This was a common problem with some harddrives: They take a very long time to initialize after a reboot and are not ready to be detected by the BIOS when it looks for connected drives.
Often there is an option in the BIOS setup to add some seconds of delay when detecting the harddrives. It is called "Delay IDE Initial", "Delay For HDD", "IDE Detect Time" or something like that.

Someone else mentioned that you can set the drive settings permanently, so it doesn't auto detect it every time.

Might also work?

Mau1wurf1977

I forgot to mention that I put the drive settings manually after the auto detect failed but had no success. it is like the hardrive is not there

5u3
I will try the ide delay feature to see if that helps..

what I cannot understand is why it produces the issue with one video card the geforce 6800 and not the kyro2.

I am waiting for a matrox parhelia to arrive to see if that replicated the issue.

stano wrote:

what I cannot understand is why it produces the issue with one video card the geforce 6800 and not the kyro2.

Probably the Kyro2 card takes longer to boot up than the GeForce, giving the harddisk enough time to be ready before detection.

Ah ok...

There might also be options like "fast boot" which is usually set to ENABLE. I don' think the RAM gets tested if you do a warm boot.

Checking for booting A: and CD-ROM before C: might also "buy" you some time.

just an update on the above issue,

the bios has no ide delay so that ruled that out
tried different delay procedures but to no avail.

today tried a matrox parhelia video card same issue.

tried a recently purchased asus geforce 3 and the issue dissapeared altogether.

the geforce 6800 will be re assigned to another project I think...

stano wrote:

just an update on the above issue, […]
Show full quote

just an update on the above issue,

the bios has no ide delay so that ruled that out
tried different delay procedures but to no avail.

today tried a matrox parhelia video card same issue.

tried a recently purchased asus geforce 3 and the issue dissapeared altogether.

the geforce 6800 will be re assigned to another project I think...

One thing you could try is to change the boot process to boot last from the harddrive by putting everything else "above" it? Worth a shot, right?

I have found the solution to the problem above.
If you want to read about the issue have a read of my first post.
I am posting this for anyone else in the future that runs into the same problem.

I recently changed my ram from 512mb generic pc2700 ddr to
1GB (2 x 512MB) Infineon DDR PC3200 400MHz ECC Ram. This stopped the drive from not being recognised during a warm boot.
So the problem was RAM.
Now was it the ram or its ECC nature I do not know, but there are a few posts of people having the above issue an the internet and none had a solution.
Hope this helps.

double post

I'm glad you got it working, and hate to be contrary, especially on my first post here, but I think you've got the wrong fix...

Look to the power supply. It doesn't meet the requirements.

Here's the power supply requirements per Asus.

• 400 Watt ATX 12V power supply
• +5V/3.3V @ 180 Watts -- I interpret this to mean 36A
• +12 Volts @ 15 Amps
• 5VSB @ 1 Amp

The supply you mention only puts out 25A on the 5V line.

Personally, I'd replace it, even if there aren't any symptoms. Power supply issues often produce unstable systems with weird symptoms and finicky builds. Not finding a hard drive is one of the most common symptoms of a weak power supply on this board. Having it work or not when you use a lighter or different video card also fits in with a below-spec power supply. Other symptoms include incompatibilities with video cards and memory, spontaneous reboots with video cards, and one I just ran into yesterday...

I've had this board running for 10 years with nary a problem through several upgrades of memory, cpu, video, sound, and drives. Unfortunately, the computer started acting up this past weekend. I tracked it down to a weak 12V line, and at this point, am just hoping there's nothing damaged on the board. I popped in an Antec SP450 temporarily, but it only has 30A on the 5V line. Yours only has 25A. The only apparent issue is that it wakes up by itself. How's that for an odd symptom?

The problem is it's not easy to find a new supply today that meets that 5V requirement. Newer supplies generate too little on the 5V side and way more than necessary on the 12V line. Matter of fact, it was the Athlons and P4s that had manufacturers switch to using the 12V line instead of 5V.

