M726MRT MOBO'S--DOA????

[Peter M]

Quit the shouting, and then check the following:

"CMOS clear" jumper set to Normal?

CPU inserted correctly? Using a supported CPU?

"CPU position" jumper set correctly?

DIMM(s) inserted all the way down? (This requires pushing REALLY hard!)

Regards, Peter

[Bovon]

Man!! I can't think of a thing to try that you havent. I believe this board is an AT board?...if so, you didn't by chance plug the power supply into the mobo socket backwards did you?..silly question I know, but it has happened.

[Bovon]

Peter, you obviously have good eyes. I used to 'shout' myself by using all caps, because my eyes are so bad, that even with glasses at times, I can hardly make out letters...even when they are all caps. and not at all, when types are in lower case.

Be kind, and consider the rest of the world may not be quite as blessed as you are

[DASHARKMAN]

I HAVE 2-M726 MOBOS & NO MATTER WHAT I TRY(DIFFERENT PS'S--RAM-CPU'S VID CARDS)--I CANNOT GET THEM TO BOOT. HDD SPINS BUT, NO BEEPS, LITES OR ANYTHING. CAN NEVER GET THRU TO SUPPORT. DOES ANYONE KNOW IF THERE IS A SECRET TO FIRE THESE BOARDS UP??? I HAVE TRIED ALL ALL JUMPER SETTINGS XCPT 1 THAT ISN'T MARKED. USED A CELRN266 & PII-300 CPU--PC66 & PC100 RAM--AT & ATX PS'S-ISA/PCI & AGP VID CARDS W/NO RESULTS.
ANY MORE IDEAS OUT THERE????TNX

[This message has been edited by DASHARKMAN (edited 03-13-2001).]

[Peter M]

Bovon,

I don't have good eyes - besides, an all-caps text is a lot harder to read for almost anyone than properly written stuff - especially in sans-serif fonts.

Anyone who has trouble reading text should choose a larger font or a lower screen resolution, shouldn't they? There even are "magnifying glass" helpers that zoom the area under the mouse cursor in fish-eye style to help reading the fine print. I do have a few friends that are vision impaired down to almost blind, and even they manage with these measures.

Regards, Peter

[nine2nite]

DASHARKMAN,
How did your M726MRT DOA turn out? Purchased the same bundled with a Intel/266 CPU. On boot got no video, but three beeps indicating memory problem. Tried different memory out of working PC. Still same problem. Ctrl/Alt/Del reboots computer but shuts monitor off. Sent board back to distributor who tested and said the board was defective. Distributor replace board. Now same problem(s) with second board.

[westr]

Hi...try putting one stick of RAM in
the second DIMM slot or if your RAM was
already in the second slot try snapping
it in the first or third slot(if you have
a third slot on that board)...with the
object being to boot with one stick
(preferrably 64mb) in any slot but the
one you are using now.

[gfunkmartin]

I had the same problem with this motherboard. IMO, these are just not worth the trouble, and I ended up showing it to its new home - a dumpster. I bought a motherboard from a more reputable manufacturer, and urge you to do the same

[Peter M]

First thing to do with mainboards that have both BAT and ATX power supply connectors is reset the CMOS memory - if it's been on an ATX power supply before, it'll possibly not power up on a BAT supply right after.

Temporarily connecting your Reset button to the Power Button connector and then pressing it might also bring it on.

Regards, Peter

[spots]

I've purchased three m726mrt's only because I can use an old junker AT style computer case to make a really cheap computer. All of them have the same problem in that the bios does not always fire up when the power is applied. They usually take off with three or less hard resets. It has one ISA slot so I can use an old throw away network adapter or video card. The c-media sound driver on the cd makes the sound work. I am still trying to figure out which modem driver to use. Documentation and support are pretty poor. If you have only one stick of memory put in the slot closest to the cpu sockets.

[nine2nite]

westr, gfunkmartin, Peter, spots,
Thanks for your input to my problem. The memory that I'm trying is 64mb but also have tried a stick of 128mb. Board has 3 slots, have tried each at least once. Have clear cmos with jumper several times. As for as the dumpster, I had already considered, since I had received two MBs with exactly the same problem from the same distributor, PC Chips may have had this batch already tag for the dumpster when they got sold to the distributor at a cut rate. For what it's worth, I think I interpreted the 3 beeps wrong since there was a destinctive delay between the second and third beep. I think I'm getting 2 beeps (parity error) then 1 beep (no refresh). Still indicating memory problem of course.

[Peter M]

Oh no, two beeps then one with an AMI-BIOS means that you have a CMOS checksum error (unsurprisingly after clearing CMOS) and then are at a prompt that allows you to enter Setup by pressing F1 or continue with default settings by pressing F2.

Meaning that the board is alive, and you have a display problem rather than a RAM problem. It wouldn't get to that point without working RAM.

Try pressing F1, then F10, Enter blindly at that point, and see if things improve. If they don't, check your graphics card installation, and maybe try another card.

