8RDA+ - IDE devices will not power up when IDE cable is connected.

[Jeff7]

The system has an 8RDA+, running stable at the same settings for maybe a month. The only problems it ever had were from the WinTV-PVR 350 card in it, which has pretty lousy drivers. It was working just fine yesterday when I went to bed. I went to work later, came home, and I find that the PC is still running, but both IDE lights (RAID array and onboard) are on, and the thing's frozen. Reset. Same thing. The board is doing the FF thing right away. I've already reset the CMOS. Four times so far. It's in the middle of the 5th - the battery's out, and the jumper's in the reset position. Maybe after 5 minutes I'll try it again. Insert key at boot does nothing. Reseating RAM and videocard does nothing. I guess the next thing is to try it out of the box - an unattractive prospect, because there's so many components in the system, so it's a very lengthy project that can only be finished in a weekend at one "sitting," when I have time.
So, the question I guess - anyone else ever have a system just decide to flip over dead (or just feign it) like this? What'd you do about it?


Edit: More weirdness - the hard drives will NOT power on as long as the motherboard has power. I even tried this with two separate power supplies. One for the motherboard, one for the rest of the system. Turn on hard drives - they go fine. Turn on motherboard - hard drives shut down.
Then,
Turn on motherboard first, then try hard drives - no power up. At this point the only link between the two is the common ground of the surge strip, and the IDE cables. They're next to go in this strange problem.


Edit#2: Very strange. As soon as an IDE device is connected to the motherboard with an IDE cable, it will not power up, whether it be a hard drive or a DVD-RW drive. And I mean, won't power up - the DVD drive won't even open/close the tray as long as the IDE cable is connected; the LED doesn't blink either.
Also strange: The hard drives connected to the PCI-RAID card exhibit this same behavior.

 

[3sixes]

Im no expert on this, but my observations have indicated to me that a majority of the nforce 2 sbd situations are with boards that have 2mbit flash bios.

I have yet to see any sbd on boards with 4mbit flash bios, do you know what your's is?

** I had 3 boards with corrupted bios issues,weird bios behaviour and the thing in common was the size.

Now that ive gone to a board with 4mbit flash bios, the bios feels more solid, no more strange behaviour.

 

[Jeff7]

All I really know is it's a revision 1.1 board; I have a feeling it's a 2Mbit BIOS.

Original post updated.

 

[Bartman39]

Jeff... Just had the same exact problem and ended up RMA`ing the board... I ended up with a version 1.2 that says in the boot screen 400fsb support... hint...hint...

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Bartman39
Jeff... Just had the same exact problem and ended up RMA`ing the board... I ended up with a version 1.2 that says in the boot screen 400fsb support... hint...hint...

But what about one that's been VDD modded? And had a heatsink/fan combo epoxied to the northbridge? Not too hopeful about that...

 

[bootoo]

OOH, another reason not to mod the board - I'm so scared now there's no backup. Oh guess since I sliced up the n/bridge hs use on the s/bridge it's not stock anymore anyway.

So sorry, hope you can get it going, please post. Damn their eyes for discontinuing this board anyways!

 

[Bartman39]

Jeff...

What type of VDD modd...? Did you use the grabbers...? If it was a solder job then you are kinda screwed... As for the epoxied stuff I just put mine in the freezer for about 20 min and popped off the heatsink on both north and south bridges and put the old passibe Epox HS back on... Also popped off my heatsinks on the mosfets and even the clockgen... The still had the AS epoxy on them but (z-buy.com) RMA`d the board no problem... (didnt mess with Epox and glad I didnt)

On another note I think your bios is trashed which is what happened to mine... If you contact a memeber named (zzzzzz) AKA... Rob he can possibly help you...? Tell him I recommened you to him also... He is the bios man for sure...

It does suck that they quit making these boards as they are bad@ss for OC`ing... BTW I have 3 that all run 210fsb or higher...

 

[Jeff7]

Soldered, because (ironically) the grabbers were a bit expensive at the time, and I had everything I needed for soldering. And the other VDD mod I did on my other 8RDA+ went just fine with solder, and no problems to report there at all. Both boards are running the same settings - FSB and RAM timings that is.
Either today or tomorrow I'll take the whole mess out of the PC and try it out of the case. Maybe (hopefully) it's something stupid in the case that is causing a momentary failure - and not something stupid outside the case that made permanent mods to the motherboard.
If it's a corrupted BIOS, I'll look up info on hot-swapping and flashing, cause I've got another identical board anyway. I just wonder though how BIOS corruption could cause the drives to not power up. It just seems more like an electrical problem (a short?) in the motherboard...which also seems to spread to the PCI card, which has its own independent BIOS for detecting attached devices. THAT is one thing that makes this really curious; if it was just the drives on the motherboard that were not shutting off, ok, more likely a bad motherboard or corrupt BIOS. But the ones on the add-in card having the same problem? Very odd.

 

[Jeff7]

Well I'm going to try the BIOS hot-flash thing now. Let's see how this goes...

Edit: Hot flashing complete. Both BIOS chips (main PC and secondary/dead one) are flashed with the most recent BIOS from Epox's site. BIOS chip from dead board works just fine in the good motherboard. Dead PC remains dead.



Edit #2: Motherboard's out of the case; tried another videocard, and PSU. The thing acts the same with and without the BIOS chip in - FF right away, no beeping at all. This doth sucketh. Time to search for a replacement nForce2 board I guess.

 

[imported_Phil]

IIRC, most IDE devices won't power up if they detect an invalid IDE controller present. However, I thought this was just hard disks...

Any help?

 

[Roadraider]

It looks like the IDE controller is damaged (shorted). A few things point to an issue with an IDE, most notably that it will not boot with anything connected to the channels.

The IDE interface does carry a bit of a power in a couple of the pins. If for some reason there is damage (leak) then the motherboard detects that and will not boot. When it eventually does, anything connected to the IDE re-establishes the leak and you are back to square one.

This is a tough one, unless you can see some visible damage on the underside of the board, the only other option might be to replace the IDE sockets. I am only suggesting this since it looks like the RMA route is out of the question. It is not as hard as you'd imagine but it does require good soldering skills.

Good luck!

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Roadraider
It looks like the IDE controller is damaged (shorted). A few things point to an issue with an IDE, most notably that it will not boot with anything connected to the channels.

The IDE interface does carry a bit of a power in a couple of the pins. If for some reason there is damage (leak) then the motherboard detects that and will not boot. When it eventually does, anything connected to the IDE re-establishes the leak and you are back to square one.

This is a tough one, unless you can see some visible damage on the underside of the board, the only other option might be to replace the IDE sockets. I am only suggesting this since it looks like the RMA route is out of the question. It is not as hard as you'd imagine but it does require good soldering skills.

Good luck!

Yeah, this board is most likely toasted. I'll probably just recoup some losses selling the accessories on the forum - and maybe the BIOS chip, as it seems to be just fine.
There doesn't seem to be any visible damage either. And replacing the sockets...don't know that that would do it, as they're just metal pins really. Other problem - they seem to be soldered on both sides of the board. That'd require some REALLY good soldering skills, or else a solder wave machine.
The motherboard was tried out of the case with only the following installed:
Keyboard (required for full POST)
videocard (req'd)
monitor (required for full POST)
RAM
CPU

With or without the BIOS chip, with those things installed, it behaves exactly the same. No beeps, no display. Just FF.