Struggling with an old Athlon XP 1800+ Build \ VOGONS

Struggling with an old Athlon XP 1800+ Build

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First post, by tomosap

Posted on 2021-02-17, 13:48

tomosap Offline

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Hi everyone,

Firstly, the specs...

AMD AX1800DMT3C ATHLON XP 1800+
Cooler Master 460W Desktop PSU ATX Power Supply Unit RS-460-PCAP-J3
Gigabyte GA-7VKML AMD Socket 462
SpecTek 256MB PC2100 266MHz DDR RAM PI32M648HHC

Tried piecing these bits together the other day, and whilst the machine powers on, there is no sign of POST, no beeps, no ram light on the motherboard, nada - tried taking the memory out of the slot and switching on to see if it beeps to say ram is missing, and same thing.

I'm aware that Athl0n XP chips are hungry power-wise, is it a simple case that the PSU I've got isn't adequate? Specs are:

+3.3V - 20A; +5V - 20A; +12V - 18A

I've ordered some more RAM, a different motherboard (ASUS A7V333), new PSU with MUCH higher current ratings on the lower voltages, but wondered if it was something more simple than that.

Thanks for your help.

Tom

Reply 1 of 8, by PD2JK

Posted on 2021-02-17, 14:27

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How is the core/die looking? Thunderbirds and Palominos are tend to crumble earlier than tbreds/bartons in my experience.
Capacitors looking good? Not bulging?
The CMOS/BIOS chip doesn't look socketed, so reprogramming seems out of the question unfortunately. Unless you have some soldering skills.

i386 16 ⇒ i486 DX4 100 ⇒ Pentium MMX 200 ⇒ Athlon Orion 700 | TB 1000 ⇒ AthlonXP 1700+ ⇒ Opteron 165 ⇒ Dual Opteron 856

Reply 2 of 8, by Joseph_Joestar

Posted on 2021-02-17, 14:31

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You might need a better PSU.

Check this video by Phil for more details.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 3 of 8, by SPBHM

Posted on 2021-02-17, 14:55

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it's likely the motherboard having issues or the ram being bad, you kind of need more ram sticks with old motherboards for testing alone.

that PSU looks fine in terms of specs for running as far as I can see.

Reply 4 of 8, by Namrok

Posted on 2021-02-17, 15:45

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SPBHM wrote on 2021-02-17, 14:55:

it's likely the motherboard having issues or the ram being bad, you kind of need more ram sticks with old motherboards for testing alone.

that PSU looks fine in terms of specs for running as far as I can see.

I'll second the RAM. It's relatively low hanging fruit you can experiment with. Often extremely cheap. You are basically paying for shipping and storage. Not long ago I built an Athlon 64 system that had all manner of bizarre, seemingly random and unrelated issues from an inability to POST to the AGP slot not working. Turned out it was the RAM.

Win95/DOS 7.1 - P233 MMX (@2.5 x 100 FSB), Diamond Viper V330 AGP, SB16 CT2800
Win98 - K6-2+ 500, GF2 MX, SB AWE 64 CT4500, SBLive CT4780
Win98 - Pentium III 1000, GF2 GTS, SBLive CT4760
WinXP - Athlon 64 3200+, GF 7800 GS, Audigy 2 ZS

Reply 5 of 8, by Hatta

Posted on 2021-02-17, 16:43

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I have run an Athlon XP 2600+ with a video card that takes molex power on a PSU that supplies 20A on +5V. You should definitely be seeing some signs of life. I doubt it's the PSU.

Reply 6 of 8, by tomosap

Posted on 2021-02-17, 17:06

tomosap Offline

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Thanks everyone, appreciate the responses - I only paid £1.59 (~$2) for the stick of memory and though it was described as working, I know it's always risky.

To that end, I've ordered 3 different sticks of similar capacity memory from 3 different brands in the hope that one will work (or I get a massive boost in performance 🤣)

If anyone else has any insight, with the same equipment, please feel free to share - it may help someone else who's looking at a similar issue 😀

Reply 7 of 8, by Hoping

Posted on 2021-02-17, 17:35

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Check the caps of the board, the cpu, and the psu, with the cpu only the board should beep, no ram. Anybody with some experience will tell you about the caps.

Reply 8 of 8, by tomosap

Posted on 2021-02-17, 17:39

tomosap Offline

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Joined: 2021-02-17, 13:42

Thanks Hoping,

The board has good looking caps and was sold as tested/working, so it would be going straight back if I'd noticed bulging caps. I have a replacement board on the way so that should eliminate that factor as well as more RAM

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