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PcChips sucks!

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First post, by Pabloz

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i just got a mint condition pcchips.motherboard M919

installed it plus video card and hard drive.
it has 2 slots of edo memory and the rest ofthe slots are smaller memory. pcb version 3.4 i belive

wont even post with both memory sticks
removed the upper stick and it did POsT..but guess what
it always detects any memory as 3megs or so...i throw a 8meg stick and the same detects 3 megs. a 4meg stick detectsnarm

i hate them

Reply 1 of 56, by feipoa

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Did you ensure that the EDO sticks are 5 V and not 3.3 V?
Did you try using FPM sticks? FPM works best in 486 boards.

If I recall correctly, the M919's BIOS has a CMOS tick box option for EDO RAM. Did you set this?

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 2 of 56, by TOBOR

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Pabloz wrote:
i just got a mint condition pcchips.motherboard M919 […]
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i just got a mint condition pcchips.motherboard M919

installed it plus video card and hard drive.
it has 2 slots of edo memory and the rest ofthe slots are smaller memory. pcb version 3.4 i belive

wont even post with both memory sticks
removed the upper stick and it did POsT..but guess what
it always detects any memory as 3megs or so...i throw a 8meg stick and the same detects 3 megs. a 4meg stick detectsnarm

i hate them

Are you using matched pairs of simms?

If the truth hurts, tough shit.

Reply 3 of 56, by amadeus777999

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Peek into the manual - an irregular memory size reported could have to do with a wrong cache setting(even though yoou may have non aka "fake")... at least is was like this on my GA486VS.
I second to try it with FPM which should always work in a 486.

Reply 4 of 56, by Anonymous Coward

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PcChips sucks!

No shit, Sherlock.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 5 of 56, by TOBOR

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Anonymous Coward wrote:

PcChips sucks!

No shit, Sherlock.

Not every motherboard from PcChips is bad. I have quite a few good ones in my collection. Change out the GSC and OST caps and they usually work as intended.

If the truth hurts, tough shit.

Reply 6 of 56, by gdjacobs

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TOBOR wrote:

Not every motherboard from PcChips is bad. I have quite a few good ones in my collection. Change out the GSC and OST caps and they usually work as intended.

Is it thin enough to fold up like the Leafs in the playoffs?

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 7 of 56, by bjwil1991

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I had a PCChips M912 V1.7 Motherboard from 1994 up until 2012, and that sucker worked until its BIOS chip died (Award non-Y2K). I have a PCChips motherboard that's a Socket 754 and it still runs (no bad caps or chips).

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Reply 8 of 56, by TOBOR

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gdjacobs wrote:
TOBOR wrote:

Not every motherboard from PcChips is bad. I have quite a few good ones in my collection. Change out the GSC and OST caps and they usually work as intended.

Is it thin enough to fold up like the Leafs in the playoffs?

Ha Ha Ha, so you think you are funny? Go fuck yourself.

If the truth hurts, tough shit.

Reply 9 of 56, by fitzpatr

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TOBOR wrote:
gdjacobs wrote:
TOBOR wrote:

Not every motherboard from PcChips is bad. I have quite a few good ones in my collection. Change out the GSC and OST caps and they usually work as intended.

Is it thin enough to fold up like the Leafs in the playoffs?

Ha Ha Ha, so you think you are funny? Go fuck yourself.

Wow.
Under no circumstances should that tone be adopted on this site. That was both light-hearted humour, and a correct observation. To react in that way is peculiar. Perhaps the PcChips boards aren't the only things that are thin.

Gdjacobs is quite correct that their boards are incredibly thin to save on the copper layers. I have a socket 423 board on an 840 chipset from them that has turned into an arc. As TOBOR indicated, though, some of their boards are quite capable, fake cache aside.

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Reply 10 of 56, by bjwil1991

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The M912 v1.7 board I had up until a few years ago had real L2 cache on it (my dad installed the L2 cache a long time ago, and I believe it was between 128KB and 256KB). There were some boards that had fake cache chips.