Looking online, I've only been able to find 3 supplies that meet the spec, but none from a manufacturer I'm comfortable with, and the $20-30us price tags don't give me that warm happy feeling. I didn't look exhaustively at the 1000W supplies, but the few I did look at are still weak on the 5V line. The sad fact is, supplies with this much amperage on the 5V line simply aren't made anymore except for a few small niche manufacturers using substandard parts.

Spent a little more time looking today and expanded the list. I doubt any of these are really what they claim to be.

• Broadway Com Corp OKIA-BLACK-550 550W ATX Power Supply
• Bestec ATX-300-12Z DDR 550W Power Supply
• COOLMAX V-500 500W ATX Power Supply
• StarTech ATX2PW450PRO Professional 450 Watt ATX12V 2.01 Computer Power Supply
• LOGISYS Computer PS575XBK 575W ATX12V SLI Ready Power Supply
• Logisys PS650U12 650 Watt 80Plus SLI ATX Power Supply
• 630 Watt ATX Power Supply http://www.atxpowersupplies.com/630-watt-power-supply.php

Some people claim that these dual athlon boards use the 12V supply, but I'm not so sure how much this particular one relies on the 12V line vs the 5V line, and I won't take chances with supplies again. Had my fill of power supply trouble with the Tyan board before getting this one.

I was going to try repairing my supply, but after opening it, it's way too cramped to make the attempt with any confidence. It's a PC Power & Cooling 510 ATX-PFC, with 510W continuous, 650W peak, 5V@40A, 12V@34A, etc. and it's old enough to still have a -5V line.

Anyway, I've been a lurker here on and off for years, but thought I'd sign up and post this time. Hoperfully, it'll spare you some grief in the future, and maybe someone out there can help us both track down a new supply.

I ordered the LOGISYS PS575XBK 575W Power Supply. Then I read a review that says it's not even capable of 300W. Oh, well! I have a 386 that needs a supply.

SiBurning wrote:

-snip- Here's the power supply requirements per Asus. […]
Show full quote

-snip-
Here's the power supply requirements per Asus.

• 400 Watt ATX 12V power supply
• +5V/3.3V @ 180 Watts -- I interpret this to mean 36A
• +12 Volts @ 15 Amps
• 5VSB @ 1 Amp

-snap-

That's one heck of a FP! 😉

Anyway, it means one of my own rigs is slightly underpowered with only 150W on the combined 3.3v/5v lines. But so far so good, ASUS's numbers are meant as a fail-safe, so to say. It's meant to save them getting calls from people using their 6800's on underpowered systems. My bet is that the actual req for the 6800 is a bit lower (and depends on the rest of the components used).

And about dodgy PSU's I tend to distrust any PSU with "ATX" in it's model name 🤣 😜

There is a 12V 4-pin connector. I don't remember the exact details, which were never entirely exact anyway, but I believe a video card would be powered off that 12V line. The 180W is also accounting for a pair of original XP processors which were hungrier than the MP by 10 or 20W, iirc. Or maybe the durons. It's been 10 years... If you're interested, have a look at the power specs for the durons & athlons. I remember 78W and even 90W. There's where the 180 goes. There's plenty of people running these off 150W supplies--as long as they're solid at that rating, and you're not pushing the chips beyond 70W each or so. Later, faster chips--I think after the 1800s--are even better with power. IIRC.

I broke down and ordered an older used OCX. Spent about 12 hours looking around. There's simply nothing out there anymore that does the 34+ amps I want. (Don't ask where that number comes from. It's buried in my subconscious in a place I don't want to revisit having something to do with a tormenting Tyan 2460.) I even went looking at server PSUs, but stopped at the redundant supplies or $250us, whichever came first. At some point, I'm willing to just upgrade the board to something new, and these can go into the older DOS & Win98 boxes. I actually have 3 dead computers, apparently all power supply issues, all at the same time. The only one that survived was my Win98 box. But that's another story.

SiBurning wrote:

There is a 12V 4-pin connector. I don't remember the exact details, which were never entirely exact anyway, but I believe a video card would be powered off that 12V line. The 180W is also accounting for a pair of original XP processors which were hungrier than the MP by 10 or 20W, iirc. Or maybe the durons. It's been 10 years... If you're interested, have a look at the power specs for the durons & athlons. I remember 78W and even 90W. There's where the 180 goes. There's plenty of people running these off 150W supplies--as long as they're solid at that rating, and you're not pushing the chips beyond 70W each or so. Later, faster chips--I think after the 1800s--are even better with power. IIRC.

