Re: P4C800 Deluxe Woes

Bill Schmidt wrote:
Thanks again for the info. You're either up early or late. In my case
it's early, since I'm in Philly.

I've been playing with the system, but still can't seem to get it
fully operational. Sometimes it will give me the following messages:

CMOS settings wrong!
CMOS Date.Time Not Set!
Overclocking Failed!
No Hard Drive Detected!

However, when I restart it, it will scan my IDE drives and identify
the mirror as FUNCTIONAL. It will then start to boot into XP, but will
hang at some point in the process.

I tried resetting the clock in the BIOS, but the settings won't hold.
I also noticed a high pictched squeal coming from what appears to be
the power supply, though my booting problem existed long before the
squeal started. So, could it be a PS problem after all?


One of our computers here at work had a similar problem where it could take over a half hour to finally boot after being turned off. It worked fine once it booted but it was a real nuisance after a power failure. I finally replaced the power supply with a high end one and have not had a problem with that computer in over 5 years.


I looked on EBAY, and found that new P4P800-E Deluxe's are going for a
little less than the P4C's, but used one's can be had for under 100.
Howver, considering that I've owned a number of problem-free boards
from Abit, ECS, and Gigbyte in my life, it's kiind of hard to justify
buying another ASUS, especially given the USB problems you mentioned.
(In fact, I can't understand how ASUS can even stay in business after
putting out so many problematic boards.)

Bill

BTW, since you said "our boards," I have to assume that you work for
ASUS?


On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 03:43:01 -0500, Paul <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Bill Schmidt wrote:
Pau,
l
How about the P4P800E- Deluxe?

If you aren't attempting a huge overclock, that would be
a good substitute.

Some 865PE boards get AGP (video) artifacts, if you raise
the FSB high enough. Having a high FSB capability via my
P4C800-E didn't make any difference in my case, because
my CPU wouldn't let me overclock much at all :-(

So sure, if they aren't charging an arm and leg for it,
that might make a good substitute.

Remember that all of our boards, have the issue with
"ICH5/ICH5R latchup". Some Southbridge chips have been
destroyed by what I suspect is ESD. It is always a
nagging concern for these motherboards, and one of the
reasons I don't (regularly) use the USB ports on my
motherboard. To protect the ICH5, if I wanted to do a
lot of USB work, I'd probably go for a separate USB2
PCI card. That is the best protection I know of,
against "latchup" failure.

Latchup failure manifests two ways. In a "minor" failure,
the USB ports lose power at the PHY level. Device Manager
still shows all the normal entries, but you can no longer
detect any USB devices when plugged into motherboard
USB ports.

In a major failure, the Southbridge gets so hot, there is
a burn mark in the center of the chip. The motherboard
will no longer POST after that. (In the "minor" failure
case, you can still use the motherboard, sans USB ports.)
It is unclear to me, whether Asus would consider warranty
repair after the normal 3 year warranty, for what is
obviously a design defect. (Lots of other Southbridges
don't blow up when you use the USB ports...)

With regard to the CMOS, the inability to remember
settings, isn't going to make startup easy for the
board. Have you ever tried clearing the CMOS, while
the computer was still plugged in ? On some motherboards,
there is an ORing diode, that joins the CMOS battery
source with a +5VSB based source. If you clear CMOS
while +5VSB is still running, the little dual diode
can get damaged. That is one reason why Asus boards
have the green LED - if the LED is lit, you should
not use the clear CMOS jumper. I'm not aware of
any other good mechanisms for the CMOS RAM to fail.
The ORing diode is the best one for that.

If you go to page 18 here, you can see the diode scheme
in the lower left corner. Now, some Asus boards, use
a three pin (looks like a transistor) dual-diode device.
D2 and D3 would be in the same tiny black three pinner,
and the CMOS jumper isn't wired the same way as shown
in the schematic either. What typically would fail, is
D2 would get burned. Since D3 is sitting right next to
it, sometimes it gets ruined too, and then there is no
source of power for the CMOS. I've helped at least one
poster here, to repair one of those - he soldered two
single diodes in place of the burned three pinner. This
is one of the reasons, that every time someone wants
to know how to clear CMOS, I tell them to unplug :-)
No matter how the circuit actually works on their
board... Safety first.

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/designex/BXDPDG10.PDF

Paul

.

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