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Reply 11 of 56, by TheMobRules

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fitzpatr wrote:

Wow.
Under no circumstances should that tone be adopted on this site. That was both light-hearted humour, and a correct observation. To react in that way is peculiar. Perhaps the PcChips boards aren't the only things that are thin.

I agree. That reaction was completely uncalled for and disrespectful. Besides, gdjacobs is right, PCChips boards are (in)famous for being paper thin, especially those from the 486 era... my M921 bends like crazy when inserting a card, it's a miracle it hasn't cracked yet.

Reply 12 of 56, by Pabloz

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feipoa wrote:

Did you ensure that the EDO sticks are 5 V and not 3.3 V?
Did you try using FPM sticks? FPM works best in 486 boards.

If I recall correctly, the M919's BIOS has a CMOS tick box option for EDO RAM. Did you set this?

yea changed that setting in bios, and its a no go, only 1 stick of ram works, if i move the same stick to the upper slot it fails to boot.

amadeus777999 wrote:

Peek into the manual - an irregular memory size reported could have to do with a wrong cache setting(even though yoou may have non aka "fake")... at least is was like this on my GA486VS.
I second to try it with FPM which should always work in a 486.

I do

Anonymous Coward wrote:

PcChips sucks!

No shit, Sherlock.

fake cache, no coast module

Anonymous Coward wrote:

PcChips sucks!

No shit, Sherlock.

yes shit watson

TOBOR wrote:
Anonymous Coward wrote:

PcChips sucks!

No shit, Sherlock.

Not every motherboard from PcChips is bad. I have quite a few good ones in my collection. Change out the GSC and OST caps and they usually work as intended.

what are you talking about, this board is full of 22uf small caps everywhere, there is only 1 bigger capacitor near the vesa slots.

how the fuck, if you insert a 8mb memory, a 4mb memory, a 16mb memory, the boot screen says its 3712k ALWAYS
pcchips piece of shit, and when i run doom it says insufficient memory

Reply 13 of 56, by BitWrangler

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I quite like PCChips, I'm at a success rate of about 8 for 9 whereas gigabyte, I'm 0 for 3.

Anyway, could be a number of things... firstly, BIOS doesn't really, really detect RAM, it reads the presence detect bits on the last few pins of the SIMM which are encoded with zero ohm resistors or just solder bridges. The coding for IBM PS/2 SIMMs is different, so an 8MB detects as a 2MB IIRC and other weirdness. So if they've got IBM part numbers on them, you could have PS/2 SIMMs..

Secondly, those presence detect lines could be shorted somewhere else, mashed pins in the socket, debris in socket, solder bridge on PCB and socket pins on the backside of the board mashed together or touching. So check all of those possibilities.

Thirdly, maybe the CMOS RAM has gone bad or got a bit stuck. Not properly clearing CMOS can have some weird effects also, so clear it, restore defaults, retry. You may be able to confirm if a bit is stuck by using one of those generic CMOS utilities that lets you poke bits to it. if it won't change, then yup there's something up with that.

Possibly if none of these reveal the exact problem, or it's a stuck bit, you can still get it to use the installed RAM with a utility that tells DOS to use extra RAM, even if not reported. You can crash the system by telling it to use RAM you haven't got, or that's somehow cut off, a break in an address line for example.

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 14 of 56, by feipoa

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Pabloz wrote:
feipoa wrote:

Did you ensure that the EDO sticks are 5 V and not 3.3 V?
Did you try using FPM sticks? FPM works best in 486 boards.

If I recall correctly, the M919's BIOS has a CMOS tick box option for EDO RAM. Did you set this?

yea changed that setting in bios, and its a no go, only 1 stick of ram works, if i move the same stick to the upper slot it fails to boot.

Did you try using FPM memory?

