Emachines T3256

[Mustang]

I just received an Emachines system for repair. Model T3256 with an FIC AU31 mobo. The system has spontanious shutdowns, phantom restarts and looks like graphics corruption as well. There's a real mixed bag of caps on this (pos)pc. Smaller caps are ost 1000uf 6.3, and teapo's 220uf. There's also 2 Sanyo 1000uf 16v, 4 Rubycon ZL 820uf 25v and 8 Nichicon HM 2200uf 6.3. A real mixed bag. All caps visually look fine but considering the problems, I wonder if the HM's are causing the problem.
The PSU is a Bestec 300w (real wimpy unit). Looks like CapXon on primary, secondaries are Jamicon and I think Ost (black with gold stripe can't see it well enough).
Any thoughts?
I'll post pics when I get home.

[dood]

Re: Emachines T3256

Test the memory... chances are that board has onboard video? If it does, bad memory can cause all of what you listed...

[Mustang]

Re: Emachines T3256

Thanks for the tip! I'll test it out. I can understand that could be the problem since the onboard graphics does use system memory.
It's a stick of Samsung 512mb pc3200.

[Rainbow]

Re: Emachines T3256

And also try another PSU.

[kc8adu]

Re: Emachines T3256

those bestec psu's suck.
we see them often with blown caps and complete burnups.often takes the mobo with it.
a celeron 2.6 based one i rebuilt for a neighbor had a 145w in it.i recapped an astec 250 and a msi 478 board to fix it.
even the restore cd's are worthless after a board swap.
these things were steaming piles when new.

[MD Willington]

Re: Emachines T3256

FYI, emachines lookup:

http://parts.emachines.com/emachines/sys_lookup.asp

Thats a XP3200+ based system, the 300W PSU in it probably just passes on the minimum specs for a Socket A AMD system...

I bet if you read the OPN on the processor it will be the 333 version of the 3200+...

ie runs at 14x166MHz...

MD

[Mustang]

Re: Emachines T3256

those bestec psu's suck.
we see them often with blown caps and complete burnups.often takes the mobo with it.
a celeron 2.6 based one i rebuilt for a neighbor had a 145w in it.i recapped an astec 250 and a msi 478 board to fix it.
even the restore cd's are worthless after a board swap.
these things were steaming piles when new.

It looks like it might handle 200w max but definately not a good psu for an Athlon 3200 or any system for that matter.

[Mustang]

Re: Emachines T3256

FYI, emachines lookup:

http://parts.emachines.com/emachines/sys_lookup.asp

Thats a XP3200+ based system, the 300W PSU in it probably just passes on the minimum specs for a Socket A AMD system...

I bet if you read the OPN on the processor it will be the 333 version of the 3200+...

ie runs at 14x166MHz...

MD

Odd thing is the bios shows the cpu running at 200mhz fsb but the ram is only running at 333mhz! The settings are greyed out so w/o hacking a new bios, maybe only way to get it to 200 is via software. There is a jumper on the board for 100mhz 133/166mhz. I'll set it at 100 and see what happens...

[Mustang]

Re: Emachines T3256

OPN is AXDA3200DKV4E XP Barton @ 400. L3 bridges are all closed so a 11x multiplier. Read adding a vid card knocks the ram fsp down to 333 for some reason. Need to fix that issue too.

[Mustang]

Re: Emachines T3256

Swapped out the PSU with my Seasonic 380w, saw the fans twitch when resetting the bios jumper ( a good sign ) then ran memtest for 15 mins. No errors so it looks to be the PSU is the main bugger.

[MD Willington]

Re: Emachines T3256

Nice, usually they throw in those oddball oem 333 bus 3200+'s...

The FIC au31 regular bios will probably work...

MD

[Mustang]

Re: Emachines T3256

The factory bios is "idiot proof" but that didn't deter the quest for a "real" bios . www.emachineupgraders.info has a good "hacked" bios that opens up the normal settings we're used to. PSU was recapped till my coworker has enough cash to buy a new one. Board runs ok but the southbridge and the addon ATI 9600 vid card are running hot.

[Rainbow]

Re: Emachines T3256

nVidia chipsets run very hot

[dood]

Re: Emachines T3256

Glad to hear it's back up and running...

[Chris1992]

Re: Emachines T3256

About the emachines bestec PSU: I recently had the pleasure of opening a bestec 250w in a tualeron 1200 eMachines box. It had JP CE-TUR and Jamicon caps and a Jamicon fan. I'll swap it out to see if that cures the problems.

[MD Willington]

Re: Emachines T3256

Nice link...

[Mustang]

Re: Emachines T3256

Still messing around with this pc. It can't run the memory at 400mhz FSB stable. The pc just freezes. Maybe this is why the factory bios locks it at 400 for the cpu and 333 for ram. I tries loosening the ram timings but still no go. ATM I've gotten it up to 374 fsb w/o a freeze up. Another oddity is the addon vid card (gigabyte 9600 pro) and 3DMark 03 scores. It benchmarks almost identical scores irrespective of FSB settings. Normally the scores go up as the FSB is increased. With this pc, it's a range from 3611 to 3640..a bit higher higher on 1 test..lower on the next etc.. There's a bottleneck in there somewhere I can't pinpoint.
I've tried to change AGP arpeture size and onboard vid size in the bios w/o any luck. Right now this pc would make a great doorstop or an expensive cup holder

[MD Willington]

Re: Emachines T3256

They're not that bad, I'm sure someone would love it for doing school work and surfing the web...

[Mustang]

Re: Emachines T3256

They're not that bad, I'm sure someone would love it for doing school work and surfing the web...

I agree, it's fine for that The kids use it for online gaming as well. I guess they'll just have to put up with being meatshields until they get a better pc hehe.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Emachines T3256

Still messing around with this pc. It can't run the memory at 400mhz FSB stable. The pc just freezes. Maybe this is why the factory bios locks it at 400 for the cpu and 333 for ram. I tries loosening the ram timings but still no go. ATM I've gotten it up to 374 fsb w/o a freeze up. Another oddity is the addon vid card (gigabyte 9600 pro) and 3DMark 03 scores. It benchmarks almost identical scores irrespective of FSB settings. Normally the scores go up as the FSB is increased. With this pc, it's a range from 3611 to 3640..a bit higher higher on 1 test..lower on the next etc.. There's a bottleneck in there somewhere I can't pinpoint.
I've tried to change AGP arpeture size and onboard vid size in the bios w/o any luck. Right now this pc would make a great doorstop or an expensive cup holder

Probably because it only has PC2700 DDR SDRAM. Most PC2700 DDR SDRAM modules probably max out in the 180s.

My 512 MB of Kingston PC2700 DDR SDRAM (with Infineon chips) hasn't been able to do 200 mhz stably either. Memtest86 failed at anything higher than 195 mhz. 10 errors when been running for 1 hour and a half at 200 mhz and at least 1 error when at 196 mhz. That was on an Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe motherboard I had briefly in late 2004.