Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 17:39:07 -0500 From: Derek Ragona <derek@computinginnovations.com> To: Garrett Cooper <youshi10@u.washington.edu>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Making a L440GX+ work (was "Trying to revive a server... AIC-7896 freezes pre-POST completion") Message-ID: <6.0.0.22.2.20060614173657.026abd98@mail.computinginnovations.com> In-Reply-To: <44908B2F.6070103@u.washington.edu> References: <448F9A87.3070809@u.washington.edu> <6.0.0.22.2.20060614103744.0271cf10@mail.computinginnovations.com> <44907122.8000801@u.washington.edu> <6.0.0.22.2.20060614164104.026ac018@mail.computinginnovations.com> <44908B2F.6070103@u.washington.edu>
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Look for just the DOS flash update. It will be smaller and from intel
comes with its own boot image. You will have to run that on a windows PC
to make the floppy.
-Derek
At 05:18 PM 6/14/2006, Garrett Cooper wrote:
>Derek Ragona wrote:
>>The halt could be anything from bad RAM, or other IRQ issues. This begs
>>the question as to why this board is not in use?
>>You should be able to update the BIOS from a floppy or cd-rom boot
>>disk. You can take your pick at bootdisk.org
>>The general rule with ram is you can run faster ram than you need, just
>>usually wastes money that faster RAM costs. But speed isn't the only
>>issue with ram, some are ECC or non-ECC, plus the CAS timing can be
>>different. So your RAM while it seems to work,may not be quite right.
>> -Derek
>>
>>At 03:27 PM 6/14/2006, Garrett Cooper wrote:
>>>Derek Ragona wrote:
>>>>IF you can find the documentation for the motherboard, see if there is
>>>>a reset jumper. That jumper should reset the BIOS to factory defaults
>>>>to allow it to get through the post and into setup. Some motherboards
>>>>actually take you into setup with the jumper moved to reset bad configurations.
>>>>Also, unplug any cards and drives, leave the system board with just ram
>>>>and cpu and video (unless it is built in) until you get it configured.
>>>> -Derek
>>>>
>>>>At 12:11 AM 6/14/2006, Garrett Cooper wrote:
>>>>>Hello again all,
>>>>> I know this isn't a FreeBSD question really, but I just
>>>>> started up a motherboard with onboard SCSI (Adaptec AIC-7896), and
>>>>> for some odd reason it freezes pre-POST before it attempts to boot
>>>>> and there isn't any way where I can get into the BIOS to change the
>>>>> settings it seems. Does anyone know how I can maybe disable the
>>>>> onboard SCSI controller since it appears to hang while detecting disks?
>>>>> Thanks a million!
>>>>>-Garrett
>>>
>>> Thanks all for the help. It turns out after a bit of
>>> researching and seeing some numbers on boot, I was able to find the
>>> documentation for the motherboard. It's an L440GX+ motherboard which
>>> does appear to still work properly, but here's the clincher. I read
>>> that the processors I have installed are compatible (2xP3 600E CPUs),
>>> _but_ only if the BIOS is updated past a particular version and I don't
>>> know if that is true or not. Plus I don't know what is causing the
>>> thing to halt because it appears to work on occasion--got the system to
>>> boot once but halted it since I couldn't get into the BIOS and change
>>> the settings. I cleared the CMOS--both by setting the jumper and
>>> removing the battery, and all it appears to have done superficially is
>>> make the original splash screen come up during boot.
>>> So, my question is has anyone experienced anything like this
>>> and if so how did you solve this problem, or does anyone know how to
>>> fix this situation apart from (maybe) installing Windows and updating
>>> the BIOS with a different processor?
>>> Also, I have a horde of PC133 SD RAM and only one stick of
>>> PC100 RAM, which doesn't appear to work in the motherboard, and the
>>> motherboard is rated to _only_ support PC100 SD RAM. Is it all right
>>> for me to use RAM which is rated 33MHz faster than recommended? I think
>>> it's possible with some motherboards but I'm not sure about this one.
>>> Thanks again for all your help guys :).
>>>-Garrett
>
>Thanks for your concerns. Supposedly when I received it last year in a
>trade, this motherboard was a spare that was not used by the owner because
>I don't think he had a reason to use the antique hardware. The thing is
>that I need a replacement motherboard with working IRQ/PCI slots because
>my previous motherboard (Tualatin ECS board) may have been partially fried
>thanks to a bad PSU and a series of SCSI hard drives drawing too much
>current within the case. Needless to say I fixed the PSU issue, but the
>issue with the original motherboard still may linger on.
>
>I'll see about using a BIOS flash boot disk, but there is a list of
>procedures that Intel gives on their website, which seems to involve
>Windows a bit more extensively than I originally thought.
>
>Thanks again about the RAM part. I know that mixing and matching is the
>only no-no in RAM-land, but other than that the motherboard says it
>supports both flavors--either ECC or non-ECC.
>
>-Garrett
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