Perhaps the bios rom chip has gone bad?
I'm not sure how common it is but I guess its a possibility?

What if you try without ram? Will it beep then? I had an issue worth an Intel 815 board. Powered on, but nothing. Removing ram made it beep, though. It was three cpu,c that was dead. Another cpu and everything worked ...

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-12-29, 04:52:

What if you try without ram? Will it beep then? I had an issue worth an Intel 815 board. Powered on, but nothing. Removing ram made it beep, though. It was three cpu,c that was dead. Another cpu and everything worked ...

Good idea. I will try it without the RAM in the morning. I'll give it a few more tries before I make it a piece of art in my office 🤣

AppleSauce wrote on 2023-12-29, 01:51:

Perhaps the bios rom chip has gone bad?
I'm not sure how common it is but I guess its a possibility?

No idea! I wouldn't know where to get a new one but I can do some Googling.

epborden wrote on 2023-12-29, 06:21:

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-12-29, 04:52:

What if you try without ram? Will it beep then? I had an issue worth an Intel 815 board. Powered on, but nothing. Removing ram made it beep, though. It was three cpu,c that was dead. Another cpu and everything worked ...

Good idea. I will try it without the RAM in the morning. I'll give it a few more tries before I make it a piece of art in my office 🤣

Yeah, and if that gives beeps, maybe try another CPU?

a post card will save you a lot of headache.

Your jumpered pic shows dips 1 thru 4 as OFF-ON-OFF-ON (x4.5)...shouldn't it be ON-OFF-OFF-ON (x5) ?

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2023-12-29, 09:53:

Your jumpered pic shows dips 1 thru 4 as OFF-ON-OFF-ON (x4.5)...shouldn't it be ON-OFF-OFF-ON (x5) ?

Unless it's an unlocked Engineering Sample, the Katmai CPU should pretty much ignore multiplier settings.

No dice today. Tried powering up with just the CPU in and nothing else. I have a Coppermine 733 coming that I am going to test with some PC133 next. Perhaps it is the CPU. I pulled the CPU from an old Dell Dimension XPS T500 so it's possible that CPU is just no good. If I can't get it to work I think I'll have the board analyzed and recapped because it's such a gem of a board. Feels like I should keep it.

AppleSauce wrote on 2023-12-29, 01:51:

Perhaps the bios rom chip has gone bad?
I'm not sure how common it is but I guess its a possibility?

I bought a new BIOS chip for giggles off eBay to try. Probably will have no effect at all but their not expensive.

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2023-12-29, 09:53:

Your jumpered pic shows dips 1 thru 4 as OFF-ON-OFF-ON (x4.5)...shouldn't it be ON-OFF-OFF-ON (x5) ?

You're right, I believe I tried both. I may have downclocked it in that pic just for testing but I can also confirm I did try x5 without any luck either.

Karbist wrote on 2023-12-29, 09:07:

a post card will save you a lot of headache.

I didn't even know this is a thing. This is amazing. Just bought one.

I was recently messing around with a dead P3B-F, although it was rev. 1.03.
The symptom was post code C1 (RAM issue) when the VIO jumper was set to 3.5 V.
Then I accidentally discovered that if I set the jumper to 3.6 V, the POST code analyzer goes haywire (POST codes looping at crazy speed).
Of course, I tried multiple CPUs and several sticks of RAM in all of the slots. In the end, I concluded that the chipset is probably dead.

In my opinion, at least some of these mysterious P3B-F deaths (and I've read about quite a few at this point) can be attributed to the idiotic VIO overvoltage.
I wonder what genius decided that it's a good idea to overvolt the chipset and RAM by 0.2 V without even having an option to set it to the stock 3.3 V. Great "engineering".

Hopefully, your board has a different issue and can still be saved - looking forward to the results once you get the POST card.

I have a mini speaker coming tomorrow. The post card is coming Wednesday, unfortunately, probably due to delays around New Years. When I try the speaker tomorrow hopefully I get some beeps and I can report back some more useful information. So there may be a delay once the work week fires up until Wednesday. Appreciate all the help so far.

watson wrote on 2023-12-29, 22:20:

In my opinion, at least some of these mysterious P3B-F deaths (and I've read about quite a few at this point) can be attributed to the idiotic VIO overvoltage.
I wonder what genius decided that it's a good idea to overvolt the chipset and RAM by 0.2 V without even having an option to set it to the stock 3.3 V. Great "engineering".

Its not idiotic, thats what was needed for stable 133MHz factory overclock.
Asus really struggled with their initial jumperless bios implementations. P3B-f, A7V, A7V133 all loved to play dead.
I would start by trying slowest possible configuration - 66mhz fsb.

Where did you get the motherboard ? Did you ever see it boot proper...ever ?
raz_pl , good thought ! I keep a old P2-266 cpu just to test slot 1 boards that won't boot on what should be a supported cpu 😀

Horun wrote on 2023-12-30, 02:22:

Where did you get the motherboard ? Did you ever see it boot proper...ever ?
raz_pl , good thought ! I keep a old P2-266 cpu just to test slot 1 boards that won't boot on what should be a supported cpu 😀

I guess it's a good question but I'm not sure why I have to say it. As is the case with most of these finds by now we're not exactly picking these up at the store or from our local tech geek with a running example. Where I live I'd be lucky to even find someone that even knows what a motherboard is let alone an old one like this.

edit: The important point is if you know if that board recently worked OK that you know of, if not just say so.
Have you checked the cpu VRM output voltages ?

Horun wrote on 2023-12-30, 03:28:

edit: The important point is if you know if that board recently worked OK that you know of, if not just say so.
Have you checked the cpu VRM output voltages ?

SHE LIVES! I think the old Katmai CPU was the culprit. I put in the 733 Coppermine today with some fresh PC133 and it booted up!