CPU has changed....BULL!

[jetstar88]

I'm hoping someone can tell me if the 2 or 3 week old Tyan motherboard
I have is a bad unit, or if the BIOS just isn't going to be right for
my purposes. I'll try to keep this short, for your sake and mine.

I'm not a complete newbie to building, but then again...the store did
initial set up of both my Asus board from a couple of years ago, and
the present Tyan (they connected LED's, installed motherboard & chip,
also installed memory, video card, power supply, and floppy). Except
for the led's and motherboard, I have done all of these installations
myself, but since the store did the Initial BIOS setup for me, I am
not familiar with that aspect. I have changed and experimented with
BIOS settings before, but so far am at a loss with this PC as to
whether its an incorrect [for me] setting that is causing trouble, or
its a bad MB. Or a bad MB for me.

After taking delivery of the barebones case, MB, etc., I installed my
hard drives and modem. Here is where I will change to list style, to
keep from being so verbose:

1) Specs....Tyan S5101 MB, Trinity i875P. 512MB Ram, 2.6Ghz Intel P4
Chip, 400W Power Supply. (Running Win98 on this PC, but have XP on my
Asus, and will eventually be purchasing another copy for the TYAN (or
whatever I replace it with!).
2) Error messages and/or weird happenings:
A) "CPU has been changed" warning (infrequent, but after adding or
moving cards in PCI slots such as the modem, I've gotten this one).
B) Both slave Hard Drives (separate IDE Channels), and sometimes
slave on Primary Channel and master on Secondary Channel, undetected
at startup. This is also infrequent and upon reboot, they re-appear.
No error messages or BSOD's. Its just weird that they aren't detected
whenno changes were made to the configuration.
C) Its real fussy about which PCI slot I put the modem in. Only 2
slots (out of total of 6, where I can place the modem. Any other slot,
and I get no response from the Monitor. None.
D) Even after its been working awhile, monitor occasionally does
not respond until PC is turned off and let be for 30 seconds or a
minute at least.
E) Things I have tried already....different modem, video card
exchange with other PC (Asus, socket 478, Intel P4 1.6Ghz chip),
different monitors, different settings in Bios that had no impact.
F) Oddly, the Video Card (Radeon 9200) works flawlessly in my other
PC, and throws a nice picture in the TYAN, but in the TYAN, the screen
flashes when first booting up with the Radeon. Something that does not
happen with different card or same card in other PC.
G) Cannot boot from CDrom. I think I know what I'm doing and I've
already tried Windows Installation CD, as well as moving the CD to
master, and still the PC won't boot from it. It displays the words
"boot from CD:", but does not do so. Pressing keys while that's on the
screen doesn't work either.

I'd like to think there is a setting somewhere in the BIOS that if
changed will make life with the TYAN easier. But if not, then I intend
to attempt an exchnage for an ASUS. I have had zero trouble with it
and it behaves as expected and doesn't fuss over new additions. Its
components play NICE with one another.

If anyone can help shed some light on whether this is a faulty unit of
the board or just not a good match for my needs, or if there is an
easy fix to be made by flipping a switch in the BIOS, please tell me
now....before I return this thing and ask for something different.

Thanks,
Larry

 

[SteveH]

I'm hoping someone can tell me if the 2 or 3 week old Tyan motherboard
I have is a bad unit, or if the BIOS just isn't going to be right for
my purposes. I'll try to keep this short, for your sake and mine.

I'm not a complete newbie to building, but then again...the store did
initial set up of both my Asus board from a couple of years ago, and
the present Tyan (they connected LED's, installed motherboard & chip,
also installed memory, video card, power supply, and floppy). Except
for the led's and motherboard, I have done all of these installations
myself, but since the store did the Initial BIOS setup for me, I am
not familiar with that aspect. I have changed and experimented with
BIOS settings before, but so far am at a loss with this PC as to
whether its an incorrect [for me] setting that is causing trouble, or
its a bad MB. Or a bad MB for me.

