T-bird amd-k7 mainboard problem

[jeffp]

My mainboard seems to have a problem setting ultra dma settings with my hard disk. I have a 20gb hard disk which is listed as p10 instead of ultra dma 2, no matter what I try it keeps coming up as p10, the cd and dvdrom also come up as p10. I am not sure wether this is a mainboard problem or a cpu problem.
My mainboard has nothing on it to identify it, only a golden heatsink with t-bird amd-k7 on it. the cpu installed is an amd 900. I would try updating the bios if I knew the exact type of board it was but even sisoft sandra failed to id the board properly, it came up as unknown manufacturer. any help identifying this board and curing the hard disk problems would be apreciated as I have been working on this pc for the last week without any progress. the bios on the mainboard is amibios.

 

[Anoobis]

Is there any info in the BIOS that reports what chipset you're using??

If not, when the board boots up, right at the beginning it will report what is referred to as the BIOS string. It's usually a long set of numbers and letters. Usually it is located at the bottom of the screen, but sometimes you have to hunt for it. What makes this hard is that the information doesn't stay up very long. Sometimes you can set your BIOS to quick boot on P.O.S.T. If you turn this off, it will give you a little more time to get the BIOS string. If not you may just have to reset your PC a few times to get it all.

If you can get this info, it will be a start.

EDIT: Its also possible the board doesn't support UDMA, as well.

 

[sturm]

Try a different hard drive cable. Its possible that you used the origional cable which was 40 wire. Newer drives, and even 20giggers, need an 80 wire cable to work correctly.
Its also possible the cable is just bad.


I dont know of any boards that didnt support udma. My old k6-2 300 board supported it.

 

[jeffp]

I have opened the case up again and checked the ide cable, it is an 80 pin cable which should work, I also downloaded the latest version of sisoft sandra and run it again, this time I have more information from it than last time. The mainboard is from hsing tech enterprise
the chipset is reported as sis730
the bios number acording to sandra is as follows
62-0308-001437-00101111-071595-sis730s
I hope this helps you to help me.

 

[Anoobis]

After doing a little searching it appears that you actually have a PCChips M810LMR. Their website doesn't have any info on that board. However, from what I can tell the board is also known as the ECS K7SEM. Does this look like your board?? If not there are several other flavors of it listed on the site. You may want to do some snooping around it to see if your is there.

I know this isn't a lot of help, but at least we can narrow it down and get an idea of what you have.

Also, could you give us an idea of what you've already tried in the BIOS already to try and resolve this issue.

 

[jeffp]

I have now traced the exact type of mainboard I have after many pc restarts and pressing the pause button as the bios flashes up pretty fast.
It is a m810lr-h with an american megatrends v3.0 bios dated 2001. I will try updating the bios to see if that helps as there was nothing really in the bios setup to help me so maybe the bios is too old or corrupted. Will get back to you when I have downloaded and tried new bios.

 

[Anoobis]

I'm sorry, I just remembered that if you disconnected your keyboard, it would pause your P.O.S.T, giving you enough time to write the info down without haveing to reboot it.

Nothing in the BIOS setup to help you???

I find it very hard to believe that you were not able to specify your hard disk through the BIOS. Where in the BIOS did you look? Usually the first page of older BIOSs was where you could setup the disk drives.

Also, you might find some helpful info about your board on this page.

 

[jeffp]

When I went into setup my hard disk was setup correctly, it was set up for udma mode 4 in the bios but when I went into windows it was setup as p10 mode.

I have just downloaded and tried to install the latest bios for my mainboard but have hit another problem, when I ran the flash update the bios file gave the following error, bios tag incorrect, old tag m810lr new tag m810, It asked if I wanted to continue to install new bios but I wasn't sure. according to the pc chips website the bios I downloaded was the correct one.

 

[jeffp]

I have finally managed to flash the bios properly but the hard disk still wouldn't work in dma mode, then I found an article online which gave instructions for getting the hard disk to work in dma mode, it involved changing the bios setting for power management to acpi then repairing windows installation. This worked first time but I have since found out that my onboard network card has disapeared from the bios setting and is not in the devices of windows I think the bios I installed must have been the wrong one maybe. The bios I installed was 030308s.rom for mainboard m810lmr version 3.

