Replacement Motherboard

[russellw]

It looks very much as if my attempted upgrades today have managed to stuff the motherboard in my main PC given that I cannot get even a POST display although everything seems to be powering up normally.

Given it is now stripped down to mboard, graphics card (and I've tried 3 - 2 AGP and one old PCI) and RAM and still doesn't display a POST screen it's a fair bet it is furgled.

Before I head off to the swap meet tomorrow morning I'm open to suggestions for a replacement. The current board is a Gigabyte K8V Ultra 939 with an AMD 64 3200.

I'm happy to junk both board and CPU but I have some compulsory requirements that have to be met as follows:

4 PCI slots (modem / Creative XFi Elite / Fusion HDTV / Adaptec SCSI) - I could sacrifice the modem and SCSI if the board had either of these built in.
1 AGP 8x
6 USB 2
1 Firewire
Dual LAN (at least one Gigabit)
No on board video (or it should be disabled)
Preferably no on board sound (or disable again)

Cheers
Russ

[charles_wif_xf]

Fukc mate, you would be hard pressed to find a new motherboard with AGP as a video subsystem. Is that a dial up modem or one of those rare PCI ADSL modems?

[jonk]

Take it to a shop that has PCI 'POST' card reader. It's the best way to diagnose what it is. If you mobo was truly stuffed it wouldn't post any way similar like normal, if at all. BTW, there are heaps of AGP mobo's still around for sale and what is it you actually upgraded ? Jumper's on a HDD can cause these sort's of prob's.

[S3SR]

good idea stripping it to just mobo, so you tired ram in different slots?, if its got onboard graphics dont put the VGA card in, tried a reset like take the CMOS battery out leave it out then use the jumper on pin 2-3 instead of 1-2 something like that put battery back in and restart, when you do all these only connect the main HDD (windows) and if you can get into SETUP try loading default settings or even optimal settings try both.....otherwise how old is it you could just send it back for warranty dont no the years on gigbyte

[russellw]

Thanks for the help.

I managed to find a replacement mobo with all the required bits (a Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra 939) and bought a new CPU as well to go with it (3900+).

As it turned out that didn't resolve the problem and even though everything appeared to be powering up I went and bought a replacement Thermaltake PS and the thing then booted fine.

A bit more diagnosis with the multimeter led to the conclusion that the ricer neon fan on the case had shorted out two of the pins on the Molex connector and this had taken out the North bridge power supply which was why everything appeared to be powering up normally (CPU, drives, PCI) but the North bridge wasn't and thus no POST.

The previous board and CPU can go to upgrade one of the other older machines so that's no loss.

Typically the supplied LAN drivers didn't work but a quick trip to their web site solved that problem.

The only thing not working now is the 3rd hard drive (a SATA unit) - every time I enable SATA on the board it hangs on boot up so that's one that still requires some attention. It's only used for storing video anyway so it's not critical and the two IDE drives work fine as do both DVD-RW's.

Cheers
Russ

[charles_wif_xf]

Did you buy that new Russ? If so, where from as I just came into possession of a 3500+ 939 Athlon and have a GeForce 4 video card (AGP) floating around, and wouldn't mind to put that combo to use.

UPDATE: Never mind, my "dealer" has the very same board for $120. Might swing past manyana and pick one up (finances willing of course).

[S3SR]

its probably reading the sata drive as the main (windows) drive might have to check boot settings, also in setup you should be able to enable S.M.A.R.T. or something never used it but it should help..

thats bad news about the north bridge, never knew these new mobos could do that sort of thing unless you had a cheapy PSU....also for future reference always unplug main power cable from back before doing ANYTHING.. just a tip you might already know

anyways good luck with it, and thank god that PC isnt the ff.com.au server hey

[banarcus]

If you were going to junk the CPU, you could've chucked it in my direction!

[S3SR]

Originally Posted by banarcus

If you were going to junk the CPU, you could've chucked it in my direction!

just a heads up if the CPU is at all damaged or faulty it COULD might not damage/destroy your mobo....just a heads up