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#11
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failures on boot
On Sun, 17 Dec 2017 06:20:29 -0500, Paul
wrote: John B. Smith wrote: My aging 2008 home built is acting up again. I'm afraid it may be headed for the morgue. It will stop with a 'C1' code during the boot on the BIOS display. This is defined as: Auto detect of dram size type & ECC Auto detect of L2 cache (socket 7 or below That is, it will run the BIOS to completion, 'FF', and start booting before falling out with the C1 and an audible alarm. I've taken to booting mem86 of a diskette and running it a while before attempting Windows when the machine is cold. Once booted, mem86 usuallly runs forever without errors. I did see it drop out once but didn't catch the code that time. Once booted, XP runs flawlessly. Once warmed up, reboots on XP never fail. The 'C1' is also the first code I see when I turn the machine on. If I had space to work on one I'd start a new build but it would be very difficult the way I've jammed myself into this apartment. Also I'm way behind the curve on planning a build with all the new chips and mbs since 2008. I built this one with a ton of advice off the Abit web site and here. And you know it shouldn't do that. Once if hits FF or "--", it "hands off" to the OS. No more codes should be produced after that point. The codes are "progress codes" indicating the subroutine the BIOS is about to enter as part of the POST process. They're not error codes. That is something I did not know. I wonder if the BIOS is trying to start over (the C1 is the first code I see on start up) If that's true then it would be no clue to what the actual error is anyway. If you see a code sitting there, and the BIOS is "stuck", it means the BIOS crashed or halted just after entering that subroutine. The end result is, the POST code is usually "almost useless" as a debug tool. Because it isn't specific enough. Since it's not an "error code", the value you get leaves a lot to the imagination. Maybe it is dying in a memory commissioning routine, and maybe not. ******* So then, how do we get a C1 code, after the BIOS has done hand-off to the OS ? That's pretty strange. I don't think the POST display is protected, and I don't think it implements a trap door. If something wants to write to that "I/O space" port later, there's nothing to stop it. (Maybe you could do it if booting MSDOS or something.) If a person wanted to hack this for themselves, maybe they would get a copy of "giveio" and try it with that. I don't think giveio works for more modern situations, x64 OSes and so on. But there have been attempts at "punch thru" drivers before, for the purpose of accessing things where you're not supposed to have access. By doing that, you may be able to update the POST display from the OS level. ******* If you're up for a new build, you can "buy anything you want" if all you're going to run is Windows 10. If you want to run Windows 7 or WinXP, then a lot more thought has to go into the process. The poster "Nil" did a build a few weeks ago, and settled for Skylake and matching motherboard, in order to cover Windows 7 without quibbles (so Windows Update wouldn't block, and there would be drivers for stuff). If you want to use Kaby Lake or Ryzen, they're probably not a problem with Windows 10. I hate to try to build without a work room. Even a card table crammed in here some place would be a tremendous temptation to my cat. Looking at mb's I was put off by lack of diskette drive and PS2 mouse and keyboard. No one wants to build a tower these days with the PSU on top, which is where I think it belongs. I'm certain there's a ton of gotchas that haven't occurred to me. And there's a lack of time - I'm working what will turn into a part time job next month but even then the free time will be discontinuous enough to make building difficult. Next summer I have off. Maybe by that time I'll be desperate enough to jump into it. I'd like to clone my boot drive and shove it into a new build. I dont' suppose it would boot up XP and Win7 like a helpful nice little computer? Do I like Windows 10 ? No, not when it interferes with my benchmarking efforts. I *hate* it when some idiotic maintenance starts in the middle of a benchmark run. And even if you leave the PC sitting there for a couple hours, so it can "play with itself", it will *still* insist on running some crap, as soon as I start a benchmark. And then I'm left wondering why the results vary slightly from run to run, and i can't trust the OS further than I can throw it! Paul |
#12
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failures on boot
On 12/17/2017 12:54 PM, John B. Smith wrote:
On Sat, 16 Dec 2017 15:45:01 -0600, VanguardLH wrote: John B. Smith wrote: My aging 2008 home built is acting up again. I'm afraid it may be headed for the morgue. It will stop with a 'C1' code during the boot on the BIOS display. This is defined as: Auto detect of dram size type & ECC Auto detect of L2 cache (socket 7 or below That is, it will run the BIOS to completion, 'FF', and start booting before falling out with the C1 and an audible alarm. I've taken to booting mem86 of a diskette and running it a while before attempting Windows when the machine is cold. Once booted, mem86 usuallly runs forever without errors. I did see it drop out once but didn't catch the code that time. Once booted, XP runs flawlessly. Once warmed up, reboots on XP never fail. The 'C1' is also the first code I see when I turn the machine on. If I had space to work on one I'd start a new build but it would be very difficult the way I've jammed myself into