I swear I'm about ready to pull my hair out. I'm going to keep this short and simple (I think).
Here is the stage that I am down to in troubleshooting.
My motherboard (an Epox 8k7a), is literaly sitting on the floor on top of an anti-static bag. It has a brand new AGOIA stepping XP 1600+ in it, with a coolermaster HHC-001 (solid copper with heat pipes) heat sink on it, and Arctic Silver 3 between them. I have 512mb (2 x 256) of Crucial PC2100 non-parity DDR SDRAM that ought to be good since I thought the memory was the problem and RMAed it so these are brand new sticks. I am currently testing with a variety of video cards, including (in order of power consumption): Matrox Parhelia 512, Hercules Prophet 4500 Kryo II, Matrox G400 SH 32, Matrox G200 8MB SG. I am also testing with three different power supplies: a cheapo 300w L&C that came with a cheapo case that I bought, a 300w AOpen that came with a very not cheapo case that I bought (almost 4 years old now), and a 3 month old 400w Sparkle.
Here's the problem, no matter what video card/psu combination I use, eventually the system (if it can be called that at this point), will shut itself off. Using less system straining video cards (G400/G200) the system will take longer before it shuts off, but it will always do so eventually, usually after no more than 20 minutes. If I use the 300w AOpen PSU it seems to last a little longer as well, but still no more than 30 minutes or so. (btw, to turn on the system I am using a jumper to briefly short the power switch jumpers so there is no possiblity that there is a short in the power switch either). (edit) I forgot to add, ALL of the video cards and PSU's work absolutely flawlessly in my older Athlon 650/512 PC133 Crucial/Epox 7KXA system.
I am at my wits end here, I have completely run out of ideas. Someone please tell me that I am right in my assumption that the mobo is bad (I don't want to have to buy a new one if that isn't the problem).
(oh, one last note, I've managed to get into the bios and load the fail-safe defaults, then disable agp fast-writes and set agp to 1x/2x).
Now I'm going to go eat dinner, have a large rum and coke (heavy on the rum), and then sulk in a corner for a while or something. Grrrrrr......
Thanks
Ian
Here is the stage that I am down to in troubleshooting.
My motherboard (an Epox 8k7a), is literaly sitting on the floor on top of an anti-static bag. It has a brand new AGOIA stepping XP 1600+ in it, with a coolermaster HHC-001 (solid copper with heat pipes) heat sink on it, and Arctic Silver 3 between them. I have 512mb (2 x 256) of Crucial PC2100 non-parity DDR SDRAM that ought to be good since I thought the memory was the problem and RMAed it so these are brand new sticks. I am currently testing with a variety of video cards, including (in order of power consumption): Matrox Parhelia 512, Hercules Prophet 4500 Kryo II, Matrox G400 SH 32, Matrox G200 8MB SG. I am also testing with three different power supplies: a cheapo 300w L&C that came with a cheapo case that I bought, a 300w AOpen that came with a very not cheapo case that I bought (almost 4 years old now), and a 3 month old 400w Sparkle.
Here's the problem, no matter what video card/psu combination I use, eventually the system (if it can be called that at this point), will shut itself off. Using less system straining video cards (G400/G200) the system will take longer before it shuts off, but it will always do so eventually, usually after no more than 20 minutes. If I use the 300w AOpen PSU it seems to last a little longer as well, but still no more than 30 minutes or so. (btw, to turn on the system I am using a jumper to briefly short the power switch jumpers so there is no possiblity that there is a short in the power switch either). (edit) I forgot to add, ALL of the video cards and PSU's work absolutely flawlessly in my older Athlon 650/512 PC133 Crucial/Epox 7KXA system.
I am at my wits end here, I have completely run out of ideas. Someone please tell me that I am right in my assumption that the mobo is bad (I don't want to have to buy a new one if that isn't the problem).
(oh, one last note, I've managed to get into the bios and load the fail-safe defaults, then disable agp fast-writes and set agp to 1x/2x).
Now I'm going to go eat dinner, have a large rum and coke (heavy on the rum), and then sulk in a corner for a while or something. Grrrrrr......
Thanks
Ian
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