Is my NF7-s dead??!!#$#$#@$%

[gkiing]

Well, I did some vmodding on my nf7-s v2 some time back, and I had been keeping the vdimm voltage at 3.1v on a stick of Corsair XMS 3200 (rated 2.7v). Today, I was doing fsb tests to see if my memory could keep pace, and I needed more voltage. I changed it to 3.2v (from 3.1), and tried to boot the computer up. Nothing happened. The hdd started up and was spinning, but no beeps from the video card or motherboard. I have had this happen before, but after turning the voltage down I had been able to boot. This time, I took the vmods off entirely, and it still wont boot.

Is my motherboard dead??
Did it take my ram or anything else with it??

any help MUCH appreciated

[PyroTeknik]

you did clear cmos right?

[gkiing]

several times. I measured the vdimm with a voltmeter and its back to 2.6v after I pulled off the voltmods.

[sky]

k.

try this - i had this save my rig on the very first night ;) and one or two times after that.

- power your pc down/turn it off
- switch the psu off and pull the plug
- set the cmos jumper to clear
- take out the cmos-battery
- plant a tree ;) or wait a few minutes
- put the battery back in
- set the cmos jumper to normal
- rehook the psu with the plug and turn it back on
- press INS(ert) and start your rig. once you
hear the beep, press DEL to enter bios...

if that doesn't do it, maybe you need a new bios-chip or your board may be gone for good.

[gkiing]

Im gona try that now, but I think its the 3.2vdimm that killed it. I remember my bios freezing just before it shut off.

Now I have to save some money to buy a new board.. argh. I was hoping it wasnt dead, maybe just stunned :\

[gkiing]

well, I tried that and same thing happens... i turn on the computer and no beeps or anything.

RIP NF7-S

:flame:

[Ow_jeih]

mine died just like that (unmodded :( )

i reboot, fans spin and stuff, but i never had a bootscreen ever :(

RMA :mad:

[gkiing]

It could be a dead CPU (barton 2500+) that's stopping it from posting but I doubt the cpu is wrecked.

[EDIT] Will ABIT RMA My Motherboard if theres heatsinks on the mosfets and southbridge?

[sandman]

Doubt it......god knows they :banana::banana::banana::banana::banana: enough when there isn't.

[gkiing]

Well, Im going to try anyway, If they dont like it I'm gona hang the dead board on my wall.

[sky]

i missed to mention, or better didn't express myself all to clearly ;)...
on the point press INS. that actually means press insert and keep it pressed while switching the pc back on and continue to press it until you hear the beep - if any.

if you don't get a beep, keep the battery removed for a longer period - i had it off for 10 mins or so.. browsing thru the manual once the board's gone bonkers... and if all that doesn't work, start looking for a replacement bios chip (ebay, or the good folks around here that have spares) or rma the board.

[sky]

Originally posted by gkiing
It could be a dead CPU (barton 2500+) that's stopping it from posting but I doubt the cpu is wrecked.

[EDIT] Will ABIT RMA My Motherboard if theres heatsinks on the mosfets and southbridge?

probably not. but anyway if they see your heatsinks they'll know what you tried to do.. so it would be better to remove the heatsinks, clear & clean the sb and the mosfets of any thermal goop or whatever you put there and make it look as if brandspankin' new.
btw abit might be reading here... we got an abit support forum in here so you might just ask them for a bios replacement.

/edited some more typos.. doh, i better stop writing now.. to loaded lol

[gkiing]

well, I just submitted an RMA request and heres what I got:

Dear customer,

Your RMA request has been validated and assigned with a RMA number as indicated. Please use the assigned RMA number (Not request number) & attached RMA form and follow the guideline to start your RMA process.

Please also note that:
1). ABIT would do 100% double checking during receiving stage to reconfirm all contents received are complying with what you submitted in your request. ABIT reserves the right to revoke your RMA case should there is any major deviation found and identified, especially for the availability of copy of original invoice and its issuing date.
2). Normally, just copy of original invoice even without serial number is good enough. However, if your serial number is verified as more than two years for motherboard, or 15 months for VGA card, from original manufacturing date, and you want to prove your purchase is well within one year to be qualified for free labor service, then your copy of original invoice MUST be with the same serial number as on your defective return(s).
3). Please log in our eRMA Online to check on 'MAKE PAYMENT' section after end of the working day (PST) that you receive this confirmation to check account balance on your RMA number. At this point, you can also have the options to pay to upgrade shipping or request for special cross-ship. It is much preferred for you to make payment, if so required, via our online payment through PayPal. If you don't feel comfortable to use PayPal or you don't have valid credit card to do so, you can still follow the attached guideline to complete your payment. However, we only accept payment for labor service charge in any other means than PayPal. For all other inquires, especially cross-ship, must be paid via PayPal. NO RMA WILL BE PROCESSED IF IT STILL REQUIRES ANY PENDING PAYMENT.

