Re: New M2A-VM HDMI, Can't get it to start



Fred Poe wrote:
I'm starting to lean torwards "there's something wrong with the board"
-- just put in my Ubuntu CD to run a Memtest and that also said there
was an I/O error reading the disk. The drive never gave me any
problems before and I've used that CD to install Ubuntu with no issues
on two other PC's this week.

On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 13:55:21 -0500, Fred Poe <fjp@xxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 13:50:51 -0500, Fred Poe <fjp@xxxxxxx> wrote:


As I had the screen paused to read off the BIOS version, those darn
blue boxes came back on the screen. This definitly looks like it's a
problem with either on board video or BIOS -- it only happens before
or during POST.

Fred


If the onboard video is bad, you may want to try another board.

The underlying cause, could be bad system memory, because a
built-in video is dependent on the system memory for its
storage. Programs like memtest86+ from memtest.org can be used
to do some testing, to see if bad memory, or a too aggressive
memory setting is to blame.

If you can keep the BIOS running long enough, switch the memory
to "Manual" and drop the DDR2 clock setting. See if that offers any
temporary help.

You can also take a look here, for matching symptoms.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx?board_id=1&model=M2A-VM+HDMI&SLanguage=en-us

"Horizontal white lines" - BIOS update helped one person, but
be careful of what flashing tool you use. Again, look in the
forum threads, for any BIOS tools that seem to have bricked
user motherboards.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20070709051846593&board_id=1&model=M2A-VM+HDMI&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

There have been some Nvidia 6100/6150 motherboards, where the
Northbridge video was the source of the problem. I don't know
if ATI chipsets have as many issues with built-in GPU or not.
The main issue I might have with ATI, is the nature of the
BIOS shipped with the board. The BIOS consists of many component
parts, and it is possible that code specific to the chipset,
is written by the chipset maker (ATI). I've never been impressed with
the manual memory options in ATI inspired BIOS (like their idea
of offering customers a "fast" or "slow" CAS setting - it should be
a number, not a fashion statement).

Things I might check out:

1) DDR2 Voltage Control [Auto]. 1.8V is nominal. You can probably
go to 2.0V without a problem. Some memory even states a
recommended or a maximum applied voltage, to give you some
idea as to what to try.

2) Timing Mode [Manual]
Memory Clock Frequency [select the slowest one]

Note that this is useless, unless the user is also offered
control of tCAS, tRCD, tRP and so on. The idea is, you would
want to either drop the frequency, and keep the timing numbers
the same, or keep the same frequency, and increase the timing
numbers by +1 more than normal (slack timing). The fact that
the ATI BIOS only allows setting the frequency, means it will
automatically compute new timing values, and they may be too
aggressive to permit any improvement in operation. This is why
I hate ATI BIOS!

HTH,
Paul
.



Relevant Pages

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