First post, by Hi-FiMan
- Rank
- Newbie
I took a chance on this motherboard listed as not working and when I got it I noticed why it was listed as such. There's a smoldering hole in one of the RS.232 drivers... I did NOT power it up in that state and decided to remove it before doing anything else with the board. Once removed, I double checked the board and noticed nothing else wrong so I installed a Pentium MMX 233MHz, went over all the jumpers with the included paper manual, and installed a 128MB dual rank DIMM. Nothing happened upon power on. I plugged in my POST card and all I got was ---- and all the rail LEDs were lit except 3.3v (I guess this board does not provide that to the PCI slots). Also the reset LED was stuck on as well and everything on the board was stone cold including the CPU. So I checked VCC2/3 and here's where I seem to have a problem.
I'm not very familiar with socket 7 but I assume the VRM provides VCC2/3 all the time once the board is powered on. However, I read ~100mv on VCC2 (vcore I think) and 2v on VCC3 (I/O I think) and both of these seem terribly wrong. I installed a single rail Pentium 120MHz to see if anything changed and now VCC2 reads ~1.87v which I assume is coming from the linear regulator that normally runs the I/O rail on dual rail CPUs. I then tried all the jumper combinations for vcore and noticed no change on VCC2. I checked the drain of both MOSFETs on the linear regulator and the buck converter and both read 5v. The schottky diode cathode reads what I see on the VCC2 pins.
I tried replacing the 1000uf 6.3v caps with no change. I also tested several resistors and capacitors around the VRM and socket area and did not find anything wrong. I also checked the MOSFETs and schottky diode and they seem to test fine with no shorts or low resistance between pins. I'm really not sure why the VRM does not want to provide the proper voltage. I was going to try and dump the BIOS and flash something on there but that should not prevent the VRM from working and neither should a faulty super I/O chip. The controller for the buck converter is a Raytheon RC5036M and I'm wondering if that has gone bad somehow. I'm not sure where to begin on testing that controller though.

