No BIOS and Desparate

edit: Born at night, but not last night ........

 

Yeah jacrabbit I agree. I've had a few older PCs that had been sitting around for a while that refused to do ANYTHING. Cleaning and reseating the ram sticks did the trick.

Since it's the only common factor with this problem that's where I would look.

Regards,
Den

 

With much regret it is not the RAM either. I removed all RAM and tried powering up with each card separately. No BIOS and no error. Although I could not do this with any drives attached, I don't see how that would matter to the BIOS. I think I've just gone insane.

 

Are any of the D-LEd's (Diagnostic LED's) at the back of the case working? what is the sequence telling you? which model in particular is your board? there are 8 different boards listed as ms-6330 on MSI's site
Regard Jac

 

Since the mainboard power connector is tougher to access than your memory modules, how is it that you were able to reset CMOS without removing drives but couldn't access memory without removing drives?

 

What processor are you trying to use?
What memory are you trying to use?
What PSU are you trying to use?

 

The CMOS jumper is on the opposite edge of the board with easy access.

 

Everything is the same as what I was replacing. AMD 1.3GHZ CPU, Kingston PC-133 DIMM, Antex 350W PSU.

 

There are no LEDs on this board as far as I can see. The only LEDs are on the SCSI card and network card when they are plugged in. The only way I can tell that anything is happening, with everything pulled out, is that the fans start and the power light in front is on.

I can't say which model it is other then what is stamped on the board (MS-6330 ver:5).

 

I'm very aware of that. However, if you did not disconnect the main power connector which was under your drives, next to the DIMM slots but closer to the edge of the board, you could not reset CMOS by simply moving the jumper. Please note the detail of my earlier instruction.

From Post #10
Reset CMOS as follows:
Unplug unit from power receptical
remove main power connector from PSU to MoBo.
Move CMOS jumper from 1&2 to 2&3
Wait 10 - 15 seconds
Re-jumper 1&2
Re-connect 20 or 24 pin power
Attempt startup while dancing on the Delete key

Also, is your current T-Bird a 133MHz CPU or 100MHz CPU? How about the first one?

 

Just noticed you have now mentioned a SCSI card when earlier you only referenced IDE drives. Please advise re: the drive configuration. Is the SCSI card newly introduced or was it just overlooked earlier?

 

You mention at the beginning that you are connected to a UPS was and still is, have you tried without.

 

No but I have tried switching outlets with the other working machine.

 

Hi GW,
From what I can find of the 8 x MS-6330 boards most are marked K7T whatever, the only one with a Rev.5 is a K7T Turbo 2, download that manual, it has optional D-Leds or you could add in an optional D-Bracket, with 2 x Usb & D-Leds, strangely enough I have one of the D-Brackets in the proverbial box of Bits
TTFN
Jac

 

Jac

His first board had a KT7 chipset. Revision 5 has a KT7a.



Edit: Jac - I just looked again at a couple of things re: these boards and technically, you are correct and I have mis-stated MSI's chipset nomenclature. I used the more common nomenclature used by Abit, Asus and others during that era. The point is that the first board had a VIA chipset which ran at 100MHz and the second board (Rev 5) had the VIA chipset which ran at a 133 MHz bus speed. Technically these were doubled to 200MHz and 266MHz.

Your reference to K7T and K7T turbo is indeed the way Microstar named these.

 

Let's go back to basic.

Disconnect all hard disks, dvd/cd drives etc. from the motherboard. Remove their power as well.

Remove all the cards which are not required for system boot.

Disconnect all external peripherals.

Now try.

Are you getting any beeps ?

 

rsinfo:

Did I hear an echo? Same advice given a week ago. Still waiting for a response. Maybe he/she will answer at some point in time.

 

Sorry Rockster2U for the duplicate advice.

Its a long thread & these things keep on happening.

 

Well if I may throw my 2 bits into the Barrel I would point the Finger straight at the "Capacitors" of the board.
Reason: One thing that can go wrong on not just two identical components but in my case 5 I have 5 IBM Net Vista's PIII ( waiting for the hard rubbish collection) 1000 MHz Coppermine CPU all working 100%, Ram 100%, HD100%, PSU 100%, and I can change every component that I can find and swap them around as much as I like, the PC's will power up, fans spinning but non will boot into Windows for one reason and one reason only Bulges or leaking Capacitors, some you can hardly see the bulge but it is there.
In my book any mobo of this Vintage yours included can have faulty Capacitors, that period of time early nineties was known for that. To have 2 of the same with the same problem like that is not unusual at all more like common.
good luck
hawk22

 

rsinfo,

No apology necessary - its still good advice and well worth repeating. Similarly, Sparrow's post #3 still begs an answer.

Hawk,

Good point and MSI was one of the many than encountered the problem with capacitors. This could well be at play here too, however, there are a few basic steps that can be taken to rule out other potential causes of this problem. This could be as simple as a bad video card but I keep coming back to clearing CMOS first. I've seen many instances of an electrical storm, a surge, a brown-out or bad shutdown playing havoc with retained BIOS settings on older boards. Add that to the fact that many older boards must be "reset" any time memory, CPU, HDD or other components are changed and one would be negligent not to clear CMOS. Its about as fundamental as it gets with reagrd to trouble shooting this type of problem. At the same time, it should only be considered as a starting point in an attempt to resolve this issue.

The problem I have here is that it is difficult getting any meaningful feedback from the original poster. This isn't a quiz show - I'm just trying to wade through all the hyperbole to get some actual factual feedback. It doesