Need a clear conscience

[RedFury]

Alright...I'm feeling the fool and need someone to make me feel better.

Long story short, I convinced my best friend to build a computer instead of throwing his money at Gateway/Dell.

I helped him pick out the components, and we put it together last night. I tested to make sure we weren't wasting time once we got the MOBO/ CPU and Vid card installed. It POSTed, and I got into the BIOS no problem.

We installed everything else and booted up to change the defaults to the settings for his new Barton 2500+. Well, I make the mistake of setting the FSB to 200 and the mulitplier to 12 ( not thinking straight...it's late and I've been getting no sleep lately ). At any rate, I reboot the system, immediately get warning beeps from the system speaker and I shut the system off as fast as I can. Well, now it won't POST or anything. I couldnt' get the CMOS to clear, and the fault codes on the board ( epox 8RDA+ ) say that the board is bad -CF and FF with my processor to see if we fried his.

I've never been so embarrassed in my life. I RMA'd the board back today so hopefully we'll get a new one soon. The worst part was that he did 2 day shipping so we could get it built ASAP.

I feel like a heel, and have been beating myself up for this since last night. I feel bad because the system RAN until I messed with the BIOS. But I don't feel that we should have had that problem getting the CMOS cleared for a simple mistake OCing the processor. I've done similar on other boards and I just had to reset the CMOS or switch jumpers. Am I wrong to think that the board should have held up to a momentary OC? I'd like to think that I exploited a weakness that would have bit us in the ass later.

At any rate, the moral of the story: Don't mess with your BIOS under Duress.

[golfcart]

It's a known bug with the bios on nforce boards. It can be fixed with a hot swap or just buying a new bios. I have done the hotswap to an 8rda+ and an a7n8x using an a7v333 and it worked fine both times. It's a gutsy move, but quite invigorating when it works

[CraigK]

If it was the A7N8X you shouldn't have returned the board. I did the same thing with my board and same chip. I was seeing if I could get away with OC'ing w/o a new heatsink/fan. I set it too high and it wouldn't start up or post. I tried around 5-6 times. I then just let it sit for a while. and when I went back to it about 5hours later it just reset itself to default fsb by itself.

[M_Six]

I built a PC for a friend once. The deal was, he was supposed to build it and I was just going to be there for assistance. Well I ended up building it and then I heard from him at least twice a week for the next three months every time some little thing didn't work the way he expected.

Never again. Now I tell friends and family alike to get a Dell.

[RedFury]

What's a "Hot Swap" Golfcart?

I'm wondering if I can fix my Abit KR7a by getting a new bios chip for it.

[CraigK]

the term "hot swap" generally refers to putting in or taking out an accessory when the computer is still running. An item will usually advertise that it is hot swappable so you are safe when doing so. that is why golf called it "a gutsy move."

[golfcart]

DO NOT attempt this if you can't afford to lose the hardware in a second machine.


Hot swap:

1) Boot working computer with boot disk to dos.

2) Remove BIOS chip while it's on (hot).

3) Insert dead bios chip(swap).

4) Flash BIOS with the correct file, the one that was on it and got corrupted.

5) Shut down computer and put the correct chips in the correct boards.

6) Hopefully both machines will boot.



I prepare the good board by removing the bios while it's turned off. Then place a piece of fishing line in the socket from corner to corner and replace the chip. This makes it easy to pull while it's on without using metal tools.

[Scott Tiger]

WHOA! That is one gutsy move.

There are very few things in the computer world that I would call ballsy but that's definitely one of them.

(now if I only had some junk hardware to test the procedure on )

Sorry to hear about your problem RedFury. I know how you feel - I had a friend convince me to build him a machine and it caused me nothing but headaches. Now I just tell people to buy a Dell.

[Uncle Bob]

Sounds to me like every one is giving Redfury permission to feel good about himself again. After all every one knows about Murphy's law.

[RedFury]

I had a feeling thats what was being discussed, but it is difficult to do if you don't have the same BIOS chips, not to mention 2 different board manufacturers. I can see how that might work with the BIOS chip though. It would be like a PS2 Memory card. You can put it in and take it out all you want, but if you are writing data to it while you do one or the other, you will corrupt the data.