After taking delivery of the barebones case, MB, etc., I installed my
hard drives and modem. Here is where I will change to list style, to
keep from being so verbose:

1) Specs....Tyan S5101 MB, Trinity i875P. 512MB Ram, 2.6Ghz Intel P4
Chip, 400W Power Supply. (Running Win98 on this PC, but have XP on my
Asus, and will eventually be purchasing another copy for the TYAN (or
whatever I replace it with!).
2) Error messages and/or weird happenings:
A) "CPU has been changed" warning (infrequent, but after adding or
moving cards in PCI slots such as the modem, I've gotten this one).
B) Both slave Hard Drives (separate IDE Channels), and sometimes
slave on Primary Channel and master on Secondary Channel, undetected
at startup. This is also infrequent and upon reboot, they re-appear.
No error messages or BSOD's. Its just weird that they aren't detected
whenno changes were made to the configuration.
C) Its real fussy about which PCI slot I put the modem in. Only 2
slots (out of total of 6, where I can place the modem. Any other slot,
and I get no response from the Monitor. None.
D) Even after its been working awhile, monitor occasionally does
not respond until PC is turned off and let be for 30 seconds or a
minute at least.
E) Things I have tried already....different modem, video card
exchange with other PC (Asus, socket 478, Intel P4 1.6Ghz chip),
different monitors, different settings in Bios that had no impact.
F) Oddly, the Video Card (Radeon 9200) works flawlessly in my other
PC, and throws a nice picture in the TYAN, but in the TYAN, the screen
flashes when first booting up with the Radeon. Something that does not
happen with different card or same card in other PC.
G) Cannot boot from CDrom. I think I know what I'm doing and I've
already tried Windows Installation CD, as well as moving the CD to
master, and still the PC won't boot from it. It displays the words
"boot from CD:", but does not do so. Pressing keys while that's on the
screen doesn't work either.

I'd like to think there is a setting somewhere in the BIOS that if
changed will make life with the TYAN easier. But if not, then I intend
to attempt an exchnage for an ASUS. I have had zero trouble with it
and it behaves as expected and doesn't fuss over new additions. Its
components play NICE with one another.

If anyone can help shed some light on whether this is a faulty unit of
the board or just not a good match for my needs, or if there is an
easy fix to be made by flipping a switch in the BIOS, please tell me
now....before I return this thing and ask for something different.

Thanks,
Larry

You could try taking it down to a minimum config, just the video card, cpu
memory and one hdd, and see what happens.
This could also be flaky memory or PSU.

Personally, as sthe store originally set it up, I would take it back and let
them fix it.

SteveH

 

[MAKillik]

I am no expert but it sounds like a dead MB

I'm hoping someone can tell me if the 2 or 3 week old Tyan motherboard
I have is a bad unit, or if the BIOS just isn't going to be right for
my purposes. I'll try to keep this short, for your sake and mine.

I'm not a complete newbie to building, but then again...the store did
initial set up of both my Asus board from a couple of years ago, and
the present Tyan (they connected LED's, installed motherboard & chip,
also installed memory, video card, power supply, and floppy). Except
for the led's and motherboard, I have done all of these installations
myself, but since the store did the Initial BIOS setup for me, I am
not familiar with that aspect. I have changed and experimented with
BIOS settings before, but so far am at a loss with this PC as to
whether its an incorrect [for me] setting that is causing trouble, or
its a bad MB. Or a bad MB for me.

After taking delivery of the barebones case, MB, etc., I installed my
hard drives and modem. Here is where I will change to list style, to
keep from being so verbose:

1) Specs....Tyan S5101 MB, Trinity i875P. 512MB Ram, 2.6Ghz Intel P4
Chip, 400W Power Supply. (Running Win98 on this PC, but have XP on my
Asus, and will eventually be purchasing another copy for the TYAN (or
whatever I replace it with!).
2) Error messages and/or weird happenings:
A) "CPU has been changed" warning (infrequent, but after adding or
moving cards in PCI slots such as the modem, I've gotten this one).
B) Both slave Hard Drives (separate IDE Channels), and sometimes
slave on Primary Channel and master on Secondary Channel, undetected
at startup. This is also infrequent and upon reboot, they re-appear.
No error messages or BSOD's. Its just weird that they aren't detected
whenno changes were made to the configuration.
C) Its real fussy about which PCI slot I put the modem in. Only 2
slots (out of total of 6, where I can place the modem. Any other slot,
and I get no response from the Monitor. None.
D) Even after its been working awhile, monitor occasionally does
not respond until PC is turned off and let be for 30 seconds or a
minute at least.
E) Things I have tried already....different modem, video card
exchange with other PC (Asus, socket 478, Intel P4 1.6Ghz chip),
different monitors, different settings in Bios that had no impact.
F) Oddly, the Video Card (Radeon 9200) works flawlessly in my other
PC, and throws a nice picture in the TYAN, but in the TYAN, the screen
flashes when first booting up with the Radeon. Something that does not
happen with different card or same card in other PC.
G) Cannot boot from CDrom. I think I know what I'm doing and I've
already tried Windows Installation CD, as well as moving the CD to
master, and still the PC won't boot from it. It displays the words
"boot from CD:", but does not do so. Pressing keys while that's on the
screen doesn't work either.

