Goddard - Drumble
A Slot A motherboard in DISTRESS!!! MSI K7 PRO Ver:1 - MS-6195
This episode
had all of the requirements to be a great one. Unfortunately, as the saying goes, you mustn't count your chickens before they hatch.
My Good Ol' HW supplier has done it again and thanks to him I soon held in my hands this glorious Slot A motherboard. At that moment
I was thinking that I've scored again ...
The motherboard arrived untested as the seller didn't have a suitable CPU to power it up. Before I decided to make it mine, from the pictures, I already spotted a few problems:
swollen capacitors and the elephant in the room aka
the mismatched NB heatsink.
As
Slot A motherboards rank high on my wish list, I wasn't put off by a few bad caps and a heatsink. So, said and done, it was mine with all her problems. There was no turning back. Besides, I was to pay for it after I tested it. All in all it was a good deal.
Upon arrival, I conducted a thorough inspection and I came to the conclusion that 13 caps will have to be replaced. All of them were branded
CHHSI, an old acquaintance from the Bad Caps Era. As the bulk of these caps wasn't in vital areas, I decided that it was safe to test the motherboard as is. Another factor that contributed to this decision was that the other caps were from reputable brands:
SANYO, United Chemi-Con and PANASONIC.
Before I powered it up I wanted to see what's under the NB heatsink. As expected, underneath,
the thermal paste was hard and almost non-existent. I addressed this matter and I soon put together a test system. I used a 650MHz CPU, some RAM, a video card, an Enermax 465W PSU and then I pressed the POWER button.
I expected a
happy BEEP but all was
silent like the grave. Hmmmmm ...
This can't be good ...
I tried just a about everything I could but I wasn't able to make the board beep let alone POST. It powered up by itself as soon as it was connected at the mains. In search of a solution I read the manual many times but to no avail. NADA! ZILCH! NOTHING!
As a feature, the motherboard has a group of four leds called
D-LED or
Diagnostic Led.
"The mainboard provides a Special Diagnostic LED for users to be aware of their mainboard conditions. The LED helps user determine the problem of the mainboard." To the experienced users this feature isn't a must but in this instance it was useful.
No matter what I tried I got the same error:
3 GREEN and 1 RED leds! aka
Early Chipset Initialization aka
Boot Attempt, straight on power up, without cycling through other color combinations.
Stuck!
I checked again the manual and the only thing I found was: *** aka
Check with local vendor for possible internal motherboard problem. I wish that I didn't read that, I said to myself.
Hoping that something will change, I installed another CPU, a 500MHz Athlon.
RESISTANCE IF FUTILE! Nothing happened.
I installed my cheap PCI debug card and I got an error message that reminded of the
Gigabyte GA-8TM aka
THE FLOP. Yeah ... I remember that one ... it was a doozy!
Good Ol'
control to int 19h boot loader error message. I can't say that I am fond of this one.
I already felt that this board was a goner. Dead NB? Hmmm ... it can't be ...
In spite of all of these facts I still clinged on my last hope of recovering this relic of times gone by.
Changing the swollen caps.
The
CHHSI RB, HS and HK caps were to be replaced with whatever I had available at that time,
Nichicon PW, Samxon GT and Aishi WH caps. The Aishi Wh caps were a stop-gap solution and I planned to swap them later with something better. In the end, as three Nichicon PW 1000uf caps were too tall and they were near the AGP slot, I replaced them with three
Rubycon YXF even if the latter were wider. 1cm vs 0.8cm.
Some time later I was ready to try again. Unfortunately even from the get go, I got the same error:
3 Green and 1 Red leds. &^$#&^&*#!!!!!!
I tried to start the motherboard with and without a CPU, with and without RAM, with and without a graphic card, with and without a BIOS chip, with and without a CMOS battery, clear CMOS, BIOS update, many BIOS versions, another BIOS chip ... the works.
All was for nothing! The CPU got warm, the NB chip got warm, the SB had a normal temperature, the jumpers were ok ... NO BEEP(s) and NO POST.
Because according to the error reported by the D-LED, the board was stuck at
Boot Attempt I also installed a HDD, FDD and ODD.
Still no change!
Because at power up the led of the FDD was on, I also put a BIOS image on a floppy disk and I tried again even if I updated the BIOS with my MiniPRO TL866A programmer.
You guessed it!
Nothing worked!
I also removed another PLCC chip that had a sticker with
MSIG 1.0 on it. I was able to read the contents of the chip with my MiniPro TL866A but this brought nothing new. The file recovered was small and it contained just "0"s and "1"s. I powered up the board with and without this chip installed.
Nothing changed.
I scoured the Internet in search of information regarding this MSIG 1.0 but I got nothing to help me. I wanted to edit the contents of this chip but because I didn't know its purpose I didn't do anything.
GREAT! &$#@(^*%^#!$#!!!!!
The road to greatness is paved with good challenges not to be mistaken for intentions or it was something along these lines ... &*($#&^*(#$#!!!
I WAS QUITE PISSED to say the least. This seemed an easy job. Get in. Get out. Take the prize and live to tell the tale ...
Well, it was fun while it lasted, so, I prepared the board for cleaning. Just a show piece, nothing more. RIP.
In spite of everything, while I cleaned the motherboard one thought kept creeping inside my mind.
What if the other caps are bad? (It seems that I didn't learn anything from the Gigabyte GA-8TM story. In that instance I changed almost all of the caps and all was for nothing too. That was my first experience with the int 19h ... )
After I washed the K7 PRO and I dried it using my air compressor, I placed it for a few minutes under the sun to let some of the leftover alcohol that might be trapped under some chips, evaporate.
A few minutes later I checked the board.
BEHOLD! THE SMOKING GUN! YEP dead NB!
Even if I dried the board using an air compressor, some of the IPA 99% that got inside the NB chip, oozed out. I wiped the alcohol that came from that tiny crack, twice, a clear sign that this mobo don't work no more ...
Looking back, the NB missing it original heatsink should've given me food for thought. When I changed the TIM on the NB chip, that tiny "scratch" didn't alarm me as it looked to be on the surface. I knew that the board wasn't handled with silk gloves. Deep scratches on the CPU locking arms, on the PCI slots and a few superficial ones on the back. Bent pins from the Front Panel connector, etc.
The SB chip is in good shape ... but this doesn't matter ...
Embalmed for posterity ...
gallery:
https://postimg.cc/gallery/w3wStzb
More later.
