VOGONS


First post, by SilverHawk

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Hey gang,
It has been awhile since I have posted, but I have continued to mess around with some retro gear. Up until now it has been without much issue. I took a chance on a used Asrock 939 Dual-SATA2.

Upon visual inspection, it has a few bulging caps. That said, I decided to see if it would function. It came with a A64 3200+ and stock fan. I threw in a known good stick of PC3200 and a GTX 750ti. I had a new EVGA 450 watt Bronze PSU with a weak 5 volt. Once I hooked up power switch and tried to turn on fans would spin no video. Unfortunately, I do not have a case or speaker handy so no beep codes atm. I then swapped in an AGP GeForce 2mx. With that combo, I was able to get video signal and POST detects CPU and single channel memory. This is as far as I can get. I have used CPU and video cards in other machines, swapped out memory and tried a couple other working power supplies with stronger 5v rails. After clearing CMOS the post process doesn’t even get far enough to report a checksum error. It just freezes displaying CPU and memory.

My question is, does this seem symptomatic of bad caps or is it perhaps a bad bios? The caps need to be replaced regardless, but I do not currently have the tools or skill set to tackle on my own. Trial and error gets expensive and I would appreciate any suggestions on where I should start. Thanks for the long read/ramble.

Reply 2 of 5, by Repo Man11

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When I have a motherboard that has visibly failing capacitors I consider a successful POST to be a good sign, and immediately stop there and put it away until I've replaced the bad capacitors. I'm fairly sure that (way back when) I allowed a motherboard to become irreparably damaged by continuing to use it after realizing that the cause of its flaky behavior was failing capacitors. Whenever you're trouble shooting, you really need to stop and repair any known problems before continuing any further.

"I'd rather be rich than stupid" - Jack Handey

Reply 3 of 5, by SilverHawk

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I agree with you Repo Mann11. I wish I could say this was a successful POST. I cannot get into the BIOS and screen is frozen with no response to keyboard. I fear the damage may already be done. I now need to decide if I invest more time and money. That said, is there anyone in the vogons community that takes on these projects?

Reply 4 of 5, by jakethompson1

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SilverHawk wrote on 2022-06-14, 03:28:

I agree with you Repo Mann11. I wish I could say this was a successful POST. I cannot get into the BIOS and screen is frozen with no response to keyboard. I fear the damage may already be done. I now need to decide if I invest more time and money. That said, is there anyone in the vogons community that takes on these projects?

Maybe you can find a hackerspace near you that could help show you how to desolder the capacitors and install new ones.

Reply 5 of 5, by SilverHawk

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I would love to learn this skill. My eyes are getting older and hands are not quite as steady, but I think I could manage. ATP, I have decided to go the CMOS chip replacement route first. I need a EEPROM programmer for another project anyway, so now seems like a good time. Taking a closer look at the screen I noticed a status code of 6B38 in the lower right hand corner. It seems this error was pretty common with ASROCK boards of this vintage. I did not find a definitive guide, but seems like the best place to start. Now to source a programmer and removal tool.