RMA Dept.
ABIT Computer USA

So it APPEARS that it might be ok. I'm not going to try and take the heatsinks off, their on their with Arctic Silver Epoxy, and it not going to come off. If i did try, it would only result in me breaking off a mosfet.

[G H Z]

Could be just a corrupted BIOS chip. Same thing happened to me....


-1st time I RMA'd

-2nd time I got the BIOS savior kit from Xcaliber. Alot faster than waiting on an RMA.

[gkiing]

What's the BIOS Savior kit?

link?

[sky]

true.. in like 90% of the cases it's just the bios chip that went to hell. either have the bios savior kit or a stack of replacement bios' to get back at it.
if the fans are turning, the hdds are powering up - that doesn't really seem like a dead board. happens with a lot of nf2 boards.
mostly while saving some new settings and the following reboot. mine went down after changing some settings, getting into windows, trying to prime it. bang it just hanged - gave me a weird error msg about my gfx-card and i had to reset. after that the screen would blank and stay that way - no beep, nothing.
i jumpered for clear - back to normal.. nothing. tried a pci gfxcard - same. tried the agp again - same.
ok then i did what i wrote earlier.. back in biz.

so yea bios is what's wrong with your board. probably not worth the rma anyway

[G H Z]

It's just a new BIOS chip that XcaliberPC has a special arrangement with ABIT to provide. It comes with instructins on how to restore and then reflash the corrupted chip so that you will always have a backup.

http://www.excaliberpc.com/product_info.php?products_id=1818

[gkiing]

Yeah, I'll probably get that bios savior, as long as I'm sure that the bios is the actual problem.

To clarify, I did try holding insert while powering up the system, and still nothing.

So if its definatly the bios thats good, saves me a hundred bucks for a replacement board ( i doubt theyl rma it)

[EDIT] If i get the bios savior so I can have 2 bios's, will the chip that comes with the bios savior have the NF7-s bios on it?

[G H Z]

Yes

And even if you are not sure it's worht it to have it if you plan on running the NF7 for awhile.

[sky]

well, what did i do? i finally managed to kill my own nf7-s r2.0 bios.. wohooo.. it was a fine d10 bios - that so far never let me down.

yea it was running fsb 200 with my 256mb ddr333 infineon cl2.5 chips at 200-11-2-2-2 (2.7v, 2.83v real) for almost 8 months now, maxing at 205. so yesterday i got 2x256 mushkin pc3500 lvl2 and 2x512 mushkin pc3500 lvl1.
i started testing with the lvl2's first. went to the bios, upped the fsb to 217, rebooted - and it kept rebooting, ok back to bios.. setting the fsb to 210.. working.. (mem voltages at default 2.6v, which is 2.73v real). went into windows did some testing.. ok good memscores, but room for improvement ;).
back 2 bios, lowered the multi, increased the fsb to 214... again no problem into windows. so in windows i started fiddling with clockgen and later with 8rdavcore. that got me to somewhat around 225 before freezing - increasing in big steps gave me an instant lockup in most case, increasing by 2, set values, +2, set, ...
that's the way it worked for me :(
ok that was benchable, so back to bios upped the fsb to 216 or 217 dunno and can't look it up anymore ;), vdimm to the max, (2.9v bios, 3.03v real). and back to windows. ran 8rdavcore, upped it to 228 - benchable.. gave me somewhat in the 34xx range sandra... lol MORE, i need more, so upped the fsb to 229,x - lockup. ok i was fed up - i had a few dozen lockups by then and decided to take a break. so i turned it off. BAD IDEA!.
i've had lockups like that before - plain reset always got me back booting and being able to enter the bios. if i wouldn't have shut it off immediately but had entered the bios, reset the values to maybe 210 11-2-2-2 and i'm 95% sure there wouldn't be a problem now. yea hindsight, lol

2 hrs later i decided to give the 512mb lvl1's a shot - put them in, cleared cmos - power to the people - nothing black screen, nothing. fans whirring, drives spinning up, nothing else DOH! ok switched back to my mushkin lvl2, same - before that i was giving a nasty speech, topic "f****** lvl1" ;)


did what i wrote above to recover, nothing so YAY! i killed my bios chip. woot woot.

so my question now is what is it that keeps these friggin boards to crap out at low fsbs like that? btw it's an early 2003 rev 2.0 board - around week 15/16 if i remember it right. massive aircooling, heatsink on the sb, yada yada.

so now i'm thinking what the hell to do? rma it (might take ages), get a new bioschip - but the board will probably crap out at 217 again killing another chip, getting a completely different board...

plenty of choices.. but no idea what to do. atm i'm asking around for a replacement bios for the nf7-s (rev. 2.0), if anyone got one and is willing to send it over - pm me, thanks

[gkiing]

Yeah, exactly same thing as what happened to me. Im looking for a bios chip too, let me know if you find one. That mushkin lvl 2 should be able to do at least 230 @ 2-2-2-11 or 2-2-2-5, 2.9v

[ricjax99]

Originally posted by gkiing
Yeah, exactly same thing as what happened to me. Im looking for a bios chip too, let me know if you find one. That mushkin lvl 2 should be able to do at least 230 @ 2-2-2-11 or 2-2-2-5, 2.9v

Do you know that for a fact?

