A7M266 sporadic boot with NIC installed

[Scout]

I'm posting in this forum because this is a motherboard issue. My new A7M266 board (yes, I bought it brand new on clearance ;P) runs fine until I plug in my Netgear FA311 NIC. Then it takes 2 or 3 tries every time you boot it. First try it won't even give a video splash screen. Once it decides to boot, the boot and operation is normal. Same behavior when you do a restart.

I had this same problem with some cheap NIC's on some of my other computers, but this is the first time with the Netgear FA311.

Thinking it's an IRQ problem, I've tried the NIC in every PCI slot, even tried to "force" a different IRQ, but nothing solves the problem. I've swapped the NIC with another FA311 that I know works OK in another computer, but still get the same behavior... so I know the NIC isn't defective. I also tried switching the video card, but again, same behavior... so I conclude it is a motherboard issue. Remove the NIC, and everything operates totally normally with no boot problems.

Anybody know what's going on here? Do I just need to buy a 3Com or Intel NIC?

Config;
Asus A7M266 (AMD 761 chipset)
256 meg Micron PC2100 DDR
Athlon XP1700+
Winfast GeForce2 Ultra 64 meg DDR
Windows ME
10 Gig Seagate Hard drive
Toshiba 16x DVD on secondary channel
Zip 100 internal slaved on Primary channel



Scout
700 Mflops in SETI!

 

[bertvandonk]

Have you updated the bios, if so what version?

avandonk

 

[khha4113]

My new A7M266 board (yes, I bought it brand new on clearance ;P) runs fine until I plug in my Netgear FA311 NIC

<b><A HREF="http://www.asus.com.tw/mb/socketa/a7m266/faq.htm" target="_new"><font color=red>Question:</font color=red></b>
<font color=green>When a Netgear FA311 NIC (Network Interface Card) is used in A7M266, it causes the system unable to POST from a warm reboot. (like save and exit from BIOS or restart from Windows)</font color=green>

<b><font color=blue>Answer:</b></font color=blue>

<font color=green>AMD761 chipset will use some PCI signals to do power on strapping. So any PCI device must be floating with these PCI signals when PCIRST# ramps up. But we found the Netgear card is not floating with C/BE0# and other signals. This will cause hardware strapping error and is the root cause why the system can not boot.</A></font color=green>

Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.

 

[Scout]

It's the 1005 version. I looked at the 1006 and 1007 but didn't see anything that addressed this issue.

I think the next poster got the answer though. Seems the guys down at a couple of the local stores figured out there is an incompatability with the 761 chipset and the Netgear NIC. I put in an SMC NIC today and it now works fine.

Thanks guys!

Scout
700 Mflops in SETI!

 

[Scout]

Wow, thank you! That's exactly what was going on. I'm not sure what "power strapping" is, but I think you've perked my interest and I'll do some reading!

Thanks again.

Scout
700 Mflops in SETI!

 

[Crashman]

Blame the crappy southbridge. Who made the southbridge?

What's the frequency, Kenneth?