Did it just die? *pics*

[pentium]

So it's been nearly two weeks since I have managed to get my K7N2 to POST and I am getting nervous.
I tested with a good PSU, a good cpu, nothing in the way of expansion (not even ram) and my only visual output was the power LED and the speaker.
With the ram pulled I know this board will give off a series of beeps.
Nothing. The PSU comes to life, the fans spin up, the cpu, NS and SB warm up (so they are getting power) but the power led remains off and the system is dead silent.
I don't see what clearing the cmos will do this time. It will just need to be cleared again the next time I have to shut down.
I noticed that the second time I washed the board (assuming that something was still lodged somewhere and the can of air did not get it out) the board worked POST'ed again but the next shutdown returned it to veg mode.

There's the culprit:





^^It's not from badcaps, it looks like glue that didn't come off in the wash.


^^The corner broke off when I did my first wash. It's not affecting the seating of the pins.





^^See the white line third pin up from the pin closest to you? It looks like a crack or a split. It's not having any serious effects on the system (it still works and is stable) but it might answer why I am running at 1.3 ghz and not 2ghz (unless the bios did not adjust itself).

If you need more photos just ask but from what you see what could be the problem?

[gdement]

Re: Did it just die? *pics*

Although the BIOS chip is making contact, the fact that the corner is broken does keep it from being as tight as it normally would be. There's really nothing to create pressure against that last pin. Does it help if you squeeze the socket together while booting?

Trouble with that socket would fit the symptoms of running fine once booted, but having trouble getting it to POST.

[shadow]

Re: Did it just die? *pics*

Very hard to say defiantly. It would be best if you had another known working board to test out some stuff. For example if you had another socket A board, you could test that CPU and see whether it runs at 1.3Ghz on another board. The motherboard problem is a bit puzzling thou. It could be caused by that broken plastic holding in the BIOS. gdement does have apoint in that this may be the cause of the problem. You said that the power LED does not light up but the system seems to be running. ie. fans spinning, getting electricity etc. And the system beeps when there is no RAM. It really seems like the BIOS is 'half' loaded, so to speak. The system knows when there is RAM present but it can not boot. Puzzling is all I can really say at the moment.

Oh maybe the power LED does not light up because you plugged it in upside down. Very common. I do it quite often, as well as the hard drive LED .

[kc8adu]

Re: Did it just die? *pics*

look to the bios socket for your problem.
it may be loose on the board since it saw enough abuse to bust it.
if it were mine i would eliminate it and solder the bios directly to the board.
this may be well beyond your capabilities though.

[pentium]

Re: Did it just die? *pics*

Does it help if you squeeze the socket together while booting?

No.

It would be best if you had another known working board to test out some stuff.

I do have a socket A test board. How else could I have confirmed that my ram, cpu andother hardware bits were not the problem?

Oh maybe the power LED does not light up because you plugged it in upside down.

It's not connected the wrong way.

[pentium]

Re: Did it just die? *pics*

Now that I have a bit more time to sleep I can stop using the quote button.

There might be the slight chance that during the cleaning I might of missed some water and there is tarnishing but I know for certain that the board was dry when I put it back into use (It was hanging in my computer room for two days and it was a warm 30 degrees in there) I'll try to clean the contacts on the bios socket tonight and use a clamp ot two to apply a little more pressure and see what's happening. I just wish I had the d-bracket. It output on the POST and pre-POST startup sequence and will halt when it has a problem.
What the D-bracket tests
I also used that page for troubleshooting.

[pentium]

Re: Did it just die? *pics*

Well I washed it again and this time I used far less in the way of heatsink compound and so far after several shutdown cycles she manages to POST fine.
I guess dielectric grease is slightly conductive and it was causing shorts.
Now to figure out why the CPU is only beig shown as running at 1.23 Ghz and 2 GHZ.

[PedroDaGr8]

Re: Did it just die? *pics*

Aren't Athalon's controlled by jumpers on the chip. Basically they are bridged or they are not controls the multiplier, along with the FSB controls the MHZ going in. See the Things near L1 L3 L5 and so on. THose are the jumpers.

[pentium]

Re: Did it just die? *pics*

Yeah.
Anyways. I just had to boost the frequency from 100mhz to 166mhz and the cpu returned to it's normal 2.2ghz speed.

[kikkoman]

Re: Did it just die? *pics*

My K7N2 (exactly the same model) just died a few days ago.
After it had been running for a few days it just halted.
At first I didn't get it to boot at all and the D-Bracket said it was a memory error.
When I removed 2 of the 3 RAM bars, it eventually POSTed, yet depending on the RAM bank I used.

It didn't boot into Windows, but with some serious underclocking (including a disabled APIC, FSB and RAM@100, previously 200/400) I managed to get into Knoppix which ran stable.

When I set the FSB/RAM clocks to their normal values, the board would
a) do nothing at all, the D-Bracket showing various errors, or
b) boot, but set the clocks to random values and eventually halted.

I didn't believe that 2 of my RAMs (all of them 512MB MDT CL2.5) had given up the ghost since they were pretty new and had never been overclocked, so I had another look at my board.

Upon examination I found this:



The PCB on the board's underside had pretty scorch marks, too, with the top trace torn from the bulging PCB.

I can't really determine that MOSFET's purpose, but from the symptoms I guess it's part of the northbridge's VRM.
The BIOS hardware monitor showed normal voltages for memory, cpu and everything else, but it doesn't monitor the NB voltage.)

The caps seemed to be okay (there are only Rubycons, KZGs and Panasonics), and given the PCB damage, I didn't really have any hope I'd be able to revive that thing, so I just kept it running, and after a few reboots it finally refused to do anything at all, showing the 'chipset ini' error (which usually means DEATH).

Scrapped the board after salvaging a few parts.

Well.....no apparent signs why this happened.
You might check yor FETs' temps....

[Logistics]

Re: Did it just die? *pics*

I thought you were supposed to wash boards BEFORE recapping them.

[willawake]

Re: Did it just die? *pics*

caps are airtight who cares

[Jor3llBR]

Re: Did it just die? *pics*

BIOS socket is likely to be your problem.

A friend of mine with a socket A nF2 board did a small crack (really tiny compared to yours) to the surface of the bios socket and his motherboard was never the same.

He tried everything, glue etc to get it's original grip again but his board still acts strange:

- doesn't boot when he turns the psu off;
- doesn't boot when adding a device to the mobo;
- only boots when it wants actually.

The only way is to get a new socket and solder it as original to the board.

Those 462 with those type of bios are really really sensitive to the bios chip and sockets.

[shadow]

Re: Did it just die? *pics*

Hmm...if that is the case then I would say get a junk board with the same BIOS socket and desolder it and solder it onto this board, then very carefully put in the current BIOS chip inside. Very drastic I must say, however it is better then having a board in a 'veg' state.

[kikkoman]

Re: Did it just die? *pics*

Soldering/desoldering those sockets is a major PITA, and I wouldn't do it if my board was still working.

However, I just noticed that the plastic socket can be separated from the pins with moderate force (avoid scratching the PCB, of course).



I assume any PLCC32 socket will do fine.

[Harvey]

Re: Did it just die? *pics*

If you have connection problems with the BIOS socket, it could of wiped the contents of the BIOS itself - I spent hours once fiddling with a system that wouldn't POST only to discover just that.