my ancient p2b board -wondering why it's semi-dead

[Guest]

Just in case anyone can diagnose a P-2b flaw on the fly from a
description, I'm interested in knowing if this board is genuinely
post-mortem.

It's my original P2b which I bought new 4-5 years ago. Rev 1.02. I
made the mistake of lending this computer to an acquaintance to
practise his skills on about 2 years ago, (it ws by then my second
computer) and one fine day after i had it back, (with win98se OS) it
froze on boot-up at the desktop. Couldn't reboot it at all. Did a
reinstall over it which constantly (about 10 tries at this) would
hang frozen at 13 minutes left when it was examining the mobo
hardware itself, I forget the exact terminology of the space...

Put it on the shelf for a couple of years and then a few months ago,
for kicks more than anything, I took it down and tried to install
winxp with it , which surprisingly loaded. But all was not well as it
does not reboot;, it wouldn't reboot even during the install phases
when it is supposed to, it freezes at the screen that says windows is
closing, and I have to manually reboot It will not shut down properly
either. I have to press the shut off button on the tower because it
freezes at the shut off screen. Kind of like the p2b-F flaw, except
this is probably a congenital hardware flaw-condition due to the fact
that it won't reboot from inside windows either.

Funny that it could be a decent server board in the sense that it'll
probably run 24/7 just so's you didn't need to reboot it. A funny
defect. Not worth selling, i keep it around for cannibalization of
parts should the need occur.

So I was wondering if this was a symptom of something obvious to
someone with knowledge of these boards and if there might exist a
cheap solution, given that these board are fairly cheap to acquire
nowadays

the end and thanks for listening,
eric

 

[Homer]

First did you reinstall windows 98 over a previous install or did you format
the drive and install windows. If you reinstall windows over a non working
version most of the time it will not work. You have to start with a clean
drive. As to the problem with xp not shutting off the computer that is an
easy fix. Go into the control panel, power options, select APM tab and tick
the box enable advance power management and the system will power off.

Good luck

Homer

 

[Paul]

Just in case anyone can diagnose a P-2b flaw on the fly from a
description, I'm interested in knowing if this board is genuinely
post-mortem.

It's my original P2b which I bought new 4-5 years ago. Rev 1.02. I
made the mistake of lending this computer to an acquaintance to
practise his skills on about 2 years ago, (it ws by then my second
computer) and one fine day after i had it back, (with win98se OS) it
froze on boot-up at the desktop. Couldn't reboot it at all. Did a
reinstall over it which constantly (about 10 tries at this) would
hang frozen at 13 minutes left when it was examining the mobo
hardware itself, I forget the exact terminology of the space...

Put it on the shelf for a couple of years and then a few months ago,
for kicks more than anything, I took it down and tried to install
winxp with it , which surprisingly loaded. But all was not well as it
does not reboot;, it wouldn't reboot even during the install phases
when it is supposed to, it freezes at the screen that says windows is
closing, and I have to manually reboot It will not shut down properly
either. I have to press the shut off button on the tower because it
freezes at the shut off screen. Kind of like the p2b-F flaw, except
this is probably a congenital hardware flaw-condition due to the fact
that it won't reboot from inside windows either.

Funny that it could be a decent server board in the sense that it'll
probably run 24/7 just so's you didn't need to reboot it. A funny
defect. Not worth selling, i keep it around for cannibalization of
parts should the need occur.

So I was wondering if this was a symptom of something obvious to
someone with knowledge of these boards and if there might exist a
cheap solution, given that these board are fairly cheap to acquire
nowadays

the end and thanks for listening,
eric

No idea what the symptoms mean - just for kicks, reflash the BIOS
to the latest, using a DOS floppy and the flash utility for the board.
Archive the current BIOS onto the floppy, then flash with a newer
BIOS. If the flash fails, revert to the old image immediately.
As boards age, there is a small chance that the flash chip can
get "bit rot".

Next step would be memtest86 testing.

Has the disk been surface scanned recently ?

I'd treat the thing like it was a new board, and run through the
usual routine.

