Did the system pass MemTest86 and Microsoft Windows Memory Diagnostic (both are bootable from diskette)?

I know I've had some compatibility issues with the Live! and a dual 440BX system. Maybe some of the issues went to VIA? I don't know.

What happens if you use two sticks of 128 MB (256 MB total), no sound card, and an ATA PCI controller for the HDD? You might also try W2K just to determine if the hardware is stable.

I've always been curious about bad caps which weren't bulging. The best way to test caps is to remove them and see if they follow the proper RC time constant in an RC circuit. There are meters that do this for you. Some tips here,
http://www.squidoo.com/how-to-check-capacitor

Yeah, it did pass MemTest86 (I had it running that for about 4-5 hours as well, just to make sure). Haven't tried the other one, I will give it a try.
I'll try a different set of sticks just to be safe and remove the sound card. Unfortunately I don't have a PCI IDE controller 🙁.
I really like your next idea though, about W2K. I will try installing Windows XP instead and see what happens then !
The capacitors do look fine, I don't like the idea of removing them one by one though, seems like a bit too much of a hassle. I know they are easily removed, but how easy is to replace them afterwards?

F2bnp wrote:

Yeah, it did pass MemTest86 (I had it running that for about 4-5 hours as well, just to make sure). Haven't tried the other one, […]
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Yeah, it did pass MemTest86 (I had it running that for about 4-5 hours as well, just to make sure). Haven't tried the other one, I will give it a try.
I'll try a different set of sticks just to be safe and remove the sound card. Unfortunately I don't have a PCI IDE controller 🙁.
I really like your next idea though, about W2K. I will try installing Windows XP instead and see what happens then !
The capacitors do look fine, I don't like the idea of removing them one by one though, seems like a bit too much of a hassle. I know they are easily removed, but how easy is to replace them afterwards?

Installing XP might be a good idea as it will give you BSoD which might point you to the right direction. Just remember to set XP to not automatically reset when it crashes (or else you might see a BSoD for a split second after which XP resets automatically leaving you with too little time to write it down).
So if I understand correctly, you only get sudden resets when you do stuff on your desktop? No BSoD in 98SE? No issues when playing games?

I didn't get to try any games yet, but yes, fooling around in the desktop will result in a reset very quickly 😜. No BSoD.
How do I change that option in XP though? It does sound like a good idea.

F2bnp wrote:

I didn't get to try any games yet, but yes, fooling around in the desktop will result in a reset very quickly 😜. No BSoD.
How do I change that option in XP though? It does sound like a good idea.

I did some googling and found the answer (I thought it would be quicker then to boot one of my own rigs as all those XP OS's are in Dutch).

Go to Control Panel>System>Advanced>Startup & Recovery>Settings and uncheck "Automatically restart".

This should do it.

Alright, I'll install XP one of these days and see what happens. Thank you very much for your help Tetrium! 😁

WinXP's BSOD doesn't always give a whole lot of insight as to the exact hardware failure unless you analyse the dump file or have some other sort of debugging.

Sometimes it does though, when you see your scsi.sys file always causing a BSOD, but other times not, like with a generic, IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.

Win NT 4.0 and W2K also offer this same type of BSOD info screen.

Edit: When I'm testing for hardware failures, I usually use a more simplistic graphics card, like a PCI Virge DX. This also reduces power draw from the PSU. Maybe your PSU is flakely, so dumbing down the graphics helps to some extent.

Is this a place where george breese's pci latency patch would help. or maybe remove the sb live?

http://www.georgebreese.com/net/software/read … 0b21_readme.HTM

I might throw a Voodoo 3 in there and see what happens. I've used George Breese's patch and seen no improvement on the unstableness unfortunately. I'm about to play MDK2 for about an hour, I'll see what happens.

feipoa wrote:

Edit: When I'm testing for hardware failures, I usually use a more simplistic graphics card, like a PCI Virge DX. This also reduces power draw from the PSU. Maybe your PSU is flakely, so dumbing down the graphics helps to some extent.

