ABit KG7 is the Walking Dead

[bgavin]

This recap was interesting. Everything went smoothly, and it runs Memest86 with no more than the usual errors present in this board.

The interesting thing is, the board is still junk. It was a tough install with XP Pro/SP2, and Quickbooks 2007 was a nightmare. The board is inherently unstable under XP.

I suppose it could be a CPU, but I doubt it. Haven't done the legwork yet... have to pull it back out of the customer machine and swap in another AMD-761 board.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: ABit KG7 is the Walking Dead

Did you clear the CMOS after the caps replacement and re-do all the settings?

[bgavin]

Re: ABit KG7 is the Walking Dead

Ya know... that is a real good idea.

Some years back, I wrote a CMOS wiper that ripples zeros through all NVS ram. I will run that and force a reload just to see what happens.

I'm more concerned that I have a cold flow on one of the new caps.

As of this writing, I'm just testing another KG7 that I did a partial recap on. I did all the 3300 and 1500uF, and the 1000s around the memory and processor. I left the others alone. The board had all Nichicon HM and was acting finicky for the client.

What sucks is, the recap board is far worse for the client than the old board. He is a good friend, but it still sucks. I'll do the CMOS thing first. Thanks for the reminder.

[bgavin]

Re: ABit KG7 is the Walking Dead

A big thanks to PCBonez for reminding this old tech to not forget the basics. I wiped the CMOS with a utility that I wrote to ripple zeros through NVS.

This forced a CMOS checksum error, and I reloaded the optimized defaults. I customize all my BIOS files for my clients, and the KG7 is no exception. The only serious changes I make to KG7 is changing the Slew Rate from Auto to 7 (Fastest). I found this tip for KG7 years ago, and it has never caused me any problems.

I have three recapped KG7 in stock, and they all fail Memtest86+ Test #5 in exactly the same manner. I found a tip somewhere about the later BIOS versions cause this error. The machines perform flawlessly, so this is strictly a diagnostic bug.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: ABit KG7 is the Walking Dead

Congrats!
Your welcome.