Forum Home
Press F1
 
Thread ID: 19307 2002-05-12 20:51:00 Faulty motherboard or CPU? Guest (0) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
48589 2002-05-12 20:51:00 I was recently given a computer with am AMD 500mhz cpu.
THE SYMPTOMS
I tried to install Dos 6.22, Win 95, Win 98 & Win XP, all without luck. The computer would hang at various stages of installation. I tried copying the entire cd to hard disk to install from there, but got problems reading the cd & verifying that files had copied correctly.
DIAGNOSIS
I searched on the internet & found a wonderful little utility called 'Dosdiag.exe' which when run told me that the cache on the cpu was faulty, and that there were problems with the printer port and the serial port. I forget the exact wording, but it was along the lines of 'Expected 0378 IRQ9 but returned XXXX IRQ78'.
It also found problems with ram.
THE QUESTION
On the basis of the somewhat vague information above, is the cpu faulty, or the motherboard, or both, or something else?
I tried changing the ram but the errors stayed, apart from the bad ram error.

Ian McDonald.
Guest (0)
48590 2002-05-12 22:14:00 Ian,
There might be one problem, that 'causes' other 'problems' to be reported. If your bios allows it, try disabling the cache and see if 'reliability' improves. The performance will take a dive, but it may prove something.
Guest (0)
48591 2002-05-13 04:02:00 *Why* was it given?

Check that the speed jumpers on the motherboard are correct. If it is being clocked too fast, it could cause all sorts of problems.

In fact, why not set it to run at 300 or thereabouts, and see if it works like that?

Memory tests are tricky (though I am more inclined to believe reports of errors than reports of 'perfection').

What does the BIOS setup say about the address and IRQ of the printer and serial ports?
Guest (0)
48592 2002-05-13 05:51:00 Hi Ian

Another possibility. If the version of 95 you tried to load is 95b/osr 2 then you will need a patch from AMD for the system to run stabley at over 350MHz if its a K6 2 CPU. Could be that there are some bugs hanging around from that install.

HTH

Murray P
Guest (0)
1