FWIW I've tossed 2 of these into ewaste this year, as unrecoverable... first one had some northbridge issue (heatsink getting way too hot waiting for POST), second one had a southbridge issue (would POST but fail to install any OS once it got hot...ATA channels would 'disappear' =). Both boards came from the warmer climes of AU and so I concluded that they both suffered from 'heat prostration' <grin> ...

giantclam wrote on 2023-09-26, 23:38:

FWIW I've tossed 2 of these into ewaste this year, as unrecoverable... first one had some northbridge issue (heatsink getting way too hot waiting for POST), second one had a southbridge issue (would POST but fail to install any OS once it got hot...ATA channels would 'disappear' =). Both boards came from the warmer climes of AU and so I concluded that they both suffered from 'heat prostration' <grin> ...

Might have been able to salvage one working board from the pair, swapping the working southbridge chip for the one with the bad chip (or vise-versa with the northbridge).

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-09-26, 23:52:

giantclam wrote on 2023-09-26, 23:38:

FWIW I've tossed 2 of these into ewaste this year, as unrecoverable... first one had some northbridge issue (heatsink getting way too hot waiting for POST), second one had a southbridge issue (would POST but fail to install any OS once it got hot...ATA channels would 'disappear' =). Both boards came from the warmer climes of AU and so I concluded that they both suffered from 'heat prostration' <grin> ...

Might have been able to salvage one working board from the pair, swapping the working southbridge chip for the one with the bad chip (or vise-versa with the northbridge).

True, but life is too short (I'm 60+ =) ....plus this was only 2 of the nearly 20 old boards I'd accrued over the years from system upgrades (started this year going through the stuff...nearly there)

I came in the thread to look because got one years ago in a junk lot, and I overoptimistically thought "Maybe someone just found a simple fix for these" hahahahaaaa.... so yeah, not a particular star of the A7V line. IDK if it's half the fault of the KT333 though, don't know any "great" boards with it.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-09-27, 00:44:

I came in the thread to look because got one years ago in a junk lot, and I overoptimistically thought "Maybe someone just found a simple fix for these" hahahahaaaa.... so yeah, not a particular star of the A7V line. IDK if it's half the fault of the KT333 though, don't know any "great" boards with it.

Indeed, I've tossed so many different branded boards all with versions of the kt333 chipset... and to this day the vt8233 southbridge is the only one I've ever seen blow a hole in itself and let out the magic smoke... for 'no apparent or obvious reason'.

Getting the hint - this board / chipset is crapola! I did check the northbridge heatsink and it's not overheating.

A few questions if anyone has a clue:

- how much of the board has to work in order to deliver the voice errors "system failed cpu test", "system failed memory test" ... etc. Does this indicate the bios is functional? less?
- any idea why SYSCLOCK 100Mhz always creates "system failed memory test" but 133Mhz doesn't?

I can get past memory & cpu test with the Duron using higher voltages, but no video on an AGP or PCI video card and the Duron overheats almost immediately afterwards. I can tell because the cpu heatsink is super hot and "system failed cpu test" comes back when I try with a hot processor.

Well you are trying 133 with 100fsb CPUs it looks like, which if they were very unlucky samples would cause early overheat and no boot, so if those are all that is available, then focussing on getting 100 working would be more likely to work. Pursuing 133 operation on CPUs that aren't guaranteed to do it will have you chasing phantoms rather than the actual problems.

Spent some time on one of these just now as well. Some years back the board started having intermittent trouble booting and from what I remember sometimes wouldn't boot cold, just spun the fans the first couple attempts. Eventually stopped booting altogether. I replaced the 3300 uf caps and cleaned up corrosion around the line of SMDs next to the northbridge, no idea how that happened. Still the same CPU test fail message and blank screen so I tossed it.

The undocumented overvoltage jumper probably didn't help these things. I think at some point after taking the board out of storage with most of the jumpers removed I went over the manual to restore the jumper configuration but missed the overvolt one, so for some time the board was running unusually hot.

Thanks for chiming in. I'm going to keep this board for parts, but that's about it, I've moved on to a totally different Socket A board that I came across which confirmed the other spare parts I was using (CPU, Memory, etc.) are perfectly fine.

It's a decent board for benchmarking video cards, shame to scrap it. I took out all 1000+ uf caps to use in other things, tested a bunch with a multimeter and none measured bad. Don't have equipment to test them any further than that though.

vvbee wrote on 2023-11-08, 18:49:

and cleaned up corrosion around the line of SMDs next to the northbridge, no idea how that happened.

It seems without rhyme or reason, I have had boards oxidise all bundled up in antistatic bags in sealed totes in heated/conditioned storage, then a couple of weeks back, opened a rusty case that had been in a drafty and latterly leaky shed for 15+ years and the board looked brand new.

Yeah, the board kicked around for a decade in various conditions before being put into retro use, should've been more damaged than it was but no obvious problems at that point, half a decade ago at this point. No obvious corrosion elsewhere on the board now so something went wrong at that spot.