Athlon XP-M 2600+, Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe, random-no-POST - what is wrong?

In article , Erik Harris
wrote:

On Fri, 03 Sep 2004 23:01:12 -0400, (Paul) wrote:

snip
sure to buy a name brand, and try to aim for a brand which is
different than the brands currently used in your computers
(this will allow testing for sensitivity to power supply
startup characteristics, which vary from brand to brand).

I can't imagine that the Asus motherboards are sensitive to, of all PSU's,
Antec TruePower units. If I were using some generic PSU, I'd buy that, but
with an Antec PSU, a "sensitivity to PSU startup characteristics" strikes me
as a characteristic of component failure on the motherboard.

snip

In fact, that is exactly what happened. There was a problem with,
I think it was P4P800 revision 1.02, where _any_ of the Antec
CWT contracted supplies (the TruePower series) prevented the P4P800
from starting. So, it is not as far fetched as you think. A component
changed was used to fix that board, and I presume customers
RMAing the board now, will receive a 1.02 board with a different
component value in the Vcore circuit.

But, it is pretty unlikely that the A7N8X-E uses the same Vcore
circuit as a P4P800. I only mention it, so your household has more
than one brand of PSU available for testing.

HTH,
Paul

On Fri, 03 Sep 2004 22:14:35 -0700, Donald White
wrote:

Erik Harris wrote:

- Antec TruePower 430W Power supply
My wife's computer recently had trouble booting after recent upgrades
upped the power demands. I bought an Antec TruePower 330 and things got
worse. I think the PSU had some bad solder joints. I RMAed it and the
replecement works fine. This suprised me with an Antec, but a few
equipment swaps clearly isolated the PSU as the problem.

That is surprising. I've been using the PSU for over a year, though, in a
motherboard with almost the exact same components (A7N8X-Deluxe, now A7N8X-E
Deluxe - the only changes that I can see are the fact that this uses the
updated nForce2 Ultra400 chipset, and this adds an expansion slot for some
proprietary Asus WiFi slot. Oh, it also uses a different brand component for
the secondary NIC. I've got that disabled in BIOS, though, and am using the
nVidia NIC)

--
Erik Harris
AIM: KngFuJoe http://www.eharrishome.com
Chinese-Indonesian MA Club http://cimac.eharrishome.com

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Erik Harris wrote:

On Fri, 03 Sep 2004 22:14:35 -0700, Donald White
wrote:



Erik Harris wrote:



- Antec TruePower 430W Power supply


My wife's computer recently had trouble booting after recent upgrades
upped the power demands. I bought an Antec TruePower 330 and things got
worse. I think the PSU had some bad solder joints. I RMAed it and the
replecement works fine. This suprised me with an Antec, but a few
equipment swaps clearly isolated the PSU as the problem.



That is surprising. I've been using the PSU for over a year, though, in a
motherboard with almost the exact same components (A7N8X-Deluxe, now A7N8X-E
Deluxe - the only changes that I can see are the fact that this uses the
updated nForce2 Ultra400 chipset, and this adds an expansion slot for some
proprietary Asus WiFi slot. Oh, it also uses a different brand component for
the secondary NIC. I've got that disabled in BIOS, though, and am using the
nVidia NIC

Did you try clearing the system setup parameters in CMOS, then setting
the BIOS to load default settings.
If you have the manual for the motherboard read page 2-17

--


John Crawford


Canadian "EH" and my second car is not a dog sled

Take the motherboard out of the case and try it with just CPU, heatsink,
Ram, PSU, KB, mouse and Video card. If it works you probably have a MoBo
mount shorting out the board

If you have a heatsink that bolts on to the Mobo check the mounts and make
sure they are not shorting things out. I had an ABIT AN7 that I took back
because ABIT put stuff too close to mounting holes shorting out against my
Swiftech MCX462

On Fri, 03 Sep 2004 23:01:12 -0400, (Paul) wrote:

Your flaky POST problem is going to be tougher to solve.

Your Voice POST symptoms (no Voice POST message) means that a
proper reset pulse is not being generated for the hardware. As
far as I know, the Voice POST chip needs +5VSB to run (you'll
see the green LED glowing on the motherboard, just before you
press the power button on the front of the computer, and that
will give some proof that the power supply is delivering +5VSB).

Yes, the board is receiving its +5VSB when powered off. No issues there.

In addition, it needs a reset pulse that goes low and then high
(the deasserted state is logic 1). If the reset signal is stuck
low, this can be caused by a bad or jammed reset switch. The

I tried both inverting the reset switch connector and removing it entirely.
No effect.

I also tried turning on QFan support as another poster suggested. The
feature seems to be working in this revision of the motherboard. I can
definitely hear it turning my fan down. But it has no effect on my problem.

Unfortunately, I've been too busy to troubleshoot this for quite some time.
I'll spend some time on it today, and try to determine as conclusively as I
can which piece of hardware the problem is. I'll exchange it if I can, but
tomorrow will be 30 days after I bought it - the absolute deadline for
returns/exchanges with ZipZoomFly (I said earlier I bought it at NewEgg, I
was mistaken). I'm not sure I'll be able to call them to arrange for RMA
tomorrow, and doubt they're open today. If all else fails, I'll try to work
through the Asus RMA process.

Does anyone know, from dealing with either ZipZoomFly or Asus, whether or not
either of them will allow a cross-shipping arrangement (obviously with a
credit card number as insurance)? Since this board is only "intermittently
dead," I'd rather not be without a working PC for a week and a half or so,
while I wait for them to receive my board and ship me a replacement.

--
Erik Harris
AIM: KngFuJoe http://www.eharrishome.com
Chinese-Indonesian MA Club http://cimac.eharrishome.com

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On Sat, 04 Sep 2004 01:40:56 -0400, (Paul) wrote:

But, it is pretty unlikely that the A7N8X-E uses the same Vcore
circuit as a P4P800. I only mention it, so your household has more
than one brand of PSU available for testing.

I'll keep that in mind in the future, but I still maintain that this is an
almost-impossible scenario. The board has been around for awhile, and I've
seen no reports of incompatibility with Antec PSU's. And it is very _likely_
that this board uses the same Vcore circuit as the A7N8X Deluxe, which I used
with this PSU without any problems, until I ran into a problem with 200MHz
FSB (original nForce2, not nForce2 Ultra400) that fried that board's BIOS (I
apparently need to ship it back to Asus with $5 for reflashing).

--
Erik Harris
AIM: KngFuJoe http://www.eharrishome.com
Chinese-Indonesian MA Club http://cimac.eharrishome.com

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On Sat, 04 Sep 2004 19:19:15 GMT, John Crawford wrote:

Did you try clearing the system setup parameters in CMOS, then setting
the BIOS to load default settings.

Yes, I've reset the BIOS. It had no effect on this problem. As I think I
said earlier, I'm suspecting that this problem happens before the BIOS has a
chance to do anything, since it's before the POST process even gets started.

--
Erik Harris
AIM: KngFuJoe http://www.eharrishome.com
Chinese-Indonesian MA Club http://cimac.eharrishome.com

The above email address is obfuscated to try to prevent SPAM.
Replace each dollar sign with an "e" for the correct address.