Acer/Emachines DA078L Boxer AM2 mGPU 8200 - won't detect SATA drives

[SuperDuty]

Hi,

I've had this board for a while and it served me well in testing countless PCI-E video cards. It's an AM2 based board, with the nVidia mGPU 8200, 2 DDR2 slots, one PCI-E 16x and one PCI-E 1x, two sata connectors, no IDE.




The other day, I wanted to install an OS to benchmark some video cards, but it wouldn't detect any SATA HDD I would plug in, I've tried at least five different known working SATA cables, I've tried with each SATA port. It just won't detect the drives. No problem if I put a SATA HDD in an external case connected to a USB port.
I've attempted a reflow of the chipset (with flux) but it didn't make any difference.

Anyone has experienced this with this type of board or chipset ?

[SuperDuty]

Re: Acer/Emachines DA078L Boxer AM2 mGPU 8200 - won't detect SATA drives

Might be stupid of me, but I've just noticed the ferrite core around the coil near the DDR2 slots is broken in half...it's the one visible between the two large Sanyo capacitors at the back of the motherboard.
Could this be a possible cause of the SATA problem ? It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the SATA ports so I kinda doubt it.

[SuperDuty]

Re: Acer/Emachines DA078L Boxer AM2 mGPU 8200 - won't detect SATA drives

I've flashed the BIOS with the latest version, but it didn't make any difference.

[momaka]

Re: Acer/Emachines DA078L Boxer AM2 mGPU 8200 - won't detect SATA drives

Might be stupid of me, but I've just noticed the ferrite core around the coil near the DDR2 slots is broken in half...it's the one visible between the two large Sanyo capacitors at the back of the motherboard.
Could this be a possible cause of the SATA problem ?

It's possible. That coils is likely for regulating the RAM or chipset voltage, so if it's broken, the buck regulator for the RAM/chipset can be producing all kinds of nasty stuff on the output, yet maybe just not enough to make the motherboard totally crash.
It's vital that you replace it though. Cracked inductors are never a good thing. In some cases, if the inductor was to completely short out (due to overheating due to its current state), you can have as much as 3.3V, 5V, or 12V going to the RAM (depending on what the motherboard uses for the supply).

[amijim]

Re: Acer/Emachines DA078L Boxer AM2 mGPU 8200 - won't detect SATA drives

Hello,
i myself have a DA078L motherboardboard with the same symptoms,not recognising sata hard disks.Did you manage to fix yous or i better buy a pci-e 1 sata raid controller?
thank you .

[amijim]

Re: Acer/Emachines DA078L Boxer AM2 mGPU 8200 - won't detect SATA drives

Eventually I manage to buy a pcie data controller and I am using the board againupgraded tons phenom I quad core .