Still continuing my major PITA with the FIC 486-PVT..... […]
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Still continuing my major PITA with the FIC 486-PVT.....
Now I'm searching around for more FIC boards to get that 0 Ohm Resistor network part, particularly another 486 PVT if possible so I can have a backup/spare while I fix the other one (put an ad up on Amibay for that).
Tried my staple change last night, and seems I can't get either chip to work, starting to wonder maybe if enabling Cache or fast RAM timing blew something small like RAM or whatever. Removing the video card and the network card is not giving me much....maybe this Resistor network is faulty. It's got me thinking there is something more going on with the board than what I originally thought. I'm just hoping it's not a broken trace somewhere or some other problem related to swapping parts out on it so often - my 128MB of RAM is supposed to come in today and I have a 512MB Cache coming in as well in early March from China. I may try swapping the RAM just in case the old 70ns Fast Page blew under the stresses of the AMD DX4.
I tried pulling everything, RAM, Video Card, it powers on, the keyboard lights flash, just no POST, no beeps (listening via SoundBlaster passthrough as that's all I have), got me wondering what part of the POST before RAM or Video it's getting hung up on. May need to try the oven-reflow trick one day if it keeps going this way.
Testing continuity on the motherboard and the old broken 0 Ohm 8P4R Resistor Network, I am finding the readings to be 100% the same if I use the staples between the contacts exactly as they work inside the resistor (around 0.0003 Ohms if I use the 200 Ohm scale on my Multitester). So I'm starting to think it's not that. Did i also mention the staples are EXACTLY the right size to fit the holes and not short each other. So things should be working. I'm just hoping I did not have a bad DX4-100 CPU, but my DX2-66 won't POST Either.
I found that one of the P8/P9 connectors were hung up on one side when "fully connected" not sure what's going on there....
Oh well, bought one of these this morning to aid in my board level repairs - http://www.ebay.com/itm/380831560767?_trksid= … K%3AMEBIDX%3AIT - maybe if I get good I could start buying up some of those Bulgarian/Hungarian/Turkish/Whatever 486 boards that are going for 30-something bucks as well, I also kind of need this thing for work anyway too, might help to tell the OEM what's actually going WRONG with their stuff rather than "we swapped out a bunch of parts and determined it's this one just because all these other parts removed did not remove/reproduce the symptom". I always loved that I had one of these built into my ABIT AW9D board on my Pentium D machine.
Still I'm a tad ...uhh....aggravated because now the DX2 chip does not boot either using correct jumper settings, and I found out I had been using it on 4 volts instead of 5......odd.
Just hoping I can get this thing finished eventually and working so I can button it up and not bother with it again. I'm starting to miss having a working 486 on my desk and getting getting a bit annoyed with having this thing open in "breadboarding mode" next to me every day to try more insane things in hopes it will eventually POST.