VA-503A dying??

Hi, all..

I have a VA-503A w/K6-2 500 in a homebrew box I built about 5 years
ago, running W2K. It's been running fine in that span, until a few
months ago, when it started crashing about every two or three weeks.

The crashes are perpetual now, and W2K won't get past the "Starting Up"
progress bar without hanging hard or crashing altogether. I've removed
the NIC, the sound card, swapped memory, swapped IDE cables and
controllers (primary for secondary), changed power supplies and video
cards, and the problem persists. All swaps were with known-good or new
components. No soap.

It surely sounds like a hardware problem to me, but I fear I've
eliminated most of the hardware except the MB itself. W2K recovery
console always works, and the drive data appears all intact, but the
thing just won't start the OS - not even into Safe Mode.

If anyone out there has any ideas about how to resurrect this box, I'd
be most appreciative...I fear the worst, and while its not a huge loss
data wise, I'd still like to rescue it if possible.

Thanks in advance for your consideration and assistance,
-David
ps Please reply to group; email here is dead.

doubt it is hardware and if it is it is just 2000 being ugly.
Besides ME prolly my least fav os. I would conside a reformat, but first
I would boot from a diagnostic floppy from the drive manufacturer and
check the drive. Back your data up, and reload os. XP is nice. If it
were the mobo you would not boot at all, or beeps no video, etc.


wrote:
> Hi, all..
>
> I have a VA-503A w/K6-2 500 in a homebrew box I built about 5 years
> ago, running W2K. It's been running fine in that span, until a few
> months ago, when it started crashing about every two or three weeks.
>
> The crashes are perpetual now, and W2K won't get past the "Starting Up"
> progress bar without hanging hard or crashing altogether. I've removed
> the NIC, the sound card, swapped memory, swapped IDE cables and
> controllers (primary for secondary), changed power supplies and video
> cards, and the problem persists. All swaps were with known-good or new
> components. No soap.
>
> It surely sounds like a hardware problem to me, but I fear I've
> eliminated most of the hardware except the MB itself. W2K recovery
> console always works, and the drive data appears all intact, but the
> thing just won't start the OS - not even into Safe Mode.
>
> If anyone out there has any ideas about how to resurrect this box, I'd
> be most appreciative...I fear the worst, and while its not a huge loss
> data wise, I'd still like to rescue it if possible.
>
> Thanks in advance for your consideration and assistance,
> -David
> ps Please reply to group; email here is dead.
>

Hi, farmuse...thanks for your input!

Ordinarily, I would agree with you on W2K just being ugly, but this box
has run W2K just fine for close to five years with no problems, and all
it does is host a developer DB and a printer. I haven't made changes to
its configuration in I couldn't tell you how long, nearly two years
perchance. It just sits in my office, fat, dumb, and happy. I guess my
own feeble brain says, in the absence of other change, hardware must be
the one changing. I guess the drive itself is certainly a possibility.
A parallel install of W2K from CD went fine, but when I tried to boot
into it - same thing - hang/freeze at "Starting Up..." apparently
right after mup.sys loads.

I've had someone else suggest to me that the power regulation
components of the motherboard are possibly going bad (a common symptom
from an aging mb), and that wouldn't show up until the system was
really taxed, eg not so much in "lighter-weight" environs (like
recovery console, or during POST).

If I can get a few files off the drive of this machine, I'll be happy,
and I'll try a reformat/reinstall.

Still soliciting any other good ideas/advice.

Thanks,
David

From what you say, I think it sounds like a hardware problem,
especially since a parallel installation of Windows 2000 does the same
thing.

It could indeed be the voltage regulators or capacitors on the
motherboard. I have seen motherboards with this problem, and the
symptoms are not unlike yours. Sometimes, but not always, you can even
see the bad capacitors. They have bulging tops (like Coke cans getting
ready to explode) or have brown stuff oozing out of them. Once a
problem like this starts, it tends to get progressively worse, as do
most hardware problems.

Another possibility is that the CPU is going bad, or maybe the heatsink
thermal compound is not as effective as it used to be.

Something you can try for the time being is to underclock the CPU to
slowest speed possible. Something like 166 MHz (2.5 x 66), for example.
If it is a voltage or temperature problem, that will at least help
relieve the motherboard/CPU of some of the load.

Do *not* use a 2x multiplier, because AMD K6-x processors interpret this
as a 6x multiplier. That is, setting it to 2x66 = 133 will actually
give you 6x66 = 400 MHz. It is a useful trick for overclocking, though.

--Alex



wrote:
> Hi, farmuse...thanks for your input!
>
> Ordinarily, I would agree with you on W2K just being ugly, but this box
> has run W2K just fine for close to five years with no problems, and all
> it does is host a developer DB and a printer. I haven't made changes to
> its configuration in I couldn't tell you how long, nearly two years
> perchance. It just sits in my office, fat, dumb, and happy. I guess my
> own feeble brain says, in the absence of other change, hardware must be
> the one changing. I guess the drive itself is certainly a possibility.
> A parallel install of W2K from CD went fine, but when I tried to boot
> into it - same thing - hang/freeze at "Starting Up..." apparently
> right after mup.sys loads.
>
> I've had someone else suggest to me that the power regulation
> components of the motherboard are possibly going bad (a common symptom
> from an aging mb), and that wouldn't show up until the system was
> really taxed, eg not so much in "lighter-weight" environs (like
> recovery console, or during POST).
>
> If I can get a few files off the drive of this machine, I'll be happy,
> and I'll try a reformat/reinstall.
>
> Still soliciting any other good ideas/advice.
>
> Thanks,
> David
>

*Great* idea, Alex. I'll give that a try tonight.

