Soltek sl-75DRV2 Networking problems.

[gonzo0815]

Hi,

i am getting a System with a Soltek sl-75DRV2 oem(this is meaning less capacitors than on the retail board) Board for repair. The problem is, that the Nework don`t work . I replaced the network card, but this don`t helped that mutch.
There are already 2 nics in the system, one 3 com and one realteck. I put in an intel nic in and pulled the defektive netgear and the probalby defektive 3com.

Now the network is working sometimes, sometimes not.
If the power is switched on, the trafic led is getting blinnking continously on the D-link wlan router(may be this is crapy too). I inspected the board and the psu for leaking caps.
The psu seams to be fine, the board is equiped with GSC crap.
But only the smal 1000uf 6.3v caps are bulged or leaked, the vrm caps are all good and there is nor v core fluktuation.
The system is stable during operation. No memtest error.
The bulged caps are around the memory vrm unit, near the AGP slot and close tho the ATX conector.

At the moment i am not shure, if the bad caps are the cause of that networking problems. As far as i thought, the PCI bus operates at 5v, so there should be not that mutch impact to it. The PCI ISDN card works without an issue.

The main problem is, that the os is an very bad win98 instalation, wich makes it dificult to nail it down to a hardware or sw problem.
I can`t do a fresh installation, due to several speciall sw systems, which will be very complicated and time consuming to install. Thus this would be very expensive.....
The owner isN´t knowing anything about his software, his business relaying one
So i have to figure it out how to obtain in install the sw, wich i can`t do on a smal budget basis.

IMHO the cleanest and long lasting solution should be a new Board or replaced caps, a new psu and a fresh instalaltion of at least windows 2000 in my opinion.
But i am not shure if that is on the budget.... but i will suggest that in any case.
For now i will try an other PSu and may be the newest BIOS update, but i don?t think that this will solve that problem. I will try a test wit a windowsxp PE cd, so if it will work fine under that os, i wont`t change anything on the HW, if the owner won`t want that for future reliability.

[willawake]

Re: Soltek sl-75DRV2 Networking problems.

when you see bulged caps, stop troubleshooting, recap the board and then start troubleshooting again. you could spend hours to try to find the source of errors when it may only be just the badcaps.

I can`t do a fresh installation, due to several speciall sw systems, which will be very complicated and time consuming to install. Thus this would be very expensive.....

you could use a linux live cd or just swap in a spare hard disk and make a test installation of 98 or xp on that.

if the system is still unstable after the recapping then you would need to quote for os reinstall.

some cards can be more tolerant of bad power from AGP or PCI

[gonzo0815]

Re: Soltek sl-75DRV2 Networking problems.

I have tested the system with a Bart`s Windows PE disk, and network will do without (ok, i haven´t mesured the bandwith) issue.
I changed the PSu teswise with an Amacrox Frei Erde 500w unit, an the vcore becomes very very unstable (but the system is stable). The 5v decreased to 4.75v. I compared the combined power of both psu´s, and the 550w has only 152w on 5v&3.3v, the old has 200w. So i think, that all caps on that board a bad, only the suprisingly good old PSU is keeping it from showing bad caps symptoms.
I will suggest to replace the board, recaping won`t be cost efficient, even as the desing is not that bad. The other thing is, that i have only some 1500uf and 2200uf MCZ caps laying around, neither the 8mm 1000uf nor the 10mm 3300uf ones for vrm unit.
As there are only 4 input caps and 3 o/p caps i am not sure if it is safe to replace those 3300uf with 2200uf ones.

[Tom41]

Re: Soltek sl-75DRV2 Networking problems.

The problem you are getting sounds more like a software configuration or hardware incompatibility issue, rather than a cap problem. I had a net card once that would seem to work properly at power-on - the LEDs were flashing - then as Windows started up the card would suddenly shut down and all LEDs would go out! Windows then claimed that the network cable was unplugged, but said the device was working properly. I swapped it out with a different net card, and that worked perfectly.

If the board is packed with GSC caps though, it would probably be best to recap it straight away, regardless of whether they've already bulged or not. GSC are one of the worst makes, and their caps have been known to explode under test conditions!

[Spacedye69]

Re: Soltek sl-75DRV2 Networking problems.

I had hardware problems with bad 1000uf around memory and agp/pci slots. I would agree that some cards can handle dirty power better than others. Windows would run fine until either heavy graphics or heavy downloads. Recap.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Soltek sl-75DRV2 Networking problems.

Some cards run fine because they have their own capacitors so it does not matter so much that they are getting unfiltered current...

But many NIC's for example does not have any capacitors at all...

[gonzo0815]

Re: Soltek sl-75DRV2 Networking problems.

Thx for help, at the moment it sems to be both, a bad D-link 7xx wlan DSL router, a very ugly windows 98 os (was infeckted with some worms, removed them but......) and probably bad caps on the motherboard.

I suggested to replace the pc, the os and the router for a long lasting trouble free operation.
If i get the hand on that soltek board, may be i recap it for fun (and the probably not that bad board desing), but in any way, for an kt266 board this isn´t worth the effort.

The d-link router has an MC34063A SMP build in, the torroid core is running very hot. The cheapo caps aren`t bulged or something, but in any way it could be the root cause of the problem. They are glued to the pcb, wich sinks the heat from de inductor and the mosfets too... may be i chek this, if i get my hand on that unit.
The router is runing fine on wlan, but on the build in switch there is no way to get a 100mb connection, either with an other switch nor an other nic.