this apartment. Also I'm way behind the curve on planning a build with all the new chips and mbs since 2008. I built this one with a ton of advice off the Abit web site and here. Once warmed, it boots okay. When cold, it might fail on a memory error. Well, likely the PSU is as old as when the box was originally built. PSUs typically lose 5% load capacity per year. No idea how close you loaded the PSU to the surge current from all loads when cold. You might want to start monitoring voltages from the PSU, or replace it with a new and much bigger capacity unit. Yes, PSU was installed in 2008. It's a PC Power And Cooling 610watt. The ABIT mb has an application called Guru that supposedly allows me to monitor the voltages. They all look ok. But that's when Windows has booted and everything is running good. Yes, sounds like a flaky psu to me too but hate to buy a new one on suspicion. I did define C1 in original post. Don't know what C1 and FF codes would mean. Obviously you have a mobo with a couple LED displays to show boot codes. Seems you'd have to know the mobo maker and model (unidentified here) to see in their manual what the codes mean. You're not getting any beep codes on cold power boot (https://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm)? PCs draw the most current at startup with HDs and optical drives spinning up and Cold inrush current Etc. I have found that when all settles down the steady state voltages are not a very reliable help. Again it may be something else entirely but would be nice if you could beg or borrow a PSU just to test. Rene |
#13
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failures on boot
On Sun, 17 Dec 2017 13:59:34 -0500, John B. Smith
wrote: Sounds like the easiest thing to try, but it's still a chore to move stuff on the desk to pull the memory boards with the tower upright. I'll get to it. The pc booted flawlessly this morning, kinda puts my desperation on hold. Yeah, they're like that sometimes. Mine's an aluminum mid-tower, light as Coke can, at my left elbow. Folded a bath towel three ways underneath it. The side farthest, I removed permanently, opposite the MB and cards. Couple things on the desk to move, couple things off the top of the computer, being then I can slide it obliquely, while lowering it to side that has the cover on. Grab a LED flashlite, clip on desk lamp, and go to it. Two minutes;- none, if disconnecting or substituting drives. I've a folding-legs, square, 3'x3' card table for anything deeper. Put that where my right elbow goes;- also handy-dandy for two computers going side-by-side. |
#14
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failures on boot
John B. Smith wrote:
I hate to try to build without a work room. Even a card table crammed in here some place would be a tremendous temptation to my cat. Looking at mb's I was put off by lack of diskette drive and PS2 mouse and keyboard. No one wants to build a tower these days with the PSU on top, which is where I think it belongs. I'm certain there's a ton of gotchas that haven't occurred to me. And there's a lack of time - I'm working what will turn into a part time job next month but even then the free time will be discontinuous enough to make building difficult. Next summer I have off. Maybe by that time I'll be desperate enough to jump into it. I'd like to clone my boot drive and shove it into a new build. I dont' suppose it would boot up XP and Win7 like a helpful nice little computer? The computer industry isn't "nice" to people any more. I don't think I have any driver I can use for WinXP on my newest computer. But the hardware in it are centered squarely on the Win7 era, so I can install a bunch of varied things and get it to work. You can only officially move a Retail version of Windows 7 from one PC to another. The Retail boxed version would have been more expensive. I built my newest box with a System Builder OEM Windows 7 Pro, due to the amount of memory in the computer. Pro or Ultimate allow you to use larger RAM setups without losing any of the capacity. Once I installed Windows 7 on that box, it's stuck there now. In terms of building stuff, you don't have to be too ambitious. It depends on what the box has to do. For example, if you have the money, you can buy an Intel NUC. The end result, is an apartment-friendly build (if you could call it a build). There's a wide range of products out there to consider, and if you don't expect to be using a gamer video card, then you can shoot for a smaller solution. It won't have hard drive bays though. External adapters can be used for hard drives, but it ain't pretty when you do that. (About as pleasant as "modular" stereo equipment.) https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16856102166 The picture here shows what is inside the box, a view that should have been included on Newegg. There is a blower over the 45W processor, making the design similar to a laptop. It's possible with the Skylake processor, that a basic Windows 7 install would work in there. But I don't know whether Intel was generous with Thunderbolt drivers and the like, for Windows 7. The processor in a product like this, is likely to be a BGA soldered to the motherboard, so it's not an "upgrade" box at all. But it is a computer. https://www.pcworld.com/article/3074...nceptions.html Older NUCs came in a slightly larger (squarish) package, with more options for what they could hold inside. There is mini-itx and microATX, as means to reduce the size of builds. And if you switch to an SSD for a boot drive, you can select a smaller PC casing for the project. With Mini-itx, there is barely room for a video card. You get one expansion slot. Zotac might make some of these too. