Athlon/K7V won't work

[alanwj]

For about a year I had a 800Mhz Slot A Athlon sitting on an Abit KA7 motherboard. Then one day I turn the thing off (I'll never do THAT again!). Next thing you know, pressing the power switch has no effect (Actually, all the drives and such spin up as if they are getting power, but the system doesn't actually attempt to boot). After completely disassembling/reassembling the system, and having just about everybody I know take their hand at figuring out what is wrong, I decide to give up and start replacing parts.

The processor was under warranty still, so I got AMD to replace it (they sent out an 850Mhz Slot A Athlon, so basically the same thing I already had). That worked for around 3 days, then the exact same problem started again.

So... I decided to replace the motherboard. I bought an Asus K7V. That fixed the previous problem, and ushered in a whole new set. Now when I turn it on, it will start its normal bootup process, and within 3-30 seconds, completely freeze. If I'm in the BIOS setup at the time (if I can make it that far before freezing) all the info that updates in real time quits updating.

I'm running on the bare essentials (motherboard, processor, memory, video card, power supply) to eliminate as many sources of problems as I can. I've tried it with both a Geforce256 AGP video card, and an old Diamond Stealth PCI card, and the same symptoms persist, so I'm fairly certain the problem in not there. The power supply has been working in another computer for over 4 months now, so I am ruling it out as well (it is a Deer 300W). I am replacing the memory (being shipped to today), but I don't think that would be the problem because replacing it with some spare chips a friend of mine had while trying to fix it the first time (back with the Abit setup) had no effect.

The only modification I have made to the factory default settings on the motherboard is moving the jumper to disable the on board sound. The bus speed is 100Mhz (and though it doesn't show anywhere in the BIOS, I am assuming the processor has a locked multiplier of 8.5). I'm running the memory at 100Mhz just in case (it is a PC133 chip). I've confirmed that the fan on the processor is spinning (Always the first thing I check no matter what is going wrong), and in the brief seconds that I get to view the CPU temperature before the thing freezes up (if, indeed, I do get so far as to view it) it seems to be running around 93F. The core voltage is reporting at 1.69V, which is right at the 1.7V the Athlon is supposed to get.

Does anybody have any suggestions/solutions that I might try to get this thing working again?

Thank you for any help,
Alan Johnson

 

[kelesh3]

/me sighs
You made the same mistake I did.
Mistake #1: buying a crappy slot A thunderbird. they have little support and are discontinued.
Mistake #2(the BIG ONE): you didn't do research before you bought your motherboard. Sure the k7v is a kickass mobo... for a CLASSIC SLOT ATHLON. It is incompatible with tbirds. I know this cuz my slot A tbird spent 3 months crashing on a k7v til i sold the k7v on FS/FT and bought an MSI K7pro, which is one of hte 3 mobo's that are officially supported for slot A tbirds. I suggest you sell/return your k7v, scrap your processor, and buy a 1.2 Ghz Socket Tbird/mobo combo frompricewatch or something and then you'll be set. The price for a new mobo is not that much less than a kickass cpu/mobo combo. Whatever you do, ditch the k7v.

 

[CTho9305]

yeah, if you have a slotA tbird >800mhz its expected to be unstable. if you search google, you might be able to find an article on modding the K7V to make it a K7V-T (which works with tbirds) with 4 capacitors and 4 resistors...
do you know for sure it is a tbird? also, are you sure it is properly cooled?

 

[alanwj]

I am pretty sure it is a Classic Slot A Athlon. NOT a Thunderbird. I'll check for sure after work. That would actually be pleasing, as I would know for the first time in months the real reason my computer isn't working. And as far as being properly cooled, AMD installed the heatsink/fan before shipping me the processor, so I trust their competence there.

Thank you for your replies.


Alan

 

[alanwj]

I checked to make sure. And the processor is an original Athlon. NOT a Thunderbird. I tried setting all the speeds via the jumpers instead of in the BIOS (K7V has a jumper free setting that lets you do everything in the BIOS), and that didn't change any of the symptoms.

The problems seems as if it may even be getting worse. Sometimes pressing the power switch results in nothing other than starting the CPU fan to spinning. Sometimes it gets as far as trying to initialize PnP cards (the only card in the system is the video card. I'm still running it with the bare essentials). Sometimes it can make it all the way to the BIOS settings before freezing.

Is there any remote chance that my monitor may be causing problems (that is the most retarded straw grasping thing I've ever come up with, but when everything else in the system has been replaced, you start to wonder)? I suppose I'll go steal one from a neighbor when the chance arises.

What about the power supply? Could it be causing freeze-ups like this? It is a 300W Deer. It has also been working for several months in a different computer. I've been looking for an excuse to grab one of those 550W Enermax's. Maybe I'll do that just to be sure (surely can't hurt anything).

Thanks again,

Alan