I'd like to think there is a setting somewhere in the BIOS that if
changed will make life with the TYAN easier. But if not, then I intend
to attempt an exchnage for an ASUS. I have had zero trouble with it
and it behaves as expected and doesn't fuss over new additions. Its
components play NICE with one another.

If anyone can help shed some light on whether this is a faulty unit of
the board or just not a good match for my needs, or if there is an
easy fix to be made by flipping a switch in the BIOS, please tell me
now....before I return this thing and ask for something different.

Thanks,
Larry

 

[jetstar88]

Well... I brought the PC back to the shop today. It's a small store,
and although I'm still a little worried I'll be stuck with a bad
decision, the techinician listened to me attentively. He didn't render
a diagnosis yet, he did confirm that the board should be more flexible
as to which PCI slot accepts the modem without interfering with video
operation. I emphasized too that the loss of video is occuring even
before Windows is even loaded....lest they try to convince me its a
power mgt setting in Win98 that's entirely to blame.

I left the PC and my list of problems with them, and did not make any
demands. Only suggested that if it's not a problem with this
individual motherboard (i.e. if the BIOS is supposed to be that
finicky), that I'd rather switch to an Asus board.

I'll post back when I have some results....good or bad.

Larry

I am no expert but it sounds like a dead MB

I'm hoping someone can tell me if the 2 or 3 week old Tyan motherboard
I have is a bad unit, or if the BIOS just isn't going to be right for
my purposes. I'll try to keep this short, for your sake and mine.

I'm not a complete newbie to building, but then again...the store did
initial set up of both my Asus board from a couple of years ago, and
the present Tyan (they connected LED's, installed motherboard & chip,
also installed memory, video card, power supply, and floppy). Except
for the led's and motherboard, I have done all of these installations
myself, but since the store did the Initial BIOS setup for me, I am
not familiar with that aspect. I have changed and experimented with
BIOS settings before, but so far am at a loss with this PC as to
whether its an incorrect [for me] setting that is causing trouble, or
its a bad MB. Or a bad MB for me.

After taking delivery of the barebones case, MB, etc., I installed my
hard drives and modem. Here is where I will change to list style, to
keep from being so verbose:

1) Specs....Tyan S5101 MB, Trinity i875P. 512MB Ram, 2.6Ghz Intel P4
Chip, 400W Power Supply. (Running Win98 on this PC, but have XP on my
Asus, and will eventually be purchasing another copy for the TYAN (or
whatever I replace it with!).
2) Error messages and/or weird happenings:
A) "CPU has been changed" warning (infrequent, but after adding or
moving cards in PCI slots such as the modem, I've gotten this one).
B) Both slave Hard Drives (separate IDE Channels), and sometimes
slave on Primary Channel and master on Secondary Channel, undetected
at startup. This is also infrequent and upon reboot, they re-appear.
No error messages or BSOD's. Its just weird that they aren't detected
whenno changes were made to the configuration.
C) Its real fussy about which PCI slot I put the modem in. Only 2
slots (out of total of 6, where I can place the modem. Any other slot,
and I get no response from the Monitor. None.
D) Even after its been working awhile, monitor occasionally does
not respond until PC is turned off and let be for 30 seconds or a
minute at least.
E) Things I have tried already....different modem, video card
exchange with other PC (Asus, socket 478, Intel P4 1.6Ghz chip),
different monitors, different settings in Bios that had no impact.
F) Oddly, the Video Card (Radeon 9200) works flawlessly in my other
PC, and throws a nice picture in the TYAN, but in the TYAN, the screen
flashes when first booting up with the Radeon. Something that does not
happen with different card or same card in other PC.
G) Cannot boot from CDrom. I think I know what I'm doing and I've
already tried Windows Installation CD, as well as moving the CD to
master, and still the PC won't boot from it. It displays the words
"boot from CD:", but does not do so. Pressing keys while that's on the
screen doesn't work either.

