Dead Motherboard

[kirby747]

I have a motherboard I am trying to identify. It has the built in 3d Rage II chip built on the system. But I am unable to get the board to post. It is and ATX board. If anyone knows of a way that I can reset the bios or even what type of board it is so that I can look up the specs of the card.

[Susan]

Need some kind of numbers off that board, or maybe somewhere there is a sticker.

No beeps when you boot up? Make sure the memory and CPU are into the slots tight.

[kirby747]

Well so far this is what i've been able to find out about the board,

It uses the Intel 430vx Trition III chipset
It has a 3d Rage Pro II Chip onboard
A Vibra 16C chip from Creative Tech.
SMC brand chip from American Megatrends
There is a smaller chip with Intel on it and a stylised FLASH on it
2 168 Pin Memory Sockets
Bus Freq goes from 1.5X up to 3.0x
Clock Freq 50, 60, 66 (so am i to assume this is not a 100 mhz board)
3 PCI Sockets
3 IDE Sockets
There is a yellow barcoded sticker with MM1TJE4 8652

I've looked at a lot of pictures of system boards online and havn't come close to finding anything that matches.

Thanks in advance for your help

[800XL]

Are the jumpers labeled something like "J9C2" or J7J1" instead of the more common "J1" and etc? The description you give sounds very much like an Intel motherboard of some kind. If the jumpers are labeled as I say above, it is some kind of Intel motherboard. I can probably narror it down from there and help you pick out which.

[kirby747]

Yes there is a set of 4 jumpers and they are labled J9C1 and there are for
a. password enable, disable
b. setup enable disable
c. clock freq
d. bus freq

I have a question, if I put power to the board and nothing on there no processor no ram nothing will the bios post?

[800XL]

Ok, that is a board made by Intel. I'll get back to you with whatever I can find out. I suspect it may be a Tiger Eye, but I don't think they came with a RageII chip. I should be able to track you down some diagrams/pictures to compare to though. The CMOS reset jumper should be labeled. Just be careful not to mess with anything labeled RCVR/NORMAL. BIOS recovery mode can do more harm than good if not done intentionally.

The board with do nothing without a processor and RAM. You will not see anything on the screen.

Out of curiosity, what type of CPU are you trying to fire this up with? It is fairly likely that any non-intel (except winchip) CPU will not POST in this Intel board.

[kirby747]

I went to the Intel site and sure enough there was a board that was very close to the board I am using, the board on there sight is a AN430TX. The differences is the placement of the FD controller and there is no J6M1 jumpers on my board. But if my suspcions are correct then the 64 meg 100 memory and the AMD K6II 350 mhz chip wont work, I just hope I havn't damaged either.

[800XL]

If you are trying to run a K6-2 in it, that is the cause of the blank screen you are getting. Intel boards are notorious for not running with AMD or Cyrix CPUs. The board probably only supports as low as 2.8 volts and that K6-2 needs to have 2.2v or perhaps as high as 2.4v to run. I doubt short bursts of 2.8v would kill the chip though. PC-100 dimms should run just fine in it. If you can borrow an Intel CPU somewhere, that will most likely get the motherboard going for you. That AMD CPU is just not going to work without extra parts (voltage adapter) and some kind of bios upgrade.

[NoWhere Man]

If you want to upgrade the board to allow you to run a K6-2 chip, check these guys out:
http://conceptmfg.com
They have upgrades for old motherboards that supported 200Mhz chips

[800XL]

I don't believe the Concept Mfging upgrade comes with any sort of bios upgrade, so that would only cure the the voltage issue, but it is a start.

[InYu]

The intel motherboard does not understand a
AMD CPU. but if you really want to upgrade to amd K-6-3 i suggest you use AP's upgrade http://st13.yahoo.net/a-p/cpuupgrade.html they are much more cost effective. i've just got one and it works great on mine aptiva.i order it for $130 they come with amdk6-2-380 under clock to 366 but all you have to do is switch the jumper and you have a 400, or you can get from powerleap they even have bio support but much more expensive tho. they are at www.powerleap.com to nowhereman have you tried any upgrade kit i just go to ap's grade kit would you recommanded something else?

[800XL]

For an Intel board (or any requiring a BIOS upgrade to work) I would recommend the Evergreen upgrade. It comes with bios upgrades for many many motherboard. Powerleap, Concept Manufacturing, and A&P all come without any bios upgrades. www.evertech.com (http://www.evertech.com) They do not, however, sell the upgrade without a chip.

There are a few Intel motherboards that will run an AMD CPU without a bios upgrade, but they pretty much all require some sort of hardware to overcome the voltage and multiplier limitations.

[kirby747]

Well i went out and purchased an old PII 200 w/ MMX and put this in the system, I was able to get the system to boot, come to find out this is and old motherboard from a gateway machine (uuuuggggghhhhh I work for Dell :-)) So now I just need to go to there website and see what info they have for motherboards on there site Also I was using the 64 meg 100ns memory and its only seeing it as 16 megs. Is there a reason for this? will I have to go to the older 168 pin sdramm?

[MR COMPUTER]

Gateway (Like Dell) has a lot of info posted at their site. I would start with a bios upgrade before buying different memory. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[800XL]

Mr. C is right on the bios upgrade. I've had the same memory problem with a Gateway machine, tho it has been years. The bios upgrade from Gateway might help it see the 64MB dimm as 64 instead of 16, but it might not. At least it is free to try. Take down the bios string shown at bootup (prolly something like 1.00.11.DQ0T or 1.00.07.CY1T, probably one of the two) and go looking on Gateway's site to see if they have anything newer. The board will pretty much NOT run an AMD chip without a bios upgrade from someplace other than Gateway. www.unicore.com (http://www.unicore.com) would do it, or you could get an Evergreen upgrade that will come with the same BIOS upgrade.

I'd just stick with the Intel proc in there, throw in some cheap RAM (32's should work just fine) and play around on it. The Intel 200 is fine for most things unless you plan on gaming with it hardcore. A Voodoo 2 card would make it passable for that even. It would make a great basic Linux machine.