Gigabyte GA-6BXD Dual Pentium 3 600 steady long beeps

[ELItheICEman]

As the title says I have a Gigabyte GA-6BXD motherboard with 2 pentium 3 600/512/100/2.05v S1 procs. I recently pulled this board out of the case where it has sat for many many years, but I would like to get it going again . I have already tried resetting cmos as well as changing the battery, tried various combinations of old memory and graphics cards (PCI and AGP) but nothing seems to change. Just a steady stream of long beeps. I am getting a steady 2.10 and 2.07 volts to CPU 1 & 2 respectively, and the memory voltage is about 2.43ish. The only power supply I have to test with is a crappy diablotek PSU, which does have -5 and -12 voltages to the 24pin ATX plug (I don't know if this board requires it but I know some old boards do. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I would love to get this thing going again!

[kc8adu]

Re: Gigabyte GA-6BXD Dual Pentium 3 600 steady long beeps

doesnt sdram run off the +3.3?
check your power supply!
edit toss your power supply!diablotek are garbage.

[ELItheICEman]

Re: Gigabyte GA-6BXD Dual Pentium 3 600 steady long beeps

I'll have to find another power supply to test it with. Not an easy task though, I tossed all my broken PSU's and Mobo's just a few months before I started learning to repair them

[ELItheICEman]

Re: Gigabyte GA-6BXD Dual Pentium 3 600 steady long beeps

Can't find the edit button, if there is one. Should have been 3.43 volts, reading from the caps for the memory. A little closer to spec :p

[momaka]

Re: Gigabyte GA-6BXD Dual Pentium 3 600 steady long beeps

The Diablotek is still garbage. Only good for scrap parts.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Gigabyte GA-6BXD Dual Pentium 3 600 steady long beeps

Long beeps means memory error. Try with only one CPU first. Clean the memory slots as best as you can, those old boards are finicky. Use only one stick of memory and don't put in any video card as of now. Rinse and repeat until you get one long beep and three short beeps - this indicates a video card error, which means the system has gotten past detecting memory. Then plug a GPU in and enjoy.

[luke10050]

Re: Gigabyte GA-6BXD Dual Pentium 3 600 steady long beeps

Long beeps means memory error. Try with only one CPU first. Clean the memory slots as best as you can, those old boards are finicky. Use only one stick of memory and don't put in any video card as of now. Rinse and repeat until you get one long beep and three short beeps - this indicates a video card error, which means the system has gotten past detecting memory. Then plug a GPU in and enjoy.

Try some compressed air in the mem slots or something... happened to a bunch of socket 939 boards i have... they got dust in the ram slots, was from sitting around for 6-12 months.

[ELItheICEman]

Re: Gigabyte GA-6BXD Dual Pentium 3 600 steady long beeps

Ok, so I tried testing with one stick of ram at a time, no video card, and with only one CPU. So far I haven't gotten any different results. I have cleaned the memory slots with a soft brush and then some compressed air, and cleaned the memory and CPU contacts with Deox-IT as well.

As I type this I'm starting to remember something about having to clear the cmos to make any changes to the memory configuration with a really old motherboard, I only cleared it a few times and it has a new battery. Another thing I noticed it has a few scratches on the backside through some of the traces, but it really doesn't look that bad, I even tested continuity on several and they should be good. I wish I still had all those Pentium 2 proc's I threw away years ago

[kc8adu]

Re: Gigabyte GA-6BXD Dual Pentium 3 600 steady long beeps

scratches through traces will cause all kinds of trouble!

[shadow]

Re: Gigabyte GA-6BXD Dual Pentium 3 600 steady long beeps

Yep long beeps indicates some sort of memory issue. Try swapping them around, different brand memory, different slots etc. I would try to get it to work with one memory module before adding more modules. And try a different power supply, I have seen dodgy quality power supply have these kinds of issues. I have also seen some motherboards being picky with particular brand/series of memory.

[luke10050]

Re: Gigabyte GA-6BXD Dual Pentium 3 600 steady long beeps

check the CMOS battery voltage, if its low/nonexistant try a new CMOS battery... some of them refuse to boot without a working battery

Edit: nevermind, new battery. Maybe if you could take a few photos of these scratches?

[gunnish]

Re: Gigabyte GA-6BXD Dual Pentium 3 600 steady long beeps

Some motherboards does not work with only one CPU. Check the manual and see if yours does.