Maybe in somecases, but with CPU interface on and 10x~11x multiplier you'd be lucky without a vmod ;)

[sky]

well it did 230 for about a second :D
- i even tried asynch before - set the fsb to 217, 4:5 or sth like that.. even 5:6. so i knew it wasn't the cpu that kept crapping out
since my psu isn't all to powerful ;). but that wasn't working either. anyway.. they sell these bios replacement on ebay, but i'm not going to drop 16 euros + shipping for one of those.
i've been told that abit sends you a reflashed chip, if you send them your corrupted original chip - of course, contacting them before that to work out the details. and as i'm told they don't charge you anything but shipping, which is a good deal. and i'd really like to keep my nf7-s since it performed well - up to yesterday ;)

[sky]

wtf it's back again.. only hooked a floppy drive to the whole rig, did another cmos clear and there it was.. wtf??? long story will be edited in here later gotta have a nice dinner.
btw i'm writing this on my resurrected abit now !!!

[gkiing]

floppy drive eh? Im going to go try that now

[sky]

yeah that was one strange thing to happen. a mate told me to try a blind bios flash on it - since most parts of the board / my system were still working (fans spinning, drives revving, ect). well since i didn't any floppydrives in my rig (only a dvd-r and a hdd) i had to rip a 3.5" from my main rig, preparing a bootdisk before doing so and copying a recent (i think d22) bios onto that disk. so then i hooked the drive to my abit, clear cmos again - for good measure ;) - tried to write down the text on the bios chip for ordering replacements and after that set that jumper back to normal. - btw my bios got a shiny sticker on it - didn't think of it then, but the real bios-chip id is below that, doh.

anyway, when done with all of this, i put the disk into the drive, switched the psu back on, pressed insert and fired up my rig while keeping insert pressed. and then there was the single most enjoyable beep today.
i was back in business. so a quick tap tap onto delete and into the bios i went (pressing insert on bootup should basically reset bios-values to default). and as if i didn't learn my lesson by now, i went at the fsb again. 230, aye aye captain.. set some more values and save & exit - continous beeping, black screen - yay, did it again ;) powerdown, cmos clear, insert+powerup - into the bios again. now i'm running 200 again - just as with my cheap-a$$ infineon ddr333. but i guess i'll try the l12 or pinmod on my dlt3c 1700 xpmw 0308 and maybe even flash a new bios and see if that helps getting higher fsbs from the bios.

btw, during that hole process i didn't even have to flash the bios as my mate recommend (since all was last already, so why not try something like that?) - it came back to life once the drive was connected using the floppy cable abit supplied with the board. and the funniest thing of all is that my bootdisk didn't actually work - i tried it later on ;)
since i am running 2k on my main-rig, there was no option in the format drive-tag of the explorer to make it a system-bootdisk. so i copied an old dos 5.0 (!!) bootdisk, removed some files i didn't need (like format.com, more, print, blabla) to make room for the actual abit flashtool and the latest bios and that was that.
trying to boot it, i got "file not found" a couple of times and just removed the disk.
once i got my game/bench rig running again i made myself a real :) bootdisk with xp - that should do the trick next time. but i WILL get a replacement bios or two anyway. one day i might run out of tricks to get my baby back to life, so a bios saviour sounds like a good investment...

if it doesn't work for you, try some other crazy :banana::banana::banana::banana::banana:.
someone over here actually said that he once phone the local abit support regarding his blown bios and asking for a replacement. those guys gave him an email and said to write that he needed a replacement bios, list is mobo-serialno and his shipping address - within a few days he got a FREE bios replacement. now that's service. abit, chapeau!

[gkiing]

Maybe I'll write abit for that free bios.. I tried the floppy drive and pressing insert and still nothing, no beeps. It's either blown bios or a broken memory controller.

[Karnivore]

You people should really get a REAL Bios Savior, they work very well and aren't to expensive, no monkeying around with swapping chips, flip a switch, boot, flip switch again, flash, and your ready for another go...

Can find them HERE (http://www.frozencpu.com/cgi-bin/frozencpu/bio-04.html)

[BMORIN]

gkiing, I got my kit from excaliberpc and bought a bios chip removal tool as well. It probably is bios corruption since it didn't shut down normally. No one in your area with a nf7-s rev.2 that you could do a hotflash with?

[gkiing]

I might try a hot flash, I do know somene with an NF7-S v2. Otherwise, I heard there was an online store that sold the bios chips (pre programmed with the NF7 bios), so I'l probably get one of those as well as the Bios Savior