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16813157742 There are a variety of cases to be purchased separately. https://www.logicsupply.com/m350/ The powering solutions can be "unconventional". For a test build, you could build up on the kitchen table for a few minutes, run Prime95 in Linux, make some current flow measurements... and then figure out which PICO to buy to finish the project. A laptop style adapter plus a PICO, can run some of the lower power mini-ITX designs. The PICO power converter installs into the main power connector on the motherboard, and makes 3.3V and 5V from a higher input voltage (from a laptop-style adapter). https://www.logicsupply.com/products...ower-supplies/ With microATX the board is larger still. The top slot is wired x16 for video. The bottom slot is wired x4 and that would be a place to install an M.2 expansion card. There is one M.2 card that will hold four M.2 format SSD drives, as an example. And the casing you put this in, will be more conventional (comparable to your older gear). With microATX you're using conventional power supplies and so on. With MicroATX, your computer case choice would also allow hard drives to be used. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16813157741 So those are some size ideas, you can fit into your apartment planning. In some cases, buying a laptop makes more sense. But I think you knew that already. Paul |
#15
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failures on boot
On Sun, 17 Dec 2017 15:31:42 -0500, Paul
wrote: The computer industry isn't "nice" to people any more. There's always *NIX left, and, to a certain extent, WINE. The "industry" got un-nice when people moved in droves over to handhelds for handroid, minimalist-*NIX operating systems. Rather they sucked it in, as the PC industry, basically, self-imploded. People never liked the PC: It was always to complicated. So the industry said: Trust us, we'll fix it. Then you started hearing, from technology press, a peculiar term called -- "Your Dad's Computer". That's when Google Chrome came out, as the HandHeld PC Revolution Ver. 2.0beta. And Microsoft, its sales profits plummeting, on an express elevator to Hell, along the rest of PC industry, somehow typically, introduced Windows 10 -- "The Last Computer OS You'll Ever Own". As if from a storyline for making it up on a daily basis. Like the new chapter released yesterday: FCC Gives Away WEB to Media ISP Conglomerates. |
#16
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failures on boot
Rodney Pont wrote:
John B. Smith wrote: Yes, PSU was installed in 2008. It's a PC Power And Cooling 610watt. The ABIT mb has an application called Guru that supposedly allows me to monitor the voltages. They all look ok. But that's when Windows has booted and everything is running good. Yes, sounds like a flaky psu to me too but hate to buy a new one on suspicion. Doesn't the BIOS have a health tab and if so can you get into that when you first switch on and see the power supply voltages? Providing the on cmos battery is good and I removed and reseated everything I can a power supply problem would be my next favourite choice. You have to start somewhere and a power supply is the most likely item to be able to use in the future. If you change motherboard, for example, you may have to change cpu and ram as well. Now that you mention it, since all the hardware is dated back to 2008, yeah, that CMOS battery is *way too old*. They should get replaced at about 5 year intervals. His battery is 9 years old (or more since it takes time from manufacture to ship, distribute, and sit on the shelf). Also, the more time the PC is powered off then the more time on battery. Replacing the coin cell battery would be much cheaper then the PSU, and he needs a new battery even if he gets a new PSU (unless he leaves it powered on 24x7 and on a UPS). The BIOS settings get copied into a table in the CMOS RTC (Real-Time Clock) chip/logic. If the battery goes weak, settings can become corrupted in the table and you have to reset the BIOS which copies the standard settings into the CMOS table and then do any tweaking again. If the battery is dead, the BIOS settings have to get copied on every boot into the CMOS table (which gets powered by the PSU but I'm not sure your Guru or BIOS health is going to show the +5V standby voltage from the PSU). I have a slew of devices that use the CR-2032 coin cell battery: garage door openers, several other remotes, LCD clocks, key fob flashlight, and probably many others that I don't recall right now. So I went on eBay (after doing some research on identifying counterfeit batteries by their packaging) and bought 20 of these batteries for all of $7.35 (under 37 cents apiece). swimteam1987 (the seller) has a 10-pack on sale now for $3.85 (item 272968340999), expire in 2027, and the packaging still looks legit. The ones I got from him before work great. Walmart wants 4 times more. Likely you have other devices that use the same coin cell battery so get several for cheap and replace them all or have spares. |
#17
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failures on boot
John B. Smith wrote:
