Two A7V133 problems

[Guest]

Hello,

I just assembled my own machine with A7V133 mobo, 900 MHz Athlon, Asus 7700 graphics card and IBM DTLA-307030, UltraATA/100, 30GB, 7200RPM HDD

Most of the things are working right except following two problems

1. Promise Ultra 100 BIOS (latest version) does not detect my hard-drive. After going through its "detect" step, it reports that it could not find any devices and therefore does not load. I thought it should detect the HDD. Correct me if I am wrong.

2. My CPU temperature is also quite high in mid 50s (without overclocking) with Swiftech MC370-0A. I am using a thermal compound for better contact. It appears that the cooler is sitting snugly on the CPU. Maybe I need to make it more tight ?? Any recommendations ?

Thanks a lot.

 

[mbaha]

First do you have an os loaded yet? (the ata 100 will not work until the drivers are installed)
Are you using the right HDD cable (the blue one)?
Jumpers set right?
What happens when you run the HD on the ata66 conectors?

As for you temp.
Do you have any case cooling?
What happens to the temp when the case is off?
Did you put a butt load of thermal compound on? (you only need a little)

Anyway just a few thoughts
mbaha


"Work is the curse of the drinking class"

 

[Guest]

Yes I have win98 loaded on the system.

But I was talking about the message during the initial bootup procedure before win98 starts to load. I'll double check the jumper and switch settings.

The temperature is without the case cover. Eventhough I have case-cooling, I am afraid that it may get worse after I put the cover on. I'll try to do that and see.

Thanks for your response.

 

[Guest]

get used to the fact that AMD chips having a hit issues, they are very hot if you compare similar P3 chip. Other than that they are fine if you coooool them down. Dont be afraid to put the cover on, just put additional intake fan to make a "wind" inside of the case. As far as A7V goes, they suck with ATA bios. Simple as that, and it is not as Asus' issue.
As long as you can boot from that controller, dont pay attention on the initial detection. If it boots from it, its fine in did... hehe

"akuna mutata" braza...

 

[pat]

For the promise, if you dont have any other drive, you just have to diseable
primary and secondary IDE in BIOS, Make sure you have the right cable in right
position (pin1-pin1). the CDROM should be connected to the secondary IDE.

ATA 100 and ATA66 doesnt use the same BIOS ID. ATA100 will show as D0, D1,....

As for the temp, make sure your heat sink is WELL sit. To much paste will
do exactly the opposite, acting as an insulator. So wipe off the excedent.

HTH

->And this is...................ACTION!

 

[Guest]

Some things I can think of:

Do you have the mb jumpered to use the ATA100 controller and not the RAID0 one?

Are you using the blue-ended cable for the hard drive? I have heard that the drive itself should be on the end of that cable (with another connector between it and the mb) with the blue end in the mb.

Make sure you are connected to the ATA100 connectors on the mb. (I know, dumb, but you'd be surprised).

Can the mb recognize the drive while on the ATA66 controller?

How are the jumpers on the drive set? I would use either master or cable-select.

As for the CPU temp, that is really high with the case off. My AMD-C 1.1GHz CPU won't get that high oc'd to 1.333GHz. I no nothing about that heatsink but the GlobalWin FOP38 gets a lot of hype around here. Also, you can use the Artic Silver compound instead of standard silicone. It will lower you temp too. www.highspeedpc.com has it for like $9 with free shipping.

 

[mbaha]

Just at thought about your heat issue. The HSF you are using is a good one so that should not be the problem, but what if it is not getting enough power? Try hooking it up to 4 pin to 3 pin adaptor and see if that makes a difference. Also if you are using ASUS pc probe make sure fan control if off.
Let us know what happens
mbaha


"Work is the curse of the drinking class"

 

[Guest]

With the hdd cable, when i connected my ata66 hdd at the end connector, it didn't detect my hdd until i put in in the middle connector. Try it, may be it help !

 

[Guest]

Guys,

Thanks for all your suggestions. So far, I've tried following things:

ATA100 Problem:
-Disabled Primary IDE from "auto" to "none" as Pat said and Promise BIOS does not even go through the "detect" step and I get a boot failure.
- My HDD is set on "Master" and therefore I connected the terminal pin to the HDD. I was under the impression that middle connector was for "Slave" drives. Maybe I am wrong. What the heck, I will try the middle connector

CPU Cooling:
-I removed the cooler, wiped all the thermal compound and applied a much thinner layer and CPU temperature jumped to 60 C, so I went back to original thickness (which is much thicker and I think sufficient) and got temperature down to 53-54. Is there a web-site with pictures showing application of thermal compound ? Please post the link fi you know of one.
-How to increase cooler pressure (swiftech mc370-0A) on the chip? It seems to loosen the cooler, I have to turn the screw clockwise and to tighten it vice versa. It appears that after you unscrew counterclockwise the cooler becomes pretty snug and further unscrewing does not seem to have any effect.

I'll wait for some more comments and in the meantime try a few more things and post the results. Thanks again.



<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Hiren on 03/07/01 06:34 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[ejsmith2]

The heat is always an issue. Welcome to AMD.
You might try taking off the case panels and seeing if a house fan will get you better temps.
As for the hard disk, I used to have the same problem with an older drive. Try this:
Hit delete at the last possible second that you physically can, to enter the bios setup. Go under the primary master channel, and make sure your hard drive is recognized with all the correct cylinders/sectors etc.

If it is, you should be in the clear to use a floppy/boot cdrom to partition the disk. Disable all other boot devices, making the cdrom/floppy the only boot device enabled. Try to fdisk the hard drive.

If your hard disk doesn't show up on the primary channel master, go under the other three positions just to see if it's listed as slaved or secondary. If it is anywhere but the primary master, you've got cables/jumpers to change.

 

[Guest]

In my comp, which is A7V133, you cann't detect HDD if it is ATA 66/100, just disable it and ATA bios will detect it later while booting. At the first time i assembled it, i put my HDD in the ATA cable at the end connector and it didn't detect in bios neither in booting but it can be detected as a normal HDD when i put it with the normal IDE slot. I think you should try the IDE slot first and try the middle connector later. For the cooler, bring your whole case to any computer shop and try different cooler until u satisfy or read the new cooler review in Tom's site.
Hope it can help.

 

[dhlucke]

Don't disable the ide!! Just put the harddrive on the 66 controller not the 100 until you have the OS loaded and the promise drivers loaded. Make sure the jumpers are correct on MASTER and that you use the primary controller.

"I think I brained my damage"

 

[Guest]

OK. I figured out the first problem. I had two ATA-100 cables that I received with the motherboard and I switched the cable and Voila it works...but another problem...now ATA BIOS recognizing my HDD the computer freezes after loading win98 desktop. I think I will just reformat HD and reload win98 and hopefully should solve the problem

As far as the cooling goes, no luck yet. I think the thermal compound I received with the cooler may be very cheap quality. I will buy some arctic silver and see what happens.

Thanks a lot for your help

 

[Guest]

I have just assembled a A7V133/Tbird 900 system. The only problem i had vas also related to the Promise raid/ATA100 controler (-ASUS website) When the Quick Start Option in BIOS was enabled the promise controler displayed error not boot device found (or somthing similar), I then had to hit enter before the OS would load. This wasnt a big problem but it to some throbleshooting lokating the problem. A recent BIOS update (from ASUS) fixed the problem.