I'd like to think there is a setting somewhere in the BIOS that if
changed will make life with the TYAN easier. But if not, then I intend
to attempt an exchnage for an ASUS. I have had zero trouble with it
and it behaves as expected and doesn't fuss over new additions. Its
components play NICE with one another.

If anyone can help shed some light on whether this is a faulty unit of
the board or just not a good match for my needs, or if there is an
easy fix to be made by flipping a switch in the BIOS, please tell me
now....before I return this thing and ask for something different.

Thanks,
Larry

 

[jetstar88]

Motherboard was bad and the store replaced it and transferred
everything to a new unit of the same MB free of charge (SHOULD be
free, considering how new it was...just emphasizing lest anyone be
thinking otherwise). I was hoping I would be able to report back with
something definitive, but results are inconclusive overall so far.

After bringing the PC home and booting to the desktop. I noticed the
right mouse button was not working. Thought that was odd, but was
focused on checking other items so dismissed it at first. The mouse is
an ancient Logitech serial mouse...but I had held off replacing it
with an [already on hand] optical mouse, so as not to change anymore
variables until after existing parts were configured properly.
Eventually, though it gnawed at me and I started re-booting and
re-installing drivers and all sorts of stuff and got really bogged
down in solving the mystery of having lost the ability to right click
on anything. Could not imagine how just the one button could have been
affected, especially when the mouse had not even left the house with
the PC.

Well..... after about 90 minutes of frustration, my daughter happened
to mention to me that she had accidentally spilled Gatorade on her
desk today, but not to worry as only the mouse had gotten splashed.
Only the mouse that I just spent all that time and energy
troubleshooting and was totally stumped about!!!!
Of course....several lectures were administered....one about the
"dangers" of having fluids anywhere near a PC (or in this case, PC
peripherals), and another about how much better it would have been for
family harmony if the Gatorade incident had been brought to my
attention BEFORE my marathon trouble-shooting session!!!! Yes, I'm
laughing now, but it wasn't funny at the time.

Now--- back to the topic--- the new Motherboard. Because of being
sidetracked by the Gatorade/Mouse scandal, I had very little time to
really test the PC otherwise. There were 3 negative items that I
noticed, and only 2 of them really concern me, as the 3rd one is only
a minor inconvenience that I should be able to take care of myself:

1) a) There are still several devices that are shown either as
unknown, or just don't seem to be able to find their drivers on either
the Win98 CD, or the CD with the drivers for the chipset. Despite
having enough knowledge to assemble most of the contents of the PC's
case myself, I'm still very sketchy on what the "PCI Bus" is, and
other similar components, be they physical parts or software funtions.
I do know that it should not be this difficult to have all the
hardware's drivers installed. Unless many of the components are not
useable under Win98, and I need to disable several of them until I add
XP to this PC? I remember having to install a lot of these type items
when I put together my other PC (on an Asus P4t-E), but after the
initial flood of "windows has detected new hardware" things were very
smooth afterward. Not so this time.
b) I'm getting occasional freeze-ups when reaching the desktop (or
even before, like when the login screen appears), but maybe this is
from stuff not being installed all the way (those "unknown" devices)
or from the wrong drivers having been selected.

2) When I re-booted the very first time, I heard what sounded like a
scraping sound. Kind of like a fan's blades striking metal, but could
have been electronic also and just sounded like metal on metal. This
was VERY alarming, but it only happened once and never again despite
at least 10-20 reboots (some cold, most not) after that particular
time. I was going to open the case, but got sucked into investigating
the Mouse caper, so no visuals yet. Any ideas on that one?!?!

3) The 3rd item, is annoying, but is strictly a visual matter and not
affecting the PC's performance. The LED that shows the hard drive's
activity is either connected wrong or not at all. This was the case
with my first homebuilt (or home-assembled, anyway) PC, and using the
manual I was able to fix myself. I'm fairly optimistic I can do the
same on this one, but TYAN's manual is much less helpful than the
ASUS's was, and I'm kind of miffed that I have to do this
again....presuming it is the same problem.