HTH,
Paul

 

[m.marien]

Just in case anyone can diagnose a P-2b flaw on the fly from a
description, I'm interested in knowing if this board is genuinely
post-mortem.

It's my original P2b which I bought new 4-5 years ago. Rev 1.02. I
made the mistake of lending this computer to an acquaintance to
practise his skills on about 2 years ago, (it ws by then my second
computer) and one fine day after i had it back, (with win98se OS) it
froze on boot-up at the desktop. Couldn't reboot it at all. Did a
reinstall over it which constantly (about 10 tries at this) would
hang frozen at 13 minutes left when it was examining the mobo
hardware itself, I forget the exact terminology of the space...

Put it on the shelf for a couple of years and then a few months ago,
for kicks more than anything, I took it down and tried to install
winxp with it , which surprisingly loaded. But all was not well as it
does not reboot;, it wouldn't reboot even during the install phases
when it is supposed to, it freezes at the screen that says windows is
closing, and I have to manually reboot It will not shut down properly
either. I have to press the shut off button on the tower because it
freezes at the shut off screen. Kind of like the p2b-F flaw, except
this is probably a congenital hardware flaw-condition due to the fact
that it won't reboot from inside windows either.

Funny that it could be a decent server board in the sense that it'll
probably run 24/7 just so's you didn't need to reboot it. A funny
defect. Not worth selling, i keep it around for cannibalization of
parts should the need occur.

So I was wondering if this was a symptom of something obvious to
someone with knowledge of these boards and if there might exist a
cheap solution, given that these board are fairly cheap to acquire
nowadays

the end and thanks for listening,
eric

Try clearing the CMOS memory with the jumper. I've fixed a few boards that
way.

 

[Ronald Cole]

No idea what the symptoms mean - just for kicks, reflash the BIOS
to the latest, using a DOS floppy and the flash utility for the board.
Archive the current BIOS onto the floppy, then flash with a newer
BIOS. If the flash fails, revert to the old image immediately.
As boards age, there is a small chance that the flash chip can
get "bit rot".

Yes, what he says. I recently went through a P2B-DS not detecting the
on-board SCSI and, finally, a reflash of the BIOS cured all that ailed.

 

[Guest]

Hard drive reformatted over and over... to fat32

 

[Guest]

On Thu, 25 Mar 2004 12:28:14 -0500, (e-mail address removed) (Paul) wrote:

Reflashed BIOS back to 1012 from 1014.003

surface scanned Hard drive. perfect.

swapped memory several times.

treated it like a new board from scratch. hangs at 13 minutes before
end in win98 instal when it is "setting up hardware and plug and play
devices".

mouse arrow can be moved, but the magnifying glass in the little
monitor has stopped making circular movements and the install more or
less stops there.

eric

 

[Guest]

Try clearing the CMOS memory with the jumper. I've fixed a few boards that
way.

Done that. Still the same hang at 13 minutes setting up hardware and
plug and play devices. Running with just a video card floppy and HD.
The mobo is definitely screwed, but I knew that. Was hoping to hear
some interesting suggestions of what the problem was.

eric

 

[Roger Hamlett]

Done that. Still the same hang at 13 minutes setting up hardware and
plug and play devices. Running with just a video card floppy and HD.
The mobo is definitely screwed, but I knew that. Was hoping to hear
some interesting suggestions of what the problem was.

What have you got on the IDE connectors?.
There was a problem some time ago, with the P2B, and (I think), a particular
BIOS version, that it would hang during IDE detection in the OS, with some
combinations of devices on the IDE connectors.

Best Wishes

 

[Guest]

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 14:16:51 +0100, "Roger Hamlett" <

hey roger,

This is something that happened a couple of years ago one bright
morning on boot-up when the desktop just froze. Mouse moved but had no
effct on anything. At the time I reformatted and re-installed to no
avail.

The mobo has been on the shelf since then. Every now and then I take
it down and try different configs to breath life into it. Or use the
bios chip to hot flash some other board.

