Mastiff
05-23-2008, 10:48 PM
I am suffering. Badly. :( I have a carputer built around an Aopen i975xA-YDG with a T2500, and it handles separate video to the two kids in the back, music and navigation in the front and even an extra monitor in the rear window (this is on a Chevy Sub with dual batteries, so I have lots of room and power) without breaking a sweat. But I have so far taken out three motherboards!
The first one lasted for one and a half year, before it suddenly only wanted to spin the fans and not boot. I tried taking out the CMOS battery and leave it without power for a few days, but nothing happened. Still I live in a country with long warranties, so I got that one RMA'ed (had to get the new board on eBay since the board was out of stock here, actually I bought two!).
After only a few weeks the first of the two new boards died, with exactly the same symptoms. I got that one RMA'ed (had to pay a bit extra for shipping) and bought two new boards. As you understand I really, really don't want to be without a carputer! I have since the first of the eBay mobos died (three months or so) been running the second of the first batch of two on a regular converter 12V-220V and a regular PSU since I figured that the DC-DC PSU probably was the culprit, with power spikes or something. This week I finally got my new DC-DC PSU (something called an M4-ATX), and within a few hours the mobo wouldn't boot up again. It just started to spin the CPU fan and show the power LED, but the hard disks and other fans didn't spin up, like they had with the two previous dead boards. I measured the output from one of the hard drive Molex plugs, and it turned out that it only gave 5V on the 12V rail and 2V on the 5V. And when I put the computer on a regular PSU, it wouldn't start up, it only spun the PSU and CPU fan for half a second and died. Had to replace the mobo again (which I luckily had two reserves for - and now I'm down to one reserve again!).
Can anybody give me a viable theory as to why this is happening? I had a 12V input 3Com WiFi access point powered off the PSUs (with cables soldered on inside the PC case), so I have removed that just in case. Could it be that, or is it just that the YDG board is hysterically sensitive?
The first one lasted for one and a half year, before it suddenly only wanted to spin the fans and not boot. I tried taking out the CMOS battery and leave it without power for a few days, but nothing happened. Still I live in a country with long warranties, so I got that one RMA'ed (had to get the new board on eBay since the board was out of stock here, actually I bought two!).
After only a few weeks the first of the two new boards died, with exactly the same symptoms. I got that one RMA'ed (had to pay a bit extra for shipping) and bought two new boards. As you understand I really, really don't want to be without a carputer! I have since the first of the eBay mobos died (three months or so) been running the second of the first batch of two on a regular converter 12V-220V and a regular PSU since I figured that the DC-DC PSU probably was the culprit, with power spikes or something. This week I finally got my new DC-DC PSU (something called an M4-ATX), and within a few hours the mobo wouldn't boot up again. It just started to spin the CPU fan and show the power LED, but the hard disks and other fans didn't spin up, like they had with the two previous dead boards. I measured the output from one of the hard drive Molex plugs, and it turned out that it only gave 5V on the 12V rail and 2V on the 5V. And when I put the computer on a regular PSU, it wouldn't start up, it only spun the PSU and CPU fan for half a second and died. Had to replace the mobo again (which I luckily had two reserves for - and now I'm down to one reserve again!).
Can anybody give me a viable theory as to why this is happening? I had a 12V input 3Com WiFi access point powered off the PSUs (with cables soldered on inside the PC case), so I have removed that just in case. Could it be that, or is it just that the YDG board is hysterically sensitive?