Any ideas? New Athlon XP System Woes (1 Viewer)

[Gordon Moore]

Thanks to all who replied but as I mentioned downwards in the post, my errors have been fixed. It was mostly a incorrect BIOS setting issue. It's a mean green fighting machine now!
Thanks

 

[Bob Hill]

I think I can help you with one concern, the floppy drive. You probably have its cable hooked up backwards. I, for some stupid reason, always manage to get those damn things flipped every time I put together a new box and they do exactly what you are describing when hooked up backwards. As to the rest I would be willing to bet it is a bios issue. Hope this helps a little bit.

 

[Gordon Moore]

Thanks Bob, I thought about that (cable upside down) but the motherboard supplies a cable and it has notches on it to ensure you do it the right way. The floppy has notches on the interface too. (Though maybe I need to find a cable that doesn't have nothces and play with the hookup..ie. twisting the cable) Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Glenise]

Work your way backwards.

Remove any extra expansion cards except the video card.

If you have more then one memory chip installed, use only one.

Make sure you have your speaker plugged in to see what kind of beeps you get.

Got to Abit's website and see if there is an updated bios for this board.

Of course this won't do you any good if you can't boot the pc.

Just curious, are you able to boot to cd rom?

Also, when you go to Abit's website, if they do have an updated bios, maybe your problem is a bug and has been fixed in a recent bios.

 

[Hugh M]

check Paul's faq at www.viahardware.com as well.
and stay current at the Abit forums at www.amdmb.com . those are both good resources.
until the last month the best DDR ram (Crucial) was also very cheap. but its still a good value now, and you should encourage him to go with the best.. www.crucial.com
sounds to me too, that the floppy would be upside down, but if the cable has notches maybe not? strange.
good luck.

 

[Gordon Moore]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Well, I took another crack at it and it turned out to be the bios. I set it for the fail-safe defaults...saved it and then restarted. Went back into BIOS and went to the SoftMenu III option to set the CPU speed and lo and behold it was finally recognizing the chip. I can't explain it but it was finally working. Nirvana!

I'm still leary of the memory. I told my friend that if the computer gets flaky to definately swap out the memory. As for the floppy, On the motherboard there is only one notch so you can't f&%^ it up. However on the FDD itself, it's notched top and bottom of the interface. I didn't notice that before. I flipped the cable around and of course it worked. Thanks guys. He's using it to do video and audio editing and damn it's fast. I'm jealous to say the least.

 

[Chris]

Actually, the floppy drive should support the cable in either way with notches on both the top and the bottom. If you have two floppy drives (god, it's been a long time since I've been there, but still have a 5.25" drive hanging around at work for emergencies) then in a A: B: configuration, the center plug of the cable would be inverted.

The floppy drive itself should accept the cable in either position anticipating that it can be A: or B:.

 

[Quinn Granfor]

I'd say you have the cpu bus speed set at 100 instead of 133? This is a jumper setting on most socket A boards.

 

[Hugh M]

Hi Chris,

I'm a little confused. If I put the floppy cable on my drive the wrong way it doesn't work, and the light stays on all the time. Is this different than what you are saying/?