K7S5A EXPERIENCE

[DrZepp]

Hello,

The good comments posted on this board about the K7S5A prompted me to pop for one and I thought others might profit from my experience.

My system:
K7S5A 8/17/01 bios
Duron 850
256M Crucial 2100DDR
IBM 40GB Deskstar
Aopen 12X10X32 CDRW
Sony Floppy
Matrox G450
Memorex 109 key KB
InWin case w/300W ps AMD approved???
Win 98SE

The board posted on the first try but I got the 'CMOS BATTERY LOW' message. I ignored that, noticed that the bios seemed to have set itself up pretty well and proceeded to partition the HD. All was well. The OS installed without a hitch and so did theECS drivers. After that I loaded the Matrox driver. Piece of cake.Then the modem went in along with it'sdriver and I got hooked up with my ISP. Great.The next day I got to thinking the HD partitioningwasn't to my liking and decided to start over.The first problem I noticed came after I tried to power up again after shutting down momentarily. TheCD lightblinked on and off butthesystem wouldn't boot.RMA thoughts wererunning through my head untilI noticed that it would boot after beingpowered down for about30 seconds. I went on to repartition the HD and reinstallthe OS anddrivers.P&P found the modem and installedits driverbut when I tried logging onto the net the modem wouldn't dial. Several days later I gave up on the modem problem and e-mailed tech assist for help. Theyadvised their driver was 'buggy' and sent a new driverwith theirresponse(I'm stillwonderinghow it worked the first time around with a buggy driver).With the new driver, the modem was back in operation. Only problem now wasthe machine couldn't be shut down fromWindows. The monitor screen went black but the fans kept running, the power indicator stayed on and I could only shut down by switching off the PS of with the back panel switch,the powerbutton on the front panelhaving no effect.About now things really started going downhill. I moved the jumper on J1 to activate the keyboard power up feature andenabled it inbios (all keys) as well. Afterswitching the ACpower on,it was now possible to start thesystem from the keyboard but the POWER key on the keyboard just put the system into sleep mode instead of shutting it down and it still wasn't possible to shut downvia Win or the front panel power switch.Furthermore,pressing WAKE on the keyboardreturnedthesystem to life with a windows'Illegal operation' message in the middle of the screen.A clean install of Win 98 w/o SE2 seemed to do thetrick as far as proper power management was concerned but after loading SE2along withthe mobo and video drivers,PM began acting up again; either no power up from keyboard or inability to shut down from Windows or both. On my latestclean reinstallI left the modem(a Best Data Winmodem) out of the box and with every driver loadedeverything seems to function properly exceptthat pressing thekeyboard POWER key still initiates sleep, not shutdown.At this point the modem appears to bethe bad actorbut Idon't have another one handy to try.Is anybodysuccessfully usingan internal modemwith this board? I'm not sure if some of thepower management problemis due to the 109 key configuration of the keyboard anda standard Win keyboard driver, Winbugs,themobo, or allthe above.The delay necessary to power up after a shutdown really isn't a concernbut it sure made me sweat for a spell. Off hand I would say theK7S5Alikely is not responsible for someor all of the problems I've experienced and if I can get this modem thingee ironed out, I'll be very happy with the board.

 

[Rebel50]

Hi Dr Zepp, I have just had a similar experience with a K7S5A. There was a number of small problems following the installation, but the main problem was accessing the internet via an internal modem (Motorola) - after a short time the screen would go black with a blinking cursor or it would shut down and reboot. I reinstalled Win 98 SE, using all new drivers etc, but the result was the same. To cut the story short I returned the MoBo and swapped it for an Asus A7V133 which worked correctly straight out of the box. It would appear that these MoBo's are at bit suspect at best. I checked the forum at OCworkbench (http://forum.ocworkbench.com)and discovered other users had similar problems (Note the number of threads relating to the K7S5A)

 

[Thump553]

I'm accessing the internet without problem on a K7S5A/1.4 T-Bird/Win2k Pro/no-name internal winmodem with absolutely no problems what so ever. DrZepp, you mentioned every bit of hardware you have except the modem. What brand modem do you have & whose tech support did you talk to?

BTW, Win2k automatically detected my modem & installed its drivers-which is good, because the factory disc9s) were lost a long time ago.

I have built three of these systems, all perform fine. I think you will find that a great majority of the problem posts on this motherboard relate to people using 1.4 T-birds with inadequate power supplies-or things that are now solved-like the Win2k floppy write problem.

 

[DrZepp]

Howdy Rebel!

Thanks for the info. Yes, Irecall spoting some comments about modem problems somewhere and that's why I asked about it.As you can tell,the system here isn't state of the art but it's used mainly for business apps. I've grown fond of the board despite the hassle and if necessaryI'll go to an external modem rather than RMA.

 

[DrZepp]

That's encouraging news, Thump533. The modem is a Best Data Winmodem with a doubtful pedigree. The box claims it's an A56FW-PCI buteach sticker (2) on the back of the board say it's something elseand Best tech assist had to ask for the chip ID before they could provide an updated driver so who knows?:frown:

Bestreally came through for me on this problem - I just received an e-mail from them offering to replace the install CD at no charge.