No one wants to build a tower these days with the PSU on top, which is where I think it belongs. Not if you want the PSU itself to get cooled better. In the top position, all the air into the PSU is pre-heated by the CPU, chipset, memory, drives, video card, and everything else consuming electricity inside the case. The PSU has to cool itself with hotter intake air. In the bottom position, the PSU gets the cooler outside air to suck into it and its exhaust goes outside so none of its heated air gets pushed across the components inside the case. PSUs are probably the heaviest component so at the bottom will stabilize the case instead of make it top-heavy. The bottom-mounted case should have an intake going into the PSU (or very close to the PSU) so cooler outside air goes into the PSU (and perhaps some into the case to other components) and the PSU's exhaust goes outside (as it does when top-mounted). The PSU creates a lot of heat because they are not 100% efficient. Good ones are 85% efficient and cheap ones even worse, and the rest produces heat. It's the same reason there are cases with vent openings (and some even have a funnel attached to the side panel and extends close to the CPU's fan) in the side panel so the CPU gets cooler outside air instead of the pre-heated air pushed around inside the case. The higher the temperature differential then the faster the thermal transfer. Which would cool a hot clothes iron faster: A tub of boiling water or a tub of ice water? I'd like to clone my boot drive and shove it into a new build. I dont' suppose it would boot up XP and Win7 like a helpful nice little computer? Remember to install the new mobo's chipset drivers. You better investigate if all your hardware, internal and external, has Windows 10 drivers for them. |
#18
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failures on boot
On Sun, 17 Dec 2017 16:15:17 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:
My computer has booted without failure for a week. Thinking about all your replies something occurred to me: some time back I turned off the power supply with the switch at the back to do something or other. When I turned it back on it didn't work. Eventually it did, but since that time I've been unplugging the supply every time I wanted to mess around inside the case, then plugging back in when I wanted to turn on. So I'm thinking maybe the flaky on switch caused the supply to drop out in mid-boot, then come immediately back on. Without an orderly shutdown maybe the machine would fall back to the C1 BIOS display which occurs at turn-on but was prevented from starting up again by the state of things. So I started thinking about a new power supply. This one interests me https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16817703038 My old power supply is this one: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16817703005 I have it mounted in the TOP of my Gigabyte case https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16811233013 My motherboard is this one: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16813127050 Here is one of the questions a NewEgg poster posed about the newer supply I'm considering: "Just bought one of these for a computer I'm putting together (first one). However, upon opening the box, I discovered that the 20pin ATX connector seems to be missing the third pin. Not only that, but that whole wire is missing. Is this how it's supposed to be? Looks sort of like that in the picture on Newegg, but it's really hard to tell." The answer was: " That is the -5v line. It was used in very old machines (ancient by aging standards) Manufacturers leave it out because there is no reason for the additional cost since people aren't building computers with 15 year old hardware." Well, I built my baby in 2008 so it's not quite 15 years old BUT do I need that -5 volt line? And does anybody see anything else that would prevent the power supply I'm considering from working in my set up? |
#19
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failures on boot
John B. Smith wrote:
On Sun, 17 Dec 2017 16:15:17 -0600, VanguardLH wrote: My computer has booted without failure for a week. Thinking about all your replies something occurred to me: some time back I turned off the power supply with the switch at the back to do something or other. When I turned it back on it didn't work. Eventually it did, but since that time I've been unplugging the supply every time I wanted to mess around inside the case, then plugging back in when I wanted to turn on. So I'm thinking maybe the flaky on switch caused the supply to drop out in mid-boot, then come immediately back on. Without an orderly shutdown maybe the machine would fall back to the C1 BIOS display which occurs at turn-on but was prevented from starting up again by the state of things. So I started thinking about a new power supply. This one interests me https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16817703038 My old power supply is this one: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16817703005 I have it mounted in the TOP of my Gigabyte case https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16811233013 My motherboard is this one: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16813127050 Here is one of the questions a NewEgg poster posed about the newer supply I'm considering: "Just bought one of these for a computer I'm putting together (first one). However, upon opening the box, I discovered that the 20pin ATX connector seems to be missing the third pin. Not only that, but that whole wire is missing. Is this how it's supposed to be? Looks sort of like that in the picture on Newegg, but it's really hard to tell." The answer was: " That is the -5v line. It was used in very old machines (ancient by aging standards) Manufacturers leave it out because there is no reason for the additional cost since people aren't building computers with 15 year old hardware." Well, I built my baby in 2008 so it's not quite 15 years old BUT do I need that -5 volt line? And does anybody see anything else that would prevent the power supply I'm considering from working in my set up? 2008 ? No, the need for -5V disappeared around 1999-2000 or so. ******* Note that PC Power And Cooling has changed hands a couple of times. As far as I'm concerned, the value of the original company, was the staff, and their care in selecting contract-built supplies for retail sales. