First post, by mothergoose729
I have a DFI P5BV3+ board, VIA MVP3 chipset, with a AMD K6 III+ at 66fsb and 2.0v. running at 366mhz. I have 128mb of PC100 SDRAM (single sided), a Voodoo 3 3500 AGP, a couple of ISA sound cards, and at the moment no floppy or IDE devices. I am powering it with an SFX 300 watt power supply, with a maximum 5v output of 22A.
I am waiting on a CMOS battery to come in, so the bios resets at every boot.
When I power on the computer I sometimes get through the whole POST and IDE check fine. It prompts me to enter F1 to continue or DEL to enter bios, and if I plug in a PS/2 keyboard using an AT-PS/2 adapter, I can navigate the bios without issues.
At least half the time, it will get to the memory check, print OK, and then the cursor will blink and it will never check my IDE devices. If I try entering the bios on the keyboard nothing happens. Occasionally, nothing will come on to the screen at all. On rare occasions it will freeze on one IDE device.
The weird thing is I can sometimes reset the computer multiple times in a row and it will POST fine. Sometimes I swear I have to unplug the power supply all together and plug it in to get it POST successfully again.
I thought at first it was the memory, so I plugged in my second stick of PC100 128mb and it would work and not work in roughly the same way. In fact, it doesn't seem to matter if I have one or both sticks installed.
The board will emit one of two error codes via the PC speaker, but all I got is either a successful POST beep (even if it hangs later) or occasionally no beep at all.
I am waiting on some IDE cables in the mail so I can try and run a MEMTEST to see if I can learn more, but right now I am confused and concerned. Is this behavior normal for the hardware of the period? Any tips for trouble shooting?