VOGONS


First post, by CelGen

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I'm building a disk imaging station and assembled a system around a PEAK 650 Socket 370 SBC board. The board does have a few tiny passives knocked off from rough handling (looks like a screwdriver was used to pry off the tabbed CMOS battery instead of snipping it off) but it still POSTS fine, to a degree. BTW this is the PhoenixBIOS D686 BIOS.
Like any other system with a reset CMOS or a flat battery it will give you the CMOS CHECKSUM ERROR - DEFAULTS LOADED message after the memory count and drive detection and then you can press F1 or DEL to carry on and it will, but at any point after that if you reset the machine it will give you the one long beep POST error and a POST display card gives you C1 so its hanging up really early in POST. You have to pull the battery or otherwise remove power to the CMOS to clear it and POST successfully again.

Curiously if I immediately jump into the setup and select LOAD FAIL-SAFE DEFAULTS the problem goes away and I can reset the machine all day long without it failing so right now I'm having to set something in the SETUP and reboot to see if I can find what setting between the fail-safe and the Optimal/default valees is making it trip up but I'm curious what it might be. I have tried to set the machine up in the basic configuration right now with everything extra pulled but it's still running with 256mb of PC100 and a 1ghz Tualatin and can't really tell if perhaps it's running into a speed/timing issue. Does kind of issue sound familiar to anyone?

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Reply 1 of 6, by BitWrangler

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Is it running a PIII Tualatin with 133 bus and trying to run the PC100 at 133?

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 2 of 6, by CelGen

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The sticks I have say that they are rated for PC133. I have not popped the heatsink off but it seems to imply it's a 1Ghz PIII with Tualatin's telltale top heat spreader.
THOUGH now that you mention that I noticed the fail-safe forces PC100 mode and the system seems to run reliably at that. Its when I enable PC133 mode or switch to AUTO and let it detect PC133 on its own that it's hanging up, so it doesn't like PC133 for some reason.

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Reply 3 of 6, by konc

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CelGen wrote on 2021-07-17, 17:43:

it's still running with 256mb of PC100 and a 1ghz Tualatin

CelGen wrote on 2021-07-17, 18:06:

The sticks I have say that they are rated for PC133.

One of the above must be wrong?

Reply 4 of 6, by CelGen

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Yes, made a mistake there. Looks like a PC100 stick got mixed into my PC133 bin.

To clear things up I just tested it:

1 x 256mb PC133 SDRAM = One-time post, then memory error beep after reset
1 x 256mb PC133 SDRAM, configured in BIOS to run at PC100 = Reliable POST
1 x 256mb PC100 SDRAM = Reliable POST

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Reply 5 of 6, by CelGen

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Okay yeah, grabbed two known PC100 128mb sticks and tried to make it fail POST and the problem went away. So either the BIOS is trying to make it run a memory frequency it can't support or something else is unhappy about the higher speed. Performance isn't a big issue here though so I'm happy.

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Reply 6 of 6, by konc

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If you ever decide to give it another go, my next guess would be that the 133MHz module can't handle the timing at 133MHz and not the speed. So if your BIOS offers the option, relaxing the timing a bit might get it working at 133MHz.