Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan (More info?)
Hi,
this seems to become the annoying sequel to my "BIOS POST Code
FF on Tiger K8W"-postings.
The board that suddenly stopped working a while ago seemed to have an
error with the IDE-Controller, at least I was told something like that.
So what I did was convincing a friend to test both Opteron 240 CPUs and
both 1GB DDR-333 memory modules in his ASUS SK8V mainboard while I
was waiting for the replacement board. He did but he did not like
the idea of installing probably damaged components at all.
Even though the SK8V only has one CPU Socket, both CPUs and memory
modules seemed to be perfectly working. We tested one CPU and one
module at a time, then replacing them with the second pair. Tests
were:
- Running memtest for about two hours (yes, I know that is not even
close to be long enough to be "almost" sure but no errors so far)
- Then booting into Linux
- Compiling a new kernel
- Playing a bit around in X11/Gnome.
We did not encounter any single problem so I suppose both CPUs and
memory modules were just fine at this moment.
Now when I received the replacement board, it did show the exactly
same error as the first one that failed after about one year of usage.
Just that this one seemed to be faulty on arrival. :-(
It was applying power to the fans, showing "FF" on status-display
and refuse to POST or even beep.
So I sent it back and got a replacement again. The second replacement
board seemed to work out of the box and came even with a quite current
BIOS. After plugging all back together I wanted to check out if really
everything is working as expected. That was when I realized that
networking was not operational. First I thought that - for some strange
reason - the e1000 module might not have been loaded at boot. So
I modprobe'd it again just to see an error message telling me "no
such device". I rebooted into BIOS only to find out that instead
of BIOS-options for the onboard-ethernet there was only a grey coloured
"N/A" and no selectable options.
Since there was a jumper onboard to switch ethernet on/off (which
was open and therefore *should* have been "on") I thought maybe this
could be another mistake in the user manual and things are just the
other way around. Sadly enough I did not remember if the jumper was
open or closed on the two former mainboards. So I closed the jumper
just to check. Nothing changed. I then opened the jumper again and
gave it another try but without success. Neither the BIOS nor lspci or
the driver seemed to see any ethernet-like device.
Now my last try was to reset BIOS settings first using the BIOS
options which, again, did not help. Still no ethernet but everything
else up and running. So I used the onboard-Jumper to hard-reset BIOS.
As written in the manual, I unplugged power, set the jumper to reset
for some seconds and then back to normal.
After this the board did never again power up. It just does nothing,
not even applying power to fans or anything. It is just as if it does
either totally ignore the power-on signals or has no power at all.
So I got frustrated again, unplugged everything again, and once again
grabbed the old Abit NF7 board to test everything that ever had any
contact with the Tiger K8W. Power supply, power switch, disks, cards
and everything else *still works perfectly*.
Well - lot of text, let me summarize what I am pretty sure of:
- I checked and double-checked for proper grounding during installation
- Any peripheral devices, PCI and AGP-cards are perfectly operational
- Power supply (300W) seems to be in perfect condition likewise, a
second one (with only 250W) was tested for certainty, same here
- I tested everything I could on the NF7-Mainboard
So what is left now is a faulty Tiger K8W, CPUs or memory whereas the
memory should only cause error-beeps while defect or missing. But of
course, there are not even beeps.
After having tested both CPUs and memory on ASUS SK8V (where they
seemed to be working fine) is there a serious probability the CPUs
could be damaged? Or did I receive a defective mainboard, again,
which I suppose in the first place since I can tell there was once
again something very weird and very wrong with this ethernet-issue
I mentioned.
By now I am quickly running out of ideas on what else could be wrong
here.
I am going to call Tyan support on monday but until then, maybe someone
around here might still have an idea what could have happened or if and
how I might get the d**n thing working again.
Tony
Hi,
this seems to become the annoying sequel to my "BIOS POST Code
FF on Tiger K8W"-postings.
The board that suddenly stopped working a while ago seemed to have an
error with the IDE-Controller, at least I was told something like that.
So what I did was convincing a friend to test both Opteron 240 CPUs and
both 1GB DDR-333 memory modules in his ASUS SK8V mainboard while I
was waiting for the replacement board. He did but he did not like
the idea of installing probably damaged components at all.
Even though the SK8V only has one CPU Socket, both CPUs and memory
modules seemed to be perfectly working. We tested one CPU and one
module at a time, then replacing them with the second pair. Tests
were:
- Running memtest for about two hours (yes, I know that is not even
close to be long enough to be "almost" sure but no errors so far)
- Then booting into Linux
- Compiling a new kernel
- Playing a bit around in X11/Gnome.
We did not encounter any single problem so I suppose both CPUs and
memory modules were just fine at this moment.
Now when I received the replacement board, it did show the exactly
same error as the first one that failed after about one year of usage.
Just that this one seemed to be faulty on arrival. :-(
It was applying power to the fans, showing "FF" on status-display
and refuse to POST or even beep.
So I sent it back and got a replacement again. The second replacement
board seemed to work out of the box and came even with a quite current
BIOS. After plugging all back together I wanted to check out if really
everything is working as expected. That was when I realized that
networking was not operational. First I thought that - for some strange
reason - the e1000 module might not have been loaded at boot. So
I modprobe'd it again just to see an error message telling me "no
such device". I rebooted into BIOS only to find out that instead
of BIOS-options for the onboard-ethernet there was only a grey coloured
"N/A" and no selectable options.
Since there was a jumper onboard to switch ethernet on/off (which
was open and therefore *should* have been "on") I thought maybe this
could be another mistake in the user manual and things are just the
other way around. Sadly enough I did not remember if the jumper was
open or closed on the two former mainboards. So I closed the jumper
just to check. Nothing changed. I then opened the jumper again and
gave it another try but without success. Neither the BIOS nor lspci or
the driver seemed to see any ethernet-like device.
Now my last try was to reset BIOS settings first using the BIOS
options which, again, did not help. Still no ethernet but everything
else up and running. So I used the onboard-Jumper to hard-reset BIOS.
As written in the manual, I unplugged power, set the jumper to reset
for some seconds and then back to normal.
After this the board did never again power up. It just does nothing,
not even applying power to fans or anything. It is just as if it does
either totally ignore the power-on signals or has no power at all.
So I got frustrated again, unplugged everything again, and once again
grabbed the old Abit NF7 board to test everything that ever had any
contact with the Tiger K8W. Power supply, power switch, disks, cards
and everything else *still works perfectly*.
Well - lot of text, let me summarize what I am pretty sure of:
- I checked and double-checked for proper grounding during installation
- Any peripheral devices, PCI and AGP-cards are perfectly operational
- Power supply (300W) seems to be in perfect condition likewise, a
second one (with only 250W) was tested for certainty, same here
- I tested everything I could on the NF7-Mainboard
So what is left now is a faulty Tiger K8W, CPUs or memory whereas the
memory should only cause error-beeps while defect or missing. But of
course, there are not even beeps.
After having tested both CPUs and memory on ASUS SK8V (where they
seemed to be working fine) is there a serious probability the CPUs
could be damaged? Or did I receive a defective mainboard, again,
which I suppose in the first place since I can tell there was once
again something very weird and very wrong with this ethernet-issue
I mentioned.
By now I am quickly running out of ideas on what else could be wrong
here.
I am going to call Tyan support on monday but until then, maybe someone
around here might still have an idea what could have happened or if and
how I might get the d**n thing working again.
Tony
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