This isn't directly related to the empeg, but there are so many computer engineers people here, someone might have an idea... =)
I recently bought a new computer (well, I bought the bits for a new computer, and built it up using some old bits from my old machine). I got an AMD Athlon 900, ABit KT7-A-Raid motherboard, 256Megs of Crucial branded PC133 CAS2 memory and a 300 Watt AMD approved PSU.
All worked well for 3-4 weeks. Then when I turned the screen on one morning, it wasn't working (I normally leave it running 24/7).
I rebooted, and the bios came up and started booting. Windows then blew up with a windows protection fault. On rebooting, safe mode appeared, so I tried to boot into windows proper, and the protection fault came back.
I tried my Linux partition, and it crashed part way through the boot with a dynamic loader error. Now even windows safe mode isn't booting (more "helpful" windows protection fault errors)
I've removed every expansion card (Except the graphics card, which I replaced briefly with an old PCI orchid card I had kicking around). The drives all work fine in another machine (My inital fear was a HD corruption). All expansion cards work fine in my old machine.
So the situation is that I have a motherboard, CPU, Memory Floppy drive and a graphics card. I can use a bootdisk to get to dos, but after a "dir" on any attached drive the system will hang solid. Booting memtest86 from
http://reality.sgi.com/cbrady_denver/memtest86/ runs for over an hour without errors, so I'm fairly certain the memory is ok. I tried my old PC100 memory in it as well (with the memory clock set to 100) which didn't stop the hanging problem.
I sent the motherboard back, as it was the drive accesses that crashed the machine, and the voltage display doesn't appear correct.
It's apparently checked out fine (Although they keep telling me I should be using PC133 memory, and I keep telling them they sold me the PC133 memory I'm using and could they please give me another reason as to why the system won't work)
My main questions are
- Has anyone seen errors like this?
- Is it normal for the Bios voltage monitor on the KT7-A-Raid to report 1.81 volts when the soft menu is set to the cpu default of 1.75?
- Should an Athlon under load be running at 55 degrees C? (I suspect not, perhaps the board really is providing 1.81 volts)
- What next?
Thanks for any help
Jazz
(List 112, Mk2 12 gig #40. Mk1 4 gig #30. Mk3 1.6 16v)