P5A-B rev 1.04 vs 1.05

Discussion relating to Socket 7 hardware.
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anomic
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P5A-B rev 1.04 vs 1.05

Post by anomic »

Hi Guys,

I'm new here on this forum, but I am playing around with S7+ K6-x for a long time now.

However, I am puzzled with the following:

I am building a home NAS with an Asus P5A-B rev 1.04, K6-IIIP 450, 1Gig IDE Flash disk PCI SATA Card, 2x 320 Gig Maxtor in RAID1 Mirror.

The OS (Debian Etch) is installed on the IDE flash disk, which works great. But, when the PCI SATA card is installed with both 320 gig disks attached, the system won't boot. I can enter BIOS, but it hangs at "Verifying DMI pool data" and locks up. During POST, the card is shown (mass storage controller), and the card also shows it found both disks.

If I only detach the 2 SATA disks from the card, the system boots fine, and the card is detected correctly in the OS.

I have another P5A-B, but this is a rev 1.05. This one is known to work very slow with the K6-IIIP (and it is indeed :P ). I swapped the boards, and I was very amazed to see that the P5A-B rev 1.05 DOES boot with the 2 disks attached. I was able to mount the disks, and everything seems to work well. However, with the P5A-B rev 1.05 I was forced to use a K6-2 400 instead of the K6-IIIP.

I also have an older Asus TX97-E, but that board also have exactly the same problems as the P5A-B rev 1.04.

The BIOS on both boards is the 1011.005bn from Jan Steunebrink.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Mike.
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kalabok
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Post by kalabok »

two things that come to my mind.

do you have a normal k6-III 450ack? that one should work without problem, as i know only k6-X+ cpus do have problems with p5a boards above rev 1.04

verifying dmi pool data needs some time ... sometimes. i got same problem with a k6bv3, i only had to wait some ... 3 minutes or so. how do you verify the system realy hangs?
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anomic
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Post by anomic »

Hi Kalabok,

Now I am doubting if it really hangs. Do you really have to wait that long? Why should it take so long?

If I recall correctly I wasn't able to press ctl-alt-del to reboot, but I can be wrong. I will test that soon and be more patient at startup :D
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Stedman5040
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Post by Stedman5040 »

Anomic,

As Kalabok states is your K6-III cpu a K6-IIIP or is it a K6-III+ as it does make a difference. If it is not a K6-III+ then the cpu should work in your v1.05 board with no slowing down problems. Take a look on the casing to see. If no + is evident after the K6-III you should be fine.

Stedman
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anomic
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Post by anomic »

Hi Stedman,

It is a K6-III 450 ACK 2.0Vcore, that should be the "P". When I put it in the rev1.05, the integer performance is about 30% less than the K6-2 @ 400MHz. I have tested with Dhrystone under Linux. My bad luck :(
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Post by Stedman5040 »

Anomic,

When was the chip manufactured?

Stedman
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Post by Jim »

@ Anomic : It is a known problem that for some reason, P5As and P5A-Bs of the Rev 105 & 106 have problems with K6+ processors. Rev 104 & 103 boards generally work alright though. Exactly what causes the problem with the 105 & 106 boards, I do not know. They have a better, (more advanced) chipset, so it is really a shame. There may be a work around for it, but at minimum, I suspect it would require a custom bios.
Superpuppy 3
K6-3+ 450 ACZ (6x100)
DFI K6BV3+/66 Rev B2 (2 Meg) w/ 2x28mm Chipset Fans
2x256 Meg PC 133 Hynix SDRAM
1x 20G Maxtor (7200)
2x 80G Maxtor (7200) Ducted w/ 2x486 Fans Mount
52/24/52/16 LG CDR/RW/DVD
8/4/3/12/24/16/32 LG Super Multi
ATI 9000 aiw Radeon AGP
SB Audigy 1 MP3 Sound
CMD 649 IDE Controller
NEC USB 2 Card
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Stedman5040
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Post by Stedman5040 »

Jim,

Anomic doesn't have a K6-III+ chip. He has a K6-III chip built on 0.25 micron architecture that happens to work at 2.0V. I think they were either meant for laptops or embedded solutions and were superceded by the K6+ series probably for cost reasons. I would have thought that the v1.05 board would have worked with it unless it isn't recognised properly by the bios.

I wonder if it just needs setting up with something like K6speed to get it working properly.

Stedman
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Post by DonPedro »

@anomic

have you tried to "reset configuration data" before you start booting with your sata-disks attached? you find that somewhere in the bios ....

@others
I don't think that the slow performance with p5a 1.05 and up boards happens only when a "+"-cpu is used. I had the same experience with my 1.06 board used together with a 2.2v k6-3-450.
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anomic
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Post by anomic »

CRAP!

I fixed my problem with the SATA card!!

I Swapped the boards (again) for some more testing, but no luck. It still hangs at boot. Damn 1.04!

Then I brainfarted and doing a jumper BIOS reset on the board. Boot the box and ... "ESCD updated succesfully" JOEPIEDEPOEPIE!! (Dutch for a sort of hurray:) )

How simple can things be sometimes. Strange though that I changed the BIOS settings to the same as before. So what ever the problem caused I don't know but it works now, and I'm happy :)

I underclocked it @ 300MHz and when idle the NAS consumes about 14 watt! Both disks spinned down, and the flash disk don't use much :)

If you like to peek: http://gyrus.anomic.net


About the mfg date ... sorry Stedman, the chip is doing its job in the NAS now 8)

Gonna have some sleep.


Thanks,

Mike.
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Post by Stedman5040 »

Great to hear everything worked out. I presume that you are using the v1.04 board?

Stedman
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anomic
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Post by anomic »

Yep, the 1.04 is running fine now. It just needed a hard BIOS reset. I earlier loaded setup-defaults, or BIOS-defaults but that did not work. I even exchanged the BIOS chips between the 1.05 and the 1.04, and that did not work either. Never thought that a BIOS reset might help. It seems a bit unlogic to me ...


Mike.
Jim
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Post by Jim »

@ qnomic : Must have been a hardware change. Some boards require the bios to be cleared, to reset the hardware identification data, when you change hardware.

@ All, I have a Rev 105, though it is at the bottom of my list of things to do. But this I can tell you : A long time ago there was a guy here named "PunkRawker82" who had a 105 with a K6-2 500; and he had trouble getting his processor to run over 475 Mhz. It bugged him that he wasn't getting full speed; and he worked at it until he figured out a way to get his 500 Mhz; though I forget how. Look through old posts by him if you like.
Superpuppy 3
K6-3+ 450 ACZ (6x100)
DFI K6BV3+/66 Rev B2 (2 Meg) w/ 2x28mm Chipset Fans
2x256 Meg PC 133 Hynix SDRAM
1x 20G Maxtor (7200)
2x 80G Maxtor (7200) Ducted w/ 2x486 Fans Mount
52/24/52/16 LG CDR/RW/DVD
8/4/3/12/24/16/32 LG Super Multi
ATI 9000 aiw Radeon AGP
SB Audigy 1 MP3 Sound
CMD 649 IDE Controller
NEC USB 2 Card
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