 

[Anoobis]

Hmmm...I told you there were several flavors of that board listed on ECS site. I did some checking and there is a K7SEM V1.0, K7SEM V1.0+B1 and the K7SEM 3.0 which is the one I linked to. I wasn't able to find the board through PCCHips website, even on their downloads page. The only ones that came close to it were all marked M810L.

I suggest contacting both PCChips and ECS directly to see if they can point you in the right direction to acquire the correct BIOS for your board. I would also suggest asking them if you can flash to either an earlier BIOS to restore the onboard lan or if the new one they give you will return will fix the problem.

 

[jeffp]

I have since found a bios which matched the configuration of my mainboard so everything seems to work okay, but my processor configuration has changed. My processor used to be listed as an amd thunderbird 900 in the bios, now it is listed as an amd 1300+. Windows xp lists the processor as a 950. Could this configuration damage my processor as changing the bios again would be a hassle as everytime I change my bios I have to revalidate windows again on the microsoft site.
My pc seems to run okay I have three fans running inside, 2 chassis fans and one cpu fan.
Thanks for all your help and advice , apart from the processor I think this pc has been sorted.

 

[Anoobis]

I don't understand why Windows would read the processor differently from the BIOS. Are you certain you obtained the correct BIOS??

Can you enter the BIOS and manually change the processor back to a 900? IIRC, most older BIOSs allowed you to select your processr from a list of supported ones. See if you can do this.

Could you possibly go here and download the latest version of CPUZ. This is a small program that will help to correctly determine the CPU in your PC.

It's easy to use. Just download it and unzip the file to your hard drive. Browse to the folder and double-click the file CPUZ.

If possible, post a screen shot here so we can see what you have going on.

 

[jeffp]

I have downloaded the program and created a screenshot of the results but not sure how to post image. I have looked in the bios again and I am unable to change the cpu settings at all, the cpu listed is a amd pro1300+ but in reality it is a 900 thunderbird. I think this must be the wrong bios, I have just downloaded another bios and will try it. This is the info I got from cpuz.

name amd athlon
code thunderbird
package socket a
technology 0.18 vm
voltage 1.808 v
corespeed 990.0 mhz
multiplier x9.0
fsb 110 mhz
bus speed 220.0 mhz
l1 data 64k
l1 code 64k
level 2 64k

Is there a way of stopping windows from needing to be validated after flashing a new bios? I have a dual boot system with internet connection on win98se but not on windows xp so I have to phone microsoft up which is a hassle. I use 98 because I capture video on xp which is slowed down greatly by firewall and antivirus protection.

 

[Anoobis]

I have downloaded the program and created a screenshot of the results but not sure how to post image. I have looked in the bios again and I am unable to change the cpu settings at all, the cpu listed is a amd pro1300+ but in reality it is a 900 thunderbird. I think this must be the wrong bios, I have just downloaded another bios and will try it. This is the info I got from cpuz.

name amd athlon
code thunderbird
package socket a
technology 0.18 vm
voltage 1.808 v
corespeed 990.0 mhz
multiplier x9.0
fsb 110 mhz
bus speed 220.0 mhz
l1 data 64k
l1 code 64k
level 2 64k

Is there a way of stopping windows from needing to be validated after flashing a new bios? I have a dual boot system with internet connection on win98se but not on windows xp so I have to phone microsoft up which is a hassle. I use 98 because I capture video on xp which is slowed down greatly by firewall and antivirus protection.

Yes it looks as though you've flashed the incorrect BIOS. Your multiplier is correct, but for some reason it has kicked up the FSB by 10 MHZ. Honestly, I'm willing to bet the processor can handle the extra bus speed, but there's no way to be sure and I believe that running the incorrect BIOS is only going to lead to issues further down the road. You should really be shooting some e-mails to ECS and PCChips on this issue. It's a long shot but it could turn out a final solution.

As far as the Windows validating, I'm not sure if there is a way to get around it. The last time I flashed my boards BIOS was a long time ago and it was before I validated my copy of XP (within the 30 day trial). Since it was the last revision available for my board, I haven't flashed it since.

If I had to post images I would setup a free Photobucket account & upload the picture there. It will give you a URL to reference which you can post here.