On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 11:19:30 -0700, Robert Heiling
<robheil@comcast.net> wrote:


>The mb with CPU & memory were installed and then the AGP video. Floppy
>and CD-ROM drives connected.
>Booting shows (abbreviated):
>Award Modular Bios v6.00PG 06/21/2002
>Main Processor: AMD Athlon 1333MHz (s/b 1000Mhz)
>Memory Testing: 524288K (no problems)
>
>Floppy Disks(s) Fail (40) (note: connections all ok)

Does this mean floppies weren't working?
Hold off on troubleshooting this though, because of the
overclocked-CPU potential I'll comment on below.


>
>Press F1 to continue, DEL to enter Setup
>06/21/2002-8363-686-IA6LMC5CC-00
><pause> F1 <cr>
>Verifying DMI Pool Data
>
>Then it boots into my Knoppix v3.4 CD and shows the splash screen.
>Attempted continuation fails in the Linux loading process (blanked
>screen and no CD activity), but Memtest on that same CD gives:
>Memtest-86 v3.0
>AMD Athlon 1335MHz
>L1 cache 128K 8193MB/s
>L2 cache 256K 2510MB/s
>Memory 512M 324 MB/s
>Chipset vt8363
>etc

It's a 1GHz CPU, yes?
I'm surprised that it even POSTs at 1.3GHz, at stock
voltage.

You are certain the 100MHz FSB jumper is set to 100MHz?
If so, try clearing CMOS. If it still appears to be at
1.3GHz, check the bios menus for a 2nd FSB setting in
addition to the jumper. Chaintech should NOT have allowed
that board to ever default to 133FSB no matter what CPU was
installed, since it uses KT133 instead of KT133A. What
"probably" happened is that they reused same bios for their
next-gen (or later revision of same board) that DID have a
KT133A chipset and so did support 133FSB CPUs.


>
>> If necessary (and possible) adjust bios settings or onboard
>> jumpers to accomodate your CPU- keeping in mind that KT133
>> (non-"A") does not support 133FSB (I dont recall the
>> particularly of your system at this time and I'd deleted the
>> original post).
>
>Not sure what to do there. What was kept from the old system was Athlon
>1GHz CPU and 512MB PC-133 memory and ATI-Radeon AGP card + case & power
>supply from the old PC Chips M805LR mATX system.

Making sure the FSB is correct is a manditory first step.
Myriad other false-errors may be reported while the CPU is
so overclocked (at stock voltage, though maybe either way).



>
>> Install floppy drive and run memtest86 to confirm memory
>> stability. Memtest86 will display the CPU frequency too
>> even if the BIOS POST screen misidentifies the CPU. Trust
>> memtest86's report over the BIOS report, BUT also you can
>> later run a windows CPU ID tool to confirm operational
>> frequency. For example, "WCPUID" would tell you, as would
>> "CPU-Z", http://www.cpuid.org/download/cpu-z-129.zip
>
>It's all quite flaky. Instead of going into Memtest it sometimes gives
>"unexpected interrupt - halting". In one case, Memtest was going well
>and then started to fail. In most every other case. it has been failing
>on every memory address. I'm holding off on trying another 128MB stick,
>which is probably good, at the moment as the fault may not be with
>memory
>itself?

Ignore memory errors for the time being and only use memtest
to check CPU speed, till it reports that at correct 100FSB.
Look around for jumpers for memory too, perhaps one for
memory at 100MHz or at 133MHz- and set it to 100MHz for the
time being, perhaps permanently. Again there may be a bios
(menued) setting for this even with a jumper.