VOGONS


First post, by lmttn

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I've recently put together a new old PC with this motherboard, a Pentium III 800, Voodoo3 2000, and a Sound Blaster PCI CT5803. However, the BIOS hangs when trying to detect any connected IDE devices. I've tried swapping cables and placements to no avail. The hard drive shows up when connected to my current PC via IDE-USB enclosure. Also, the CPU is detected as being 400MHz. I have no idea what I am doing and would greatly appreciate any help. Thank you.

Reply 1 of 8, by frudi

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What size hard drive are you using and what version is your board's BIOS? The board only supports up to ~130 GB, but earlier BIOS versions likely have a lower limit than that, perhaps as low as 32 GB. Using a hard drive larger than the BIOS supports results in exactly the sort of hanging symptoms you describe. So if you haven't yet, then update the BIOS to the latest version and make sure to use a drive with capacity 128 GB or less.

As for the CPU speed, I'm assuming your P3 800 is the 133 MHz FSB model? Then your board is most likely set to 66 MHz FSB, which will give you exactly the 400 MHz you're seeing.

Reply 2 of 8, by lmttn

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It's 40GB. I formatted it as FAT32 using my USB enclosure (I'm not sure if that would be the issue). As for the FSB, turns out I just need to adjust some jumper placements, but the manual states that FSB speeds above 100 aren't guaranteed to be stable (edit: I changed the jumpers and I now have 792MHz, which is close enough for me).

Reply 3 of 8, by auron

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if you say have no idea what you are doing jumpering it to 100mhz as per manual instead of overclocking the fsb by 33% is recommended, especially if that is an agp voodoo3. and you can still get the bios update from asus' site.

Reply 4 of 8, by lmttn

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This is a PCI Voodoo3 (taken from a previous machine) but yeah, I'll set it back down to 100MHz just to be on the safe side.

Edit: in doing so, it is now roughly 600MHz, which is still fine by me seeing as pretty much every P3 below 900MHz is around the same price on eBay. As a side note, I did at least learn that I made a mistake by buying a P3 with a 133MHz FSB for a mobo that is not prepared for it.

Reply 5 of 8, by frudi

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If you're currently using some early BIOS version, then 40 GB drives might well not yet be supported. If you have any smaller drive, you should try that one, even if just temporarily, to see if it's detected and doesn't cause a hang. And do update the BIOS to the latest version, it's still available on ASUS' website: https://www.asus.com/supportonly/P2B-F/HelpDesk_BIOS/

BX chipset motherboards don't officially support FSB frequencies above 100 MHz, since the chipset only supports 1:1 and 2:3 AGP/FSB dividers. That means that above 100 MHz FSB, AGP will be running above its specified 66 MHz. At 133 MHz FSB, 2:3 gives 89 MHz for AGP, which some video cards might not be able to handle, but most will work at that frequency without problems. Second issue is that some BX motherboards also don't implement PCI frequency dividers beyond 1:3, meaning PCI will also be running above its spec - at 133 MHz FSB that comes out to 44 MHz PCI frequency, which is likely to cause issues with PCI cards, IDE controller or anything else that uses the PCI bus. Other BX boards, especially later models, also support the 1:4 divider for PCI frequency, which brings it back down to the proper 33 MHz at 133 MHz FSB. With one of these boards, using a 133 MHz FSB processor is typically not an issue at all, despite the lack of official support.

To complicate things, some revisions of the P2B-F support the 1:4 PCI divider, while some don't, depending on the clock generator used. I would suggest first getting the system fully working at 100 MHz FSB and only afterwards switching to 133 MHz, to see if that causes any instabilities.

Reply 6 of 8, by mtgmackid

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I just went this with my own P2B-F - earlier bioses don't support HDs over 32 gb (my board had 1009A when I got it I think and it was also hanging on a 40gb drive). You have to grab the Version 1013A BIOS, and depending on the revision of your board it may not play nice with AFLASH 1.37. My P2B-F is a v1.00 and I had to use the version of AFLASH (1.00 I think) on the original setup CD which was kindly uploaded by Horun (thanks a lot if you're reading this!):

https://archive.org/details/asusm066p2bp2bf