Regards, Peter

[nine2nite]

Peter, I guess I was counting on getting a 8 beep code if I had a video problem and I didn't know about the 2 and 1 beeps being a checksum problem. The only checksum error AMI mention in their list was 9 beeps for Rom checksum error. The distributor from where I purchased the board (TigerDirect) is now telling me they think I have a video compatibility problem after my telling them of about seven different video boards I had tried, some being ISA. They warned me to stay away from Diamond Stealth, ISA(s) and any board that had a SIS chip set. That should 'bout get them all huh? No but really you would think if a manufacturer was going to market a MB that would only work with a couple of video cards, they would tell you up front. That would be much more simple than attempting to determine what video card out of hundreds that would work. Thanks for you input. I will try to find a video card that doesn't meet the no-no criteria.

regards,

[nine2nite]

Peter, I guess I was counting on getting a 8 beep code if I had a video problem and I didn't know about the 2 and 1 beeps being a checksum problem. The only checksum error AMI mention in their list was 9 beeps for Rom checksum error. The distributor from where I purchased the board (TigerDirect) is now telling me they think I have a video compatibility problem after my telling them of about seven different video boards I had tried, some being ISA. They warned me to stay away from Diamond Stealth, ISA(s) and any board that had a SIS chip set. That should 'bout get them all huh? No but really you would think if a manufacturer was going to market a MB that would only work with a couple of video cards, they would tell you up front. That would be much more simple than attempting to determine what video card out of hundreds that would work. Thanks for you input. I will try to find a video card that doesn't meet the no-no criteria.

regards,

[Peter M]

Oh, the board model is fine in that regard.

As for the no-no VGA cards. Some models of the Diamond Stealth series have a really screwed VGA BIOS that tries to do things that work on very few platforms. There also still are some SiS 6326 based VGA cards floating around that come from mainboard/card bundles where the mainboard brought the VGA BIOS - those cards don't even have a VGA BIOS chip on and work only on the mainboards they were originally bundled with.

So, in general, the M726 boards should succeed in showing a picture on the monitor with any kind of VGA card. Tried my advice yet?

Regards, Peter

[nine2nite]

Peter, Sorry I haven't updated you on my accomplishments. The one thing I had not tried was an AGP V-card. I pull one from my G-way P2 and plug it into the AGP slot. Almost as soon as I powered on, I had video but like you said showing a BIOS Checksum error which obviously clear itself on next boot. I then shutdown and re-inserted the Stealth PCI V-card and pwr on with video again. After installing Win 98, windows said that I had an unknown problem with the Stealth board. Tell ME! Anyway I am in the process of purchasing a AGP Video card and I think that will solve everything.

Regards,
James

[spots]

I'm still using my two M726MRT's and I consistently see a reliable boot up if I do not turn on the monitors until after the computers boot up. If I turn on the monitors before I power on the computer, sometimes the computer does not boot up. I have gotten used to turning on the monitor after I hear the disk drive activity.

[eagle1]

I have one of these boards with a Celeron 300a overclocked to 450mhz and it has run quite well since the first time I bought it.!I really like this board.. I think it's one of the "good" boards from PCChips.!!

[steph0574]

Hi,

I got one of these boards on ebay from "package2you".

I can't get no beep at startup.

I tried 2 different ram module both tested ok in another system.

I am using a PII 350 Mhz and an ATI Mach 64 PCI vga.

I verified each jumper about 2000 times. I get no video neither.

Please help!
Stéphane Brault

[spots]

You are having exactly the same symptoms I had when I bought my first one of these motherboards. I gave up and sent it back for repair. The technician could find nothing wrong with it and I wasted about 20 bucks on shipping. Keep pushing the reset button. Wait ten seconds or so between resets. It should finally fire up and give you a bios sign on screen.

[jphelps]

I admire your willingness to help those in distress. I have read most all of your comments re: the M726MRT mobo. I have just put together a PC with everything new except the hard drives, floppy, and the CD ROM. I get 1 long beep followed by 8 short beeps, a pause of about 5 seconds followed by 2 short beeps, a 1 second pause followed by 1 short beep. The mobo is a Amptron with AMI Bios. I am using a PPGA, Socket 370, 500mhz Celeron CPU. I have tried all of your suggestions and others such as moving a PC-100 128mb single SDRAM DIMM from DIMM 1 to DIMM 3, then to DIMM 2 slots and still don't get any sign of life out of my monitor. I've got a brand new ATI Pro Series 32mb AGP V-Card that I'm using and have taken in and out several times. Pressing any of the F keys on my keyboard gets no response. If there wasn't a flash of the lights on the keyboard as soon as I power up, I would think the keyboard wasn't plugged in. Can you think of any other strategy?:confused:

[Peter M]

You got a display RAM error, a CMOS checksum error and a Press F1 to enter Setup prompt there.

You did move the CMOS Clear jumper to Normal, didn't you?

regards, Peter

[buddhahaha]

You know,
I never got the onboard modem to work either. And the only sound I could get to work was the one on the board. If I added a soundcard, even with the onboard sound turned off in bios and with the jumper, I got no video. I don't know if that helps. Otherwise it's been a great board.

[jphelps]

I suppose I am confused about the term Display RAM. I was using a brand new ATI Pro Xpert AGP Card with 32mb RAM onboard. Does this mean the entire AGP card is bad? I substituted a Diamond Viper 330 AGP card out of one of my other working computers and the only difference I heard was the beeps were slower to start from the time I turned the power on, maybe 10 seconds more delay. Nevertheless, I got the same beep pattern. One long beep followed by eight short beeps. About 10 seconds after that I got two short beeps, a one second pause then one short beep.

Repeating my previous message, the F1 or the F10 keys did nothing no matter when they were pressed. I made about 15 cold boot attempts and pressed these keys at various times before, during and after the beeps. Remember I never got as much as a flashing dash on my monitor screen. It also seemed that my keyboard was dead as no NUMLOCK light would come on after the initial Power On.

During unplugging the power cord at least 15 times, I moved the CMOS jumper to the CLEAR MEMORY position about four times and after waiting about 30 seconds, I moved the jumper back to the NORMAL position (shorting pins 2 & 3 on JP4).

Could the mobo be d.o.a.? Thanks for your reply.

Originally posted by Peter Missel

You got a display RAM error, a CMOS checksum error and a Press F1 to enter Setup prompt there.

You did move the CMOS Clear jumper to Normal, didn't you?

regards, Peter