Compaq hard drive down for the count

[370forlife]

I believe the hard drive went bad in this computer. A compaq presairo sr1703WM, the hard drive is a seagate 7200.7 80gig.

When it tries to boot, it goes "click click click clickkkkkkkkkkkkk click click click clickkkkkkkkkkk...."

Eventually tells me that it has a invalid boot.ini, then tries to boot from C:\windows, but then crashes and restarts.

The motherboard is a Asus A8AE-LE, ATI radeon xpress 200 chipset with a sempron 3200+ socket 939, and a measly 256MB of hynix ddr-400.
Going to suggest a new hard drive, and also to replace the bestec in this machine.

What do you think of this power supply? The customer wants it to be cheap, but not 'cheap'.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817171028

It OEM's to AcBel, so its not entirely cheap, and I figure for $35, its gotta be at least a decent 300W actually in there.

Or should I just got with something like a 300w FSP, which are about $30?

[370forlife]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count

BTW, the caps are all UCC KZG's and Rubycons.

[370forlife]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count

Strange, I whipped out the DMM to check the voltages on the psu, especially the 5vsb.

When I read it, it was not shorted and running, I put the leads to the 5vsb and the negative next to it, and it read 4.11V. Thats not right, I checked the other rails, and they read 12.28 and 5.12 with just a hard drive attached. In spec, so why is the 5vsb so low, and yet the computer still starts? Or is my DMM probably wanky? Its a Equus innova 3320.

[ratdude747]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count

your hard drive has a head crash. I personally like seagate, so this is disturbing

a 300 watt should be okay as long as they dont use a REALLY fast gpu or do a lot of optical burning.

beware- cooler master power supplies have lousy caps, or so i have heard.

try geeks.com - they sometimes have good brands (stay away from the a-power, but to say that is preaching to the choir, i know)

hope all works out

[370forlife]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count

I'm thinking about just getting a delta off ebay for cheap, usually pick them up for about $10 for a good 300W w/ sata connectors, which is good because the replacement HD is a sata hard drive.

[ratdude747]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count

yup, deltas are good

[momaka]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count

Well the hard drive is most likely broken (probably a head crash). Still, have you tried hooking it up to a good PSU? I doubt this will do anything, but maybe there's a slight chance the Bestec is being screwy.
As for PSUs, you can find quite a few good ones on newegg for $35. Going from memory, there's a 400w HiPro with free shipping for that price, a few 300-350w FPSs, and a 300w Seasonic with APFC for a few $ more. Of course, the Cooler Master is probably ok too.

[ratdude747]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count

cooler master= bad caps

look at the picture of the cables. the sata wire look a bit thin

the text bleow the chart on the label says "the +3.3v & +5v & +12v1 & +12v2 COMBINE shall not exceed 401.5 watts"

first, 401.5<460 - bad info

second, notice that i bolded COMBINE, not "combined". looks like engrish to me

go with the delta. full of nippon chemicons, rubycons, and/or nichicons. just bought a 350watt one at my local computer shop today. much better quality

[Wizard]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count

early in the socket 7 days when K6 got hot as well as athlon cpus, I had diffcult time finding good heatsinks (back then, Intel's retail CPUs was a fortune to buy. Coolermaster was only choice that had enough fins surface area and good delta fans (if you look where to look for, hard to mistake a delta fan for what it is!). But rest of coolermaster heatsinks/fan combo are grabage.

And still is. Once I had choice of good heatsinks like Alpha PAL series other than coolermasters and other heatsinks with copper base, went I go! No more coolermaster at all. Intel retail heatsinks for C2D are decent enough for normal use now.

Cheers, Wizard

[370forlife]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count

Delta usually uses Ltec and capxon in their lower end psu's, but they have very good protection circuitry, so if one goes screwy, it can't really cause any major damage.

I just bought a delta 300w off ebay, it is a higher end 300w of theirs, has huge heatsinks, a little pcb just for the input filter and rectifier, the main caps are two nichicons and the secondaries are all Ltec except for one rubycon.

Thinking I may buy the other one from the seller for the compaq, but the replacement HD is sata, and this psu dosen't have sata.

[stevo1210]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count

beware- cooler master power supplies have lousy caps, or so i have heard.

I second that statement. Some low end Cooler master PSUs use crappy caps and are kinda flimsily built. Um. Deltas are good though, some Deltas have UCC, whereas others have Ltec and Capxon.... I use these and I haven't seen a failure ever.

[ratdude747]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count

agree

[everell]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count

I put the leads to the 5vsb and the negative next to it, and it read 4.11V. Thats not right, I checked the other rails, and they read 12.28 and 5.12 with just a hard drive attached. In spec, so why is the 5vsb so low, and yet the computer still starts? [/QUOTE]

What model Bestec?

[370forlife]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count

its a 250-12Z

[everell]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count

[QUOTE]I put the leads to the 5vsb and the negative next to it, and it read 4.11V.

I didn't quite understand "the negative next to it". Are you measuring on the power supply pc board, the atx connector that plugs into the mobo, or somewhere else? For the negative side, I usually use an unused power connector, one that can plug into hard drive or CDROM, just plug the meter probe into one of the center black wires. That is the ground for 5vsb. Then can pick up 5vsb measurement off the violet wire on the ATX connector plugged into the mobo. Try measuring it that way and see if it makes any difference.

[370forlife]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count

I put the leads to the 5vsb and the negative next to it, and it read 4.11V.

I didn't quite understand "the negative next to it". Are you measuring on the power supply pc board, the atx connector that plugs into the mobo, or somewhere else? For the negative side, I usually use an unused power connector, one that can plug into hard drive or CDROM, just plug the meter probe into one of the center black wires. That is the ground for 5vsb. Then can pick up 5vsb measurement off the violet wire on the ATX connector plugged into the mobo. Try measuring it that way and see if it makes any difference.

The attached picture shows the two pins I was using to measure. As you can see there is a ground right next to it, that's what I meant by the negative next to it.

[Wizard]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count

Power_on is shorted to ground to turn ATX PSU on.

There is no such as negative ground. All voltage measurements is referenced to the ground. There are two wires that usually have -5V and -12V measured to ground. Your DMM will say - voltage when measuring negative voltage or your probes reversed by mistake while measuring positive voltage.

Standby voltage is what you should also measure against ground. The power_on pin is a signal not a voltage, it has bit of voltage via a pull up resistor to 5V internally in the PSU and mainboard pulls it low near ground via a transistor on the mainboard itself.

Remember, in other non-PC applications there is some PSU designs that has isolated winding that does not have a ground connection and is still a DC due to diode and a capacitor network, usually for audio or other special application where double isolation is needed for extra safety.

Cheers, Wizard

[370forlife]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count



am I retarded or what

Hmmm, this is no good, its reading 5.90V. How did this ati chipset not fry yet? Good thing I got it out of there now.

[Wizard]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count

Good that you got this caught. Go retail Seasonic!

Keep us updated.

Cheers, Wizard

[everell]

Re: Compaq hard drive down for the count

If 5vsb measures 5.90 volts, it is only going to get worse, not better. This sounds more like the Bestec ATX-250 12E rather than the 12Z, unless they are playing games with the labels. Definitely time to change power supply to something like has been recommended.

If you decide to dumpster the Bestec, send it my way for further analysis. I will reimburse you for the shipping expense. This is the first 12Z I have heard having a 5vsb problem - the 12Z model uses a PWM chip for better voltage control.

Tom