It's here, a nice chart with electrical specs as linked in the retro computing topic in my sig 😉

The figure for the 3200+ is around 76.8W's maximum, going down to 48.5W's for the Thoroughbred 1800+.
Palomino is hotter again ranging from 70W (2100+) to 60W (1500+) and again a bump for Thunderbird (72W 1.4GHz to 650Mhz 36.1W) 😉

I remembered the 7 and 8 but forgot the 6 in the middle? Odd. 😮

Some of the 3400 and up models go to 89W. reference. (My memory's not as bad as I thought. Just a few bitshifts.) Still, that's not what I was referring to. I seem to remember some extreme tests they did way before they passed 2400MHz. Might have been some overclocking tests or stuff like that. It's more likely that they specced it to 90W max and decided later not to exceed that number for support purposes--something they had a lot of reason to be concerned about at the time. It may even have been the maximum thermal limit the physical chip could support.

Will check out your links.

There's another thread that brings up another issue about the GeForce and earlier AMD chips. It might be that the OP is having power issues because of the GeForce. It only adds to the basic problem of too much current--maybe it's not so much a completely separate issue. The early dual athlon chipsets all had issues on the bus, and while they were supposed to be contention issues, maybe this all hints at the underlying problem being that it all consumed too much power. I'm suggesting that they "fixed" it by slowing down the bus, which is pretty much the workaround for the earlier GeForce issue--namely, to drop down to AGP1.

SiBurning

thanks for your informative posting.
In regards to the warm booting issue even with the new ram which is two infineon branded ecc sticks (of 512mb each)
I can replicate the hardrive issue when I remove one of the sticks. i.e remove one stick to only have 512mb only.

I went further and swapped one of the sticks(512mb) with a normal 256 mb stick(to have a total of 768 mb of ram and the issue was still there.
Finally I placed another 256 mb of ram for a total of 1gig and the issue dissapered altogether.
So my current deduction is any ram and I mean any(ecc or no sticks) below 1 gig will produce the above issue at a gig the issue dissapears.
I will try with more ram in the future (when I buy some)i.e. 1.5 and 2 gig.
(unfortunately my newly acquired ecc ram suffered a failure with one of the 512mb sticks dying on me-possibly static discharge?)

I have also bought another p/s this time a coolermaster with a few more amps on the 3.3/5 volt rail when compared to the corsair GS600.
here is a comparison:

corsair GS600
(CMPSU-600G)
Voltage

+3.3V 25A

+5V 25A

max combined 150A

and the recent purchase the coolermaster 650w

+3.3V 28A

+5V 30A

I understand the even the coolermaster with the slightly higher 5v rail might not be enough to meet the 180w requirements but the issue is still the same with this power supply.
Although I love the list of p/s compatible with the board.
I hope this thread will provide some help with future a7m-266d mainboard users.

I'd sooner get a reliable supply with solid components and--most important--conservative specifications. There's too many odd things that can go wrong when the power supply is underpowered. You've possibly hit on one of the worst issues, where increasing the memory, which means you're using even more power, seems to make things more stable. It all depends on the specific stuff in your build, and components drift, and heat as they operate, so you might have instability, for example, when you're using some little-used feature on your graphics card. I'm going to try using that used OCX supply I ordered, even though it's not as powerful as I'd like, but that cheapo supposed 575W LOGISYS supply will be relegated to a pentium board along with an AT-ATX adapter.

I thought I was rid of this problem when I exchanged that Tyan board for the Asus, but alas... I'm really tempted to just get a newer system and be done with it. I got a decade of sane use out of this system.

That Logisys PSU weighs 1.26 kg including all of the cables, and feels lighter than any PSU I've ever held. Has 2 80mm fans on the case. Hardly seems fit for even an old computer. Might end up being a waste of 28usd.

When buying PSU's, always buy from a reputable company. I never ever bother with the El Cheapo brands, not even for a retro rig. I don't want the PSU causing any kind of problem