scan can also be
used to prove that all signal pins are wired up.
*******
Intel makes both ICH5 and ICH5R, from the same silicon
die. The ICH5R will have a wire bond option or something
similar, to distinguish it from the non-RAID version.
The BIOS also plays a part. To get RAID, the chip must be
RAID capable (via wire bonding some status signal to say
it is capable), plus the BIOS must set the chip up to
enumerate as ER or EB (as "Tim" explained).
What that means is, if you have an ER chip on the board,
flashing with a P4C800-E BIOS might offer the option to
enable RAID. Or, perhaps, modbin or an equivalent BIOS
editting tool, could be used to enable such an option.
The Asus flashing tools will not make such a proposal
easy.
Please note, that I am not encouraging such an option to
you. Leave your BIOS the way it is, and enjoy the perfect
working function of your repaired board
While RAID
may appear to be a wonderful option, it brings with it
the need to understand the maintenance and reliability
issues. I recommend simple disk configurations, because
when they fail, it is easier to understand what to do
about the failure.
And, don't forget to pick up a PCI USB2.0 card for your
computer. Since as customers Asus has not admitted there
is a problem, or that the replacement chips are a
permanent solution, a separate PCI USB2.0 card will be
a much safer solution if you plan on hot-plugging USB
devices to the computer.
Paul
