Blackops FF eternal reboot and/or lock, no keyboard lights

[XmikeX]

Hello everyone,

I had/have a few BO mobos and I had/have fun with them. Today, I decided to bring to life a "new" BO I had in storage for almost 2 years.

Before anyone asks, my prime mistake is to have never tested this particular BO from the start. I've been very lucky with BOs in the past.
I have no clue if this board went stale in storage or at some other time. Naturally, RMA is clearly out of the question at this point (but that's fine with me).

To continue ..

Board delivers power but hangs or reboots with FF code and keyboard is never activated. (I do remember a short faq on this.)

The bios chips on this board would boot-sequence on ANOTHER BO with FF, 0D and then hang. However, I was able to flash them successfully and get a good boot from these chips on other BO.

-- Unfortunately, replacing BIOS chips on "bad" BO doesn't change anything.
-- Clearing CMOS .. doesn't change anything.
-- Forcing BIOS 1 or 2 .. doesn't change anything.
-- Forcing FSB by jumper .. doesn't change anything.
-- CPU LGA pins "SEEM" ok

[...]

-- Booting is with minimal hardware attached.
-- 3V lithium battery checks out OK.
-- Tried vid cards (PCIe and PCI), PSU, CPUs (multiple), Memory (multiple)... all this hardware is known to work with other BOs of mine, even when BOs are sporting ancient firmware.

I suppose I now have a good excuse to check out Q9xxx action with something like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128433

But sadly, I'm wretchedly and bloody curious as to how/why this BO may or may not be perma-dead, so any constructive ideas regarding this will be appreciated.

. o O o O ( I wonder if those BO multimeter-access-points pics from Saaya are still available in this forum. )

Cheers,
XmX

EDIT: Didn't mean to post in this section. I'm either too tired to find a "delete" option or I've forgotten how to use XS these days.
EDIT2: Yay, thanks to (whoever) for relocating this post.

[saaya]

its a psu issue most likely...
the overvoltage/undervoltage/surge protection kicks in triggered by a too whimpy or to aggressive psu, and the board shuts down and reboots, again... again...
the only way to fix it is to flash a newer bios on it or use another psu.
a newer bios should fix the problem, i think... but using a different psu is probably the best option.
COULD also be memory btw...

[XmikeX]

its a psu issue most likely...
the overvoltage/undervoltage/surge protection kicks in triggered by a too whimpy or to aggressive psu, and the board shuts down and reboots, again... again...
the only way to fix it is to flash a newer bios on it or use another psu.
a newer bios should fix the problem, i think... but using a different psu is probably the best option.
COULD also be memory btw...

Oh yeah, first thing I did was update the roms.

To be clear - Using a working BO, I flashed the two bios chips from the non-working BO.. to G43 (and these roms booted the working BO). I then took these G43 roms, slammed em into the non-working BO and applied memory/cpu/psu that have been known to work on my other BOs. ..Bzzt.. stuck on FF still.

The psu could indeed be "fail" because I've only tested with this one PSU, whereas I've tried different cpu/memory combos (all known to work on other BO). I'll recheck the PSU (corsair hx1000 which has worked on my other BO in the past).

I'm tempted to bring the newly-flashed roms into a working BO _again_ and see if they boot or fail in booting with funny FF -> 0D code sequence again. If that occurs, then maybe something on the mobo is scrambling the BIOS before full init happens?

Cheers,
XmX

[saaya]

welll... if the psu is the culprit, then this is why:

once you flash a newer bios itll update the firmware of the voltage monitoring chip on the board, to stop it from triggering the overvoltage, undervoltage or surge alert.
it adjusts the settings to make it less sensitive to that... then the board reboots and should work fine.

BUT... if your psu really does cause the problem, it might never get to that point of updating the firmware...
get what i mean? so yeah, try any psu, even an old 300W psu should be enough to post... and when i tested a lot of psus, i found that ALL older and low wattage psus worked perfectly fine on BO and BR, and only newer psus had issues, and the higher the wattage the more likely a problem was, weird huh?

anyways, try another psu, if thats not it, and all the hardware worked on another board... weird... i guess the board is toast :/
well, did you try disabling oc recovery? search for oc recovery there should be several threads here about that...

[saaya]

welll... if the psu is the culprit, then this is why:

once you flash a newer bios itll update the firmware of the voltage monitoring chip on the board, to stop it from triggering the overvoltage, undervoltage or surge alert.
it adjusts the settings to make it less sensitive to that... then the board reboots and should work fine.

BUT... if your psu really does cause the problem, it might never get to that point of updating the firmware...
get what i mean? so yeah, try any psu, even an old 300W psu should be enough to post... and when i tested a lot of psus, i found that ALL older and low wattage psus worked perfectly fine on BO and BR, and only newer psus had issues, and the higher the wattage the more likely a problem was, weird huh?

anyways, try another psu, if thats not it, and all the hardware worked on another board... weird... i guess the board is toast :/
well, did you try disabling oc recovery? search for oc recovery there should be several threads here about that...

[XmikeX]

welll... if the psu is the culprit, then this is why:

once you flash a newer bios itll update the firmware of the voltage monitoring chip on the board, to stop it from triggering the overvoltage, undervoltage or surge alert.
it adjusts the settings to make it less sensitive to that... then the board reboots and should work fine.

BUT... if your psu really does cause the problem, it might never get to that point of updating the firmware...
get what i mean?

Yeah, catch-22.. chicken v. egg problem. This one is new to me. =)
BO proves it is still a fun board.

Cheers,
XmX

EDIT : Just for reference -- I found this bit of info in my archive :: "The BIOS chips on the Foxconn are MX25L8005PC-15G SPI 8 Pin PDIP EEPROMs, and the minimum BIOS revision required for recent processor support is 7A3F1P05." :: I'd like to know what the minimum BIOS revision is for decent PSU support. (LOL). I'm 95% certain I had Corsair HX-1000w confirmed OK down to P02, but perhaps my recollection is completely wrong on this.

EDIT2 : Same PSU issue on Bloodrage ??? -- http://www.xtremesystems.org/FORUMS/...85&postcount=9 -- The part about the mini-firmware rotting, without standby power, is just precious.

[XmikeX]

I haven't had much time to test that presumably-broken BO, but I did throw another PSU at it and there's been no improvement. BIOS on this board (G43) seems to be intact (when I test the bios chips on -another- blackops they boot fine). I won't give up just yet.

For the near-future, I'll split time with a Gigabyte USB3 P45 replacement mobo, which seems interesting but I'm already longing for a boot code display like on BO.

XmX

[jinomz]

I have the same FF lock boot problem, but it only occurs when my machine has been on for quite a while. so if I restart, the machine boots for a sec then goes off again just like when OC recovery is on. but then it reboots itself again only to lock @ FF code. I can only reboot again if I let it sit on off for awhile like about 5-10 minutes.
1st i thought its the psu, but i've changed from my FSP Blue Storm II 500W to Enermax Modu 87+ 600W but the problem persist.
also i tried updating the bios to G43 but it didnt help as well. also i tried disabling the oc.
any thoughts?
btw i use Q6600, patriot signature 1333 2GB, geforce 7600GT.