-dew

Alex:

Awesome news, Alex. You're idea worked like a charm. Although I had to
try a couple of different combinations, I finally settled on a CPU
setting of 66Mhz and bus multiplier of 4x, so the MB thinks it's
hosting a K6 266. (The first try, leaving the multiplier at 5x and
dropping the CPU from 100 to 66Mhz didn't change the lockup behavior.
Dropping the multiplier to 4x did the trick). But the good news is that
Windows 2000 now starts and runs happily!!! I'm not sure if that
suggests the CPU is no longer stable at the higher frequency or if the
frequency generator is, itself, unstable now at the higher speed, but
either way I believe I have the chance to get a few things off of that
box. I'm not sure how much *time* I have at this combination (since I
suspect the deterioration will continue), but at any rate
"underclocking" the CPU seems to have bought me some valuable time!.

Thanks again for the great suggestion!!

-David

Have you cleaned the gunk (dirt and dust) out of the CPU heatsink, the
CPU fan and the PS fan lately? The box I built for my mother-in-law
years ago recently started to get flakey, I reached in and touched the
HS and it was quite warm, actually hot would be a better description
(system has a k6-2/500 CPU). I removed the CPU HS, took off the fan
and used a cheap paintbrush to clean out the crap on the HS and fan;
now the HS feels merely warm to the touch, like it should, and the
machine runs stable (it was doing random odd things like lock-ups and
program errors, etc.). I tried to redistribute the thermal compound a
bit and made certain the HSF was firmly screwed back and forth onto
the CPU heat spreader before clipping the HSF to the CPU socket. I
also pulled the PS fan out and cleaned it up, removed the bearing
cover and put 3 drops of Mobil 1 oil on the fan bearing area (ok, so I
didn't have my Teflon lube with me cuz I was out of town, so the
mobile 1 oil sounded like a good substitute, a relatively thin stable
oil compound) and the fan noise also magically disappeared.

--
Best regards,
Kyle
<> wrote in message
news: oups.com...
| Alex:
|
| Awesome news, Alex. You're idea worked like a charm. Although I had
to
| try a couple of different combinations, I finally settled on a CPU
| setting of 66Mhz and bus multiplier of 4x, so the MB thinks it's
| hosting a K6 266. (The first try, leaving the multiplier at 5x and
| dropping the CPU from 100 to 66Mhz didn't change the lockup
behavior.
| Dropping the multiplier to 4x did the trick). But the good news is
that
| Windows 2000 now starts and runs happily!!! I'm not sure if that
| suggests the CPU is no longer stable at the higher frequency or if
the
| frequency generator is, itself, unstable now at the higher speed,
but
| either way I believe I have the chance to get a few things off of
that
| box. I'm not sure how much *time* I have at this combination (since
I
| suspect the deterioration will continue), but at any rate
| "underclocking" the CPU seems to have bought me some valuable time!.
|
| Thanks again for the great suggestion!!
|
| -David
|

hey thats the same oil I use to revive old fans ! now that is funny.
Glad the original post got the machine to run, was gonna suggest
flashing the bios as it may have become corrit for some odd reason,
happened to me on the last 503+, anyway glad all is well.

Kyle wrote:

> Have you cleaned the gunk (dirt and dust) out of the CPU heatsink, the
> CPU fan and the PS fan lately? The box I built for my mother-in-law
> years ago recently started to get flakey, I reached in and touched the
> HS and it was quite warm, actually hot would be a better description
> (system has a k6-2/500 CPU). I removed the CPU HS, took off the fan
> and used a cheap paintbrush to clean out the crap on the HS and fan;
> now the HS feels merely warm to the touch, like it should, and the
> machine runs stable (it was doing random odd things like lock-ups and
> program errors, etc.). I tried to redistribute the thermal compound a
> bit and made certain the HSF was firmly screwed back and forth onto
> the CPU heat spreader before clipping the HSF to the CPU socket. I
> also pulled the PS fan out and cleaned it up, removed the bearing
> cover and put 3 drops of Mobil 1 oil on the fan bearing area (ok, so I
> didn't have my Teflon lube with me cuz I was out of town, so the
> mobile 1 oil sounded like a good substitute, a relatively thin stable
> oil compound) and the fan noise also magically disappeared.
>

oops I meant to say corrupt


farmuse wrote:

>
>
>
> hey thats the same oil I use to revive old fans ! now that is funny.
> Glad the original post got the machine to run, was gonna suggest
> flashing the bios as it may have become corrit for some odd reason,
> happened to me on the last 503+, anyway glad all is well.
>
> Kyle wrote:
>
>> Have you cleaned the gunk (dirt and dust) out of the CPU heatsink, the
>> CPU fan and the PS fan lately? The box I built for my mother-in-law
>> years ago recently started to get flakey, I reached in and touched the
>> HS and it was quite warm, actually hot would be a better description
>> (system has a k6-2/500 CPU). I removed the CPU HS, took off the fan
>> and used a cheap paintbrush to clean out the crap on the HS and fan;
>> now the HS feels merely warm to the touch, like it should, and the
>> machine runs stable (it was doing random odd things like lock-ups and
>> program errors, etc.). I tried to redistribute the thermal compound a
>> bit and made certain the HSF was firmly screwed back and forth onto
>> the CPU heat spreader before clipping the HSF to the CPU socket. I
>> also pulled the PS fan out and cleaned it up, removed the bearing
>> cover and put 3 drops of Mobil 1 oil on the fan bearing area (ok, so I
>> didn't have my Teflon lube with me cuz I was out of town, so the
>> mobile 1 oil sounded like a good substitute, a relatively thin stable
>> oil compound) and the fan noise also magically disappeared.
>>