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Power_and_Cooling When another company "buys a brand", you could get just about anything. Then, when it comes to Newegg reviews, you need a metric ton of reviews from the current calendar year, to "calibrate" the reliability. The power supply industry, relies on a lot of contract manufacturing. Even when a company makes its own supplies, if they need a "$20 rubbish supply", they contract it out to one of their competitors. Seasonic, Enermax, Fortron/Sparkle make their own supplies. With Fortron, you can tell what you're buying, by the cabling, as the wires on the cables are "as short as possible" :-) If you can find reviews for specific supplies, the reviewer can sometimes identify who made it. For example, Antec supplies were made by HEC (good), Channelwell (I had two failures), and Delta (OK, usually a loud fan). To identify a Channelwell, you could pop the lid (look, but don't touch!), and see "CWT" printed on the transformers. This site has reviews and a forum. http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/show...?t=3964&page=5 http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews "There are a total of 526 reviews on 53 pages" So if I needed to datamine, I might try a site:jonnyguru.com as an added search term in my browser. ******* Modern supplies can have a 20+4 and 4+4 connectors. The first is the main connector, working with 20 pin or 24 pin motherboards. Your motherboard is a 24 pin motherboard. The 4+4 splits into two pieces, supporting 2x2 ATX12V. Or, on newer boards, they have room for a 2x4. On your board, using a 2x4 helps when doing extreme overclocks. The record for that, back in the era, was overclocking a D805 to 4GHz. In which case it would draw 200W+ from the 12V rail. That's when the 2x4 ATX12V setup helps. For a lot of conventional applications, just the 2x2 portion of the 2x4 is sufficient. A 20 pin supply (old style) can still be used with a 24 pin motherboard. As long as pin 1 goes to pin 1. The extra four pins just increase the ampacity, and provide more +12V current flow for PCI Express slot power. Cards like 6600 video used to draw 12V 4A from the slot. Some of the more monstrous cards, they only draw 12V 2A from the slot, so the "stress" on the 20 pin single 12V wire is a lot less in that case. The monster cards have 2x3 or 2x4 PCI Express to carry the majority of the power. For pictures of connectors, how connectors split and the like, this site is good. http://www.playtool.com/pages/psucon...onnectors.html Paul |
#20
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failures on boot
On Mon, 25 Dec 2017 10:32:48 -0500, John B. Smith
wrote: On Sun, 17 Dec 2017 16:15:17 -0600, VanguardLH wrote: My computer has booted without failure for a week. Thinking about all your replies something occurred to me: some time back I turned off the power supply with the switch at the back to do something or other. When I turned it back on it didn't work. Eventually it did, but since that time I've been unplugging the supply every time I wanted to mess around inside the case, then plugging back in when I wanted to turn on. So I'm thinking maybe the flaky on switch caused the supply to drop out in mid-boot, then come immediately back on. Without an orderly shutdown maybe the machine would fall back to the C1 BIOS display which occurs at turn-on but was prevented from starting up again by the state of things. So I started thinking about a new power supply. This one interests me https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16817703038 My old power supply is this one: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16817703005 I have it mounted in the TOP of my Gigabyte case https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16811233013 My motherboard is this one: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16813127050 Here is one of the questions a NewEgg poster posed about the newer supply I'm considering: "Just bought one of these for a computer I'm putting together (first one). However, upon opening the box, I discovered that the 20pin ATX connector seems to be missing the third pin. Not only that, but that whole wire is missing. Is this how it's supposed to be? Looks sort of like that in the picture on Newegg, but it's really hard to tell." The answer was: " That is the -5v line. It was used in very old machines (ancient by aging standards) Manufacturers leave it out because there is no reason for the additional cost since people aren't building computers with 15 year old hardware." Well, I built my baby in 2008 so it's not quite 15 years old BUT do I need that -5 volt line? And does anybody see anything else that would prevent the power supply I'm considering from working in my set up? Wups, I see a compatibility problem. The new ps I picked out has its fan on top. Since my current supply has a fan in back and is located in the top of my case, the new one, if it would even fit up there, would have the fan pressing right against the top of the case. Further, ALL the new supplies seem to have the same problem. The only solution I see is to try and cut a hole for the fan in the top of my case. And I ain't got that big a can opener. |
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