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 16 of 56, by bjwil1991

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I have a Gigabyte Motherboard (AM3+) that destroyed one of my memory modules (only have 4GB and Windows 10 64-bit doesn't like that at all), and would randomly BSOD on me. My Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus is more reliable than my gaming rig.

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Reply 17 of 56, by Pabloz

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BitWrangler wrote:
I quite like PCChips, I'm at a success rate of about 8 for 9 whereas gigabyte, I'm 0 for 3. […]
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I quite like PCChips, I'm at a success rate of about 8 for 9 whereas gigabyte, I'm 0 for 3.

Anyway, could be a number of things... firstly, BIOS doesn't really, really detect RAM, it reads the presence detect bits on the last few pins of the SIMM which are encoded with zero ohm resistors or just solder bridges. The coding for IBM PS/2 SIMMs is different, so an 8MB detects as a 2MB IIRC and other weirdness. So if they've got IBM part numbers on them, you could have PS/2 SIMMs..

Secondly, those presence detect lines could be shorted somewhere else, mashed pins in the socket, debris in socket, solder bridge on PCB and socket pins on the backside of the board mashed together or touching. So check all of those possibilities.

Thirdly, maybe the CMOS RAM has gone bad or got a bit stuck. Not properly clearing CMOS can have some weird effects also, so clear it, restore defaults, retry. You may be able to confirm if a bit is stuck by using one of those generic CMOS utilities that lets you poke bits to it. if it won't change, then yup there's something up with that.

Possibly if none of these reveal the exact problem, or it's a stuck bit, you can still get it to use the installed RAM with a utility that tells DOS to use extra RAM, even if not reported. You can crash the system by telling it to use RAM you haven't got, or that's somehow cut off, a break in an address line for example.

the ram slots looks fine to me, besides its kind of weird that it always shows on screen 3712k ram.

by cmos ram you mean the bios chip? or has more ram soldered on the board for the bios?
I will check it with another BIOS, i got a friend that has the same board, maybe it has to do someting with the bios chip, i remember yesterday i placed the bios jumpler to clear it and nothing happened on boot gave me no error (strange because when you clear the cmos you always get an error) and showed me the same 3712k ram.

Im starting not to like pcchips at all, too much failure things going on with those boards.
For example an m919 i got. I have to turn it on ....2 or 3 times for it to POST.
Its always the same with different video cards isa and pci, and does the same with different memory, and different power supply
you turn it on, se a light blink on the keyboard...and black screen on the monitor.
Turn it on 2 more times and it boots.

and i can´t belive its the capacitors, there arent much caps on the board, just filled with small caps and 1 or 2 bigger ones.

Reply 18 of 56, by feipoa

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Very few 486 motherboards, including the late PCI ones, work well with EDO RAM. Before expending further discussion on this, you should obtain some conventional FPM memory, preferably 32 MB or less per module. Module pairing is not required. There is no speed benefit from EDO on these motherboards. The few boards which work with EDO RAM require reduced wait states for stability.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 19 of 56, by Frasco

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"Perhaps the PcChips boards aren't the only things that are thin."

It's not about swearing, not about sports, just my Asrock Z77 extreme 4 is an arc.
How could that happen? Sometimes I want to destroy those things, but I can't! Maybe a bad instalation, bad use or brute force from previous owner?
Fact is this Asrock Z77 is rock solid, despite the arc shape.

Having said this - I'm not intending to defend PC Chips - all my PC Chips boards are trouble, except for one 386 board (that's not saying much cause nothing can diminish the reliability of a 386 😘 😊 )...

M919 - If arcing it, booted fine. No arc, no boot.
M810L - Falling off in pieces! And I am crazy enough to lose time trying to save this sad excuse of a board. So pathetic that this isn't worth killing.
M717 - Where your PII becomes a Pentium.
And so on and on.

Seriously, even asians acknowledge that! That's decided, don't discuss with us! (That guy is allowed to talk like Steven Seagal, and so do I).
I can vouch for Abit and Asus endurance.