I was going to mention this, but he mentioned that he ran some benchmark programs for an hour or 2 without any problem. I don't see how it could be the PSU.
Edit:Could still be of help though to install a very simple PCI graphics card. S3's are perfect for that! :Endedit

Lets just see what happens when he installs XP. Once I had a rig, it installed 9x just fine, but was horribly unstable. Later I tried installing XP on that thing, but it wouldn't even make it through the installation. I remember it was some hardware defect, but I can't remember exactly what was causing the problems (probably it was the memory). But anyway, installing a different OS "might" give us a clue as to what is going on 😀

F2bnp, whats the configuration of your memory modules? (like, whats the total size of the memory modules and how many chips do they have on each side?).

I'm using a couple of 256MB DIMMS. One is a doublesided Samsung DIMM and the other one is a singlesided Kingston. I did try with a couple of doublesided 64MB DIMMS though and it was still equally unstable.

A couple of updates. I didn't get to install XP today, I wanted to play a bit more in Win98SE. I sat down and played MDK 2 for more than an hour and although it was rockstable, the sound was awful, as if there was something wrong with my Live!. I tried a set of different drivers and then the Latency Patch from George Breese. I didn't get to see any difference unfortunately.
Anyway, I tried without the Live! and the system was equally stable/unstable in games and Desktop. Finally, I removed my Voodoo 5 and installed a GeForce 6600GT which unfortunately produced artifacts and I had to do a clean installation of Win98SE for it to work properly. I should also note that the system did a reset once or twice during the installation!!! I still had to install the Via 4.35 drivers because otherwise I would be watching a slideshow whenever I started a game.

Overall, the system is still completely very unstable. I'll proceed with installing Windows XP tomorrow and see what happens! I'm not overly optimistic though 🙁

Before you install XP, you might want to plop in a simple PCI graphics card, such as an S3 Trio, and swap the PSU. You may also want to use the default BIOS defaults. I've had similar instability issues with certain BIOS features. Write cache pipeline was one such, but there have been others, such as too low a CAS Latency setting (CL), etc. You could also try running the memory at 100 MHz, just for troubleshooting purposes.

It's been a few days since I posted here. I've finally found the cause of the problem. I gave the motherboard a good wash and swapped the Tualatin for a Coppermine 1000EB (133FSB) and used a Ti4200 instead.
I experienced absolutely no crashes or hangs with the Coppermine. I tried a lot of games and benchmarks and it performed as expected. As soon as I switched to the Tualatin, I got a reset 😜
All of this under Win98SE. Now, could the problem be the CPU or the motherboard? I've modified my cpu by removing 3 specific pins so that it could play on plain socket 370 boards (with mixed success, of all the motherboards a Compaq OEM board worked!). Unfortunately I don't have another Tualatin CPU to give a try quickly. 🙁

Sorry for this simple question, have you tried another psu?

You know, I actually haven't. I'm pretty sure I was using a different one the last time I tested the board a few months ago, but it wouldn't hurt if I tried with a couple of other ones. Thanks for the heads up!

F2bnp wrote:

You know, I actually haven't. I'm pretty sure I was using a different one the last time I tested the board a few months ago, but it wouldn't hurt if I tried with a couple of other ones. Thanks for the heads up!

I just mentioned it because sometimes I get so into trying to solve the problem and thinking about complex causes that forget simple ones. you're welcome. Good luck 😉

It's not the PSU 🙁. I've tried 3 of them and there always a lot of hangs, resets and just instability.
Heck, my Coppermine 1GHz works just fine. I even overclocked it to 1125MHz using the 150MHz FSB and it is rockstable. I'll see if I can try another Tualatin (like the 1266).

F2bnp wrote:

It's not the PSU 🙁. I've tried 3 of them and there always a lot of hangs, resets and just instability.
Heck, my Coppermine 1GHz works just fine. I even overclocked it to 1125MHz using the 150MHz FSB and it is rockstable. I'll see if I can try another Tualatin (like the 1266).

Could it be that the processor is defective in some way?

The board maker's website claims that your system will support Tualatin CPUs,
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page … spx?pid=1389#sp

So I'd try acquiring a non-pin-hacked Tualatin.