But alas, I think it has a genuine hardware defect with no solution in
sight

eric

 

[Guest]

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 14:16:51 +0100, "Roger Hamlett"


Another funny thing is that I was able to install win95 on the board.
Must be something to do with lack of hardware checking during the
install process. Left a lot of yellow question marks in device driver,
but this may have been due to lack of chipset recognition.

eric

 

[Roger Hamlett]

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 14:16:51 +0100, "Roger Hamlett" <

hey roger,

This is something that happened a couple of years ago one bright
morning on boot-up when the desktop just froze. Mouse moved but had no
effct on anything. At the time I reformatted and re-installed to no
avail.

The mobo has been on the shelf since then. Every now and then I take
it down and try different configs to breath life into it. Or use the
bios chip to hot flash some other board.

But alas, I think it has a genuine hardware defect with no solution in
sight

eric

The obvious solution, it just to use an IDE card, instead of the motherboard
port(s). It sounds as though you have a problem when the IDE controller
switches to using DMA, rather than PIO.

Best Wishes

 

[Guest]

The obvious solution, it just to use an IDE card, instead of the motherboard
port(s). It sounds as though you have a problem when the IDE controller
switches to using DMA, rather than PIO.

I'm on it right now...


eric

 

[Guest]

The obvious solution, it just to use an IDE card, instead of the motherboard
port(s). It sounds as though you have a problem when the IDE controller
switches to using DMA, rather than PIO.

Used a sigg controller card for the hard drive. If I plugged in the
cd-rom as well to the controller card, then win98 bootdisk can't find
the hd. So I put the cd-rom on IDE1.

Anyway the long and the short of it is that the same thing happened on
the win98 install. A freeze at 14 minutes before time while setting up
hardware and plug and play devices.

thanks,. eric .

 

[Ronald Cole]

Done that. Still the same hang at 13 minutes setting up hardware and
plug and play devices. Running with just a video card floppy and HD.
The mobo is definitely screwed, but I knew that. Was hoping to hear
some interesting suggestions of what the problem was.

Just for the heck of it, try reflashing the BIOS. I had what I swore
were hardware problems with detecting my onboard SCSI controller and
tore my hair out for weeks until I reflashed my BIOS as a last resort
and everything cleared right up! Perhaps the P2B series got a flaky
batch of EEPROMs.

 

[Roger Hamlett]

Used a sigg controller card for the hard drive. If I plugged in the
cd-rom as well to the controller card, then win98 bootdisk can't find
the hd. So I put the cd-rom on IDE1.

Anyway the long and the short of it is that the same thing happened on
the win98 install. A freeze at 14 minutes before time while setting up
hardware and plug and play devices.

thanks,. eric .

If there is a DMA problem with the IDE controller, you are going to still
have the problem if you attach anything to the motherboard IDE ports. You
need a controller that has a BIOS, and set the CMOS up, so that the IDE
ports are disabled, and the system is set to boot from 'SCSI' (which will
force it to use the BIOS on the IDE card). You also need to ensure you have
the drivers for the IDE card, on a floppy disk before starting.

Best Wishes

 

[dave AKA vwdoc1]

Not sure if this was mentioned but........
Did you try different memory, using just one at a time?

 

[Guest]

If there is a DMA problem with the IDE controller, you are going to still
have the problem if you attach anything to the motherboard IDE ports. You
need a controller that has a BIOS, and set the CMOS up, so that the IDE
ports are disabled, and the system is set to boot from 'SCSI' (which will
force it to use the BIOS on the IDE card). You also need to ensure you have
the drivers for the IDE card, on a floppy disk before starting.

Best Wishes

Ok, I made a mistake in the other post, I meant to say that with the
cd-rom connected to the controller card, the win98 boot disk (nor the
Ultimate BootDisk program) could not find a cd-rom device, but I'll
just copy the cd to the hard drive before installing,

I had made those settings in the bios you described.

I'll try that some time today, thanks, eric

 

[Guest]

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 13:22:47 -0700, Ronald Cole

I did re-flash the bios, Ronald, several times.

 

[Guest]

Not sure if this was mentioned but........
Did you try different memory, using just one at a time?

swapped out memory several times, yes.