Celeron 300A and Asus P2L97-S Not Booting

I have a Celeron 300A that I want to install on an Asus P2L97-S that I
just bought. It came with a PII 233 on it, but without a heat sink or
fan. So I thought that installing the Celeron 300A which has a fan
and heat sink would be the solution. Has anybody used this cpu/board
combination?

The manual for the motherboard says that it is compatible with 300 MHz
PII and Celeron cpus, I changed the jumpers to the correct multiplier,
swapped the cpus and plugged the power cord back into the power
supply. The ps fan immediately came on, and either one or both of the
front leds came on and stayed on, but no video signal went to the
monitor. I tried the power switch to shut it down but it didn't do
anything, so I unplugged the power supply.

An hour digging through the archives led me to try updating the BIOS
on the off chance that the old BIOS (1995) did not support the Celeron
300A. I managed to download it, and flashed the BIOS successfully,
reset the multiplier jumpers and reinstalled the Celeron. This time
the power supply fan and the leds stayed off after plugging in the
power cord. When I hit the power switch it looked like it was going
to boot, everything started as normal, the leds for the hard drive,
and on the monitor acted as they should, but nothing came up on the
screen. I waited for a while, still nothing on the screen -- so I hit
the power switch again and the computer shut down.

The BIOS I installed had a bunch of revisions, but was not the newest
one available. The newest BIOS only listed, "Support for Intel
Mendicino cpus" as its revision. I don't remember having heard of the
name Mendicino being mentioned in regard to the Celeron 300A, and I
can't think of what else might be the problem.

Any helpful suggestions?

Thanks,

Lionel

lionelhasselhoff wrote:
I have a Celeron 300A that I want to install on an Asus P2L97-S that I
just bought. It came with a PII 233 on it, but without a heat sink or
fan. So I thought that installing the Celeron 300A which has a fan
and heat sink would be the solution. Has anybody used this cpu/board
combination?

The manual for the motherboard says that it is compatible with 300 MHz
PII and Celeron cpus, I changed the jumpers to the correct multiplier,
swapped the cpus and plugged the power cord back into the power
supply. The ps fan immediately came on, and either one or both of the
front leds came on and stayed on, but no video signal went to the
monitor. I tried the power switch to shut it down but it didn't do
anything, so I unplugged the power supply.

An hour digging through the archives led me to try updating the BIOS
on the off chance that the old BIOS (1995) did not support the Celeron
300A. I managed to download it, and flashed the BIOS successfully,
reset the multiplier jumpers and reinstalled the Celeron. This time
the power supply fan and the leds stayed off after plugging in the
power cord. When I hit the power switch it looked like it was going
to boot, everything started as normal, the leds for the hard drive,
and on the monitor acted as they should, but nothing came up on the
screen. I waited for a while, still nothing on the screen -- so I hit
the power switch again and the computer shut down.

The BIOS I installed had a bunch of revisions, but was not the newest
one available. The newest BIOS only listed, "Support for Intel
Mendicino cpus" as its revision. I don't remember having heard of the
name Mendicino being mentioned in regard to the Celeron 300A, and I
can't think of what else might be the problem.

Any helpful suggestions?

Thanks,

Lionel

It should work - I had a 300A running on a P2L97 (not the SCSI version)
for a while. I don't recall the specific BIOS version, but it wasn't
exactly up to date so I doubt that's your problem.

Assuming you know the 300A isn't dead, my best guess is the processor is
not seating properly in the slot - that can cause the power supply to
start immediately when you plug in the cord as it did before you updated
the BIOS. 300As can be fiddly to seat in the slot because the edge
connector is a tiny bit thinner than on the PII and they don't fit
tightly in the PII retention mechanism - you'll probably find you can
tilt the processor back and forth a little while it's installed, so try
it in various positions. One board I installed a 300A on even needed the
processor lifted up slightly from the fully seated position before it
would boot.

HTH

lionelhasselhoff wrote:


The BIOS I installed had a bunch of revisions, but was not the newest
one available. The newest BIOS only listed, "Support for Intel
Mendicino cpus" as its revision. I don't remember having heard of the
name Mendicino being mentioned in regard to the Celeron 300A,

Well that's exactly what a 300A is, a medocino.

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20.../index-02.html
--

Stacey

Stacey wrote in message ...
lionelhasselhoff wrote:


The BIOS I installed had a bunch of revisions, but was not the newest
one available. The newest BIOS only listed, "Support for Intel
Mendicino cpus" as its revision. I don't remember having heard of the
name Mendicino being mentioned in regard to the Celeron 300A,

Well that's exactly what a 300A is, a medocino.

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20.../index-02.html

Guess I should have kept researching until I ran down the last
possibility. Thanks for the help.

Lionel