I probably won't have time to work on the PC again till Friday night.
In the meantime, am interested in any feedback or input as to whether
the items I listed spell long-term troubles, or are relatively minor
and more along the lines of getting the bugs worked out.

Thanks,
Larry

Well... I brought the PC back to the shop today. It's a small store,
and although I'm still a little worried I'll be stuck with a bad
decision, the techinician listened to me attentively. He didn't render
a diagnosis yet, he did confirm that the board should be more flexible
as to which PCI slot accepts the modem without interfering with video
operation. I emphasized too that the loss of video is occuring even
before Windows is even loaded....lest they try to convince me its a
power mgt setting in Win98 that's entirely to blame.

I left the PC and my list of problems with them, and did not make any
demands. Only suggested that if it's not a problem with this
individual motherboard (i.e. if the BIOS is supposed to be that
finicky), that I'd rather switch to an Asus board.

I'll post back when I have some results....good or bad.

Larry

I am no expert but it sounds like a dead MB

I'm hoping someone can tell me if the 2 or 3 week old Tyan motherboard
I have is a bad unit, or if the BIOS just isn't going to be right for
my purposes. I'll try to keep this short, for your sake and mine.

I'm not a complete newbie to building, but then again...the store did
initial set up of both my Asus board from a couple of years ago, and
the present Tyan (they connected LED's, installed motherboard & chip,
also installed memory, video card, power supply, and floppy). Except
for the led's and motherboard, I have done all of these installations
myself, but since the store did the Initial BIOS setup for me, I am
not familiar with that aspect. I have changed and experimented with
BIOS settings before, but so far am at a loss with this PC as to
whether its an incorrect [for me] setting that is causing trouble, or
its a bad MB. Or a bad MB for me.

After taking delivery of the barebones case, MB, etc., I installed my
hard drives and modem. Here is where I will change to list style, to
keep from being so verbose:

1) Specs....Tyan S5101 MB, Trinity i875P. 512MB Ram, 2.6Ghz Intel P4
Chip, 400W Power Supply. (Running Win98 on this PC, but have XP on my
Asus, and will eventually be purchasing another copy for the TYAN (or
whatever I replace it with!).
2) Error messages and/or weird happenings:
A) "CPU has been changed" warning (infrequent, but after adding or
moving cards in PCI slots such as the modem, I've gotten this one).
B) Both slave Hard Drives (separate IDE Channels), and sometimes
slave on Primary Channel and master on Secondary Channel, undetected
at startup. This is also infrequent and upon reboot, they re-appear.
No error messages or BSOD's. Its just weird that they aren't detected
whenno changes were made to the configuration.
C) Its real fussy about which PCI slot I put the modem in. Only 2
slots (out of total of 6, where I can place the modem. Any other slot,
and I get no response from the Monitor. None.
D) Even after its been working awhile, monitor occasionally does
not respond until PC is turned off and let be for 30 seconds or a
minute at least.
E) Things I have tried already....different modem, video card
exchange with other PC (Asus, socket 478, Intel P4 1.6Ghz chip),
different monitors, different settings in Bios that had no impact.
F) Oddly, the Video Card (Radeon 9200) works flawlessly in my other
PC, and throws a nice picture in the TYAN, but in the TYAN, the screen
flashes when first booting up with the Radeon. Something that does not
happen with different card or same card in other PC.
G) Cannot boot from CDrom. I think I know what I'm doing and I've
already tried Windows Installation CD, as well as moving the CD to
master, and still the PC won't boot from it. It displays the words
"boot from CD:", but does not do so. Pressing keys while that's on the
screen doesn't work either.

I'd like to think there is a setting somewhere in the BIOS that if
changed will make life with the TYAN easier. But if not, then I intend
to attempt an exchnage for an ASUS. I have had zero trouble with it
and it behaves as expected and doesn't fuss over new additions. Its
components play NICE with one another.

If anyone can help shed some light on whether this is a faulty unit of
the board or just not a good match for my needs, or if there is an
easy fix to be made by flipping a switch in the BIOS, please tell me
now....before I return this thing and ask for something different.

Thanks,
Larry