Imminent SSD and CPU Fan Upgrade

[Petersueco]

Do you have any RAM sticks you could exchange? Just to rule out the RAM.

Do your motherboard have any AGP slot? You may try an AGP video card in it. You will not be able to run Mackies OS but you may be able to take a look at the BOIS settings with it. I had a very similar problem like yours long time ago, and placing thr AGP video card allowed me to fix the BIOS settings and, after that, reinstall back the PCI video card and... voilá!!! It worked...

Best of luck.
Peter.

[bitSync]

Do you have any RAM sticks you could exchange? Just to rule out the RAM.

Do your motherboard have any AGP slot? You may try an AGP video card in it. You will not be able to run Mackies OS but you may be able to take a look at the BOIS settings with it. I had a very similar problem like yours long time ago, and placing thr AGP video card allowed me to fix the BIOS settings and, after that, reinstall back the PCI video card and... voilá!!! It worked...

Best of luck.
Peter.

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the ideas. I don't have any spare RAM sticks but they're cheap enough so I've ordered a few sticks.

I have the newer motherboard (Itox CB50-BX/ZX) in my d8b #2 and it has an AGP slot. This is the slot that the stock ATI 128 video board is in. Also tried the replacement ATI video board I received yesterday in that slot. After reading your note I dug around in my computer junk and found a different AGP video board, an Nvidia GeForce AGP, and tried that as well but no luck.

[Edited to update status]

[doktor1360]

Do your motherboard have any AGP slot? You may try an AGP video card in it. You will not be able to run Mackies OS but you may be able to take a look at the BOIS settings with it. I had a very similar problem like yours long time ago, and placing thr AGP video card allowed me to fix the BIOS settings and, after that, reinstall back the PCI video card and... voilá!!! It worked...

Excellent advice, Peter... as I mentioned before, it very well may also be something going on w/ the power supply. But I'd be inclined to pursue the course of action you've outlined here - being mindful that the CPU really is nothing more than a PC with a single-use design (read micro-controller type). This situation is weird, to say the least, the most frustrating part of it is not being physically present to 'have a look'...

Peace

[bitSync]

Do you have any RAM sticks you could exchange? Just to rule out the RAM.

Status update... It occurred to me I might still have the original RAM stick out of my d8b #1 (64 Mbyte, I think?) that I replaced with a 256 Mbyte stick when I went to OS 5.1. I'm a little bit of a hoarder when it comes to this sort of thing. I found the OEM original 64 Mbyte stick, swapped it into d8b #2 (which also still had the 64 Mbyte original) and no dice. Still won't boot.

I think I've ruled out the motherboard battery (replaced with a new one several successful boots before the boot problem), the keyboard (num/caps lock lights flash when powered up), the disk drive (readable on another machine), the video card (boot problem persists with 2 different AGP cards), the console power cable (Rude Solo comes on at startup and VFD is illuminated), and the RAM stick (swapped out with an exact replacement and no boot).

I'd say I've ruled out the console data cable but I'm not certain about that. If I disconnect the data cable from the back of the console I get the identical non-booting startup behavior and VFD messages, but somehow I think the data cable is not the problem. I should be seeing something from the BIOS (right?) but I'm getting no video at all.

Next stop - CPU properly seated (as in pry it off and put it back on)? Swap out the power supply? Swap out BIOS chip?

I'd really rather be recording...

[bbb]

I think it's CPU related...I have a stock CPU from the 1st motherboard...I'm also a bit of a hoarder as well, and kept the CPU when I upgraded it...Can the original processor be installed on your motherboard?..if so let me know and I'll be glad to send it to you.

Good luck,
Bruce Brody

[bitSync]

I think it's CPU related...I have a stock CPU from the 1st motherboard...I'm also a bit of a hoarder as well, and kept the CPU when I upgraded it...Can the original processor be installed on your motherboard?..if so let me know and I'll be glad to send it to you.

Good luck,
Bruce Brody

Bruce,

That is a very kind offer. To my knowledge (this d8b #2 is at least second-hand) the CPU is original, a Celeron running at 300 MHz, same as my d8b #1.

I just tried two other power supplies I have, a 300W Sparkle and a 525W Enermax. I couldn't get the system to power up with either one (I must be overlooking something simple?), so I'm back to the stock power supply which continues to power up the unit fine, as far as I can tell; I haven't metered the voltages

My next move will be to (1) remove and reseat the BIOS, and (2) to actually remove the heat sink and fan clip assembly for the CPU, to pull the CPU chip and then reseat it. That will have pretty much rounded out the Easter egg hunt and will leave me with the CPU and the motherboard as principal suspects. Unless I'm missing something.

[bitSync]

Sweet!

Although I resisted, it was down to fiddling with the CPU itself which always freaks me out. I pulled off the fan clip and heat sink, removed then replaced the CPU, left the heat sink off and now it boots. However, when I replace the heat sink and fan clip it will not boot. But in general, things are improving...

Dok, you called it early on. You called it too, Bruce. It's just that the CPU was going to be the very last thing I touched.

I've got to figure out this CPU heat sink issue. Don't know what's going on there and I certainly can't run without it for any prolonged period. I'll keep working at getting things going with the heat sink attached. Once I conquer that maybe I can get back to what this thread was supposed to be about...

Thanks all for your patience and assistance!

[bitSync]

There seemed to be an excessive amount of thermal goop between the CPU and the heat sink. The heat sink could slide around pretty easily. The goop was oozing over the edges of the processor crown and glopped up right next to the tops of the processor pins. I can't imagine it's electrically conductive? I wiped up a lot of the excess goop from the perimeter of the processor crown leaving enough for the top of the processor. Cleaned off the bottom of the heat sink also, leaving what looked like a reasonable amount of thermal goop. Put the heat sink, fan clip and fan back on and it's been booting up consistently ever since, probably 10 times or so tonight with no boot fails.

[doktor1360]

Sweet!

Dok, you called it early on. You called it too, Bruce. It's just that the CPU was going to be the very last thing I touched.

Thanks all for your patience and assistance!

Respect! Fucking MADDENING, is it not? However, as I pointed out, your due diligence here has definitely run it's course with all logical troubleshooting techniques as suggested applied - AWESOMENESS! You left nothing to chance or question...

However, the post-mortem would be that based on what upgrade(s) you originally performed, I would have (and have) zero'd in on the processor issue just because that's where you were working - could have saved yourself a bit of heartache... but at the end of the day, you've LEARNED quite a bit about the cpu internals... priceless knowledge if you're using one of these consoles...

I'm quite envious - you've got TWO working v5.1 consoles... {sighs - lol}

All the Best, Brutha!

Peace

[bbb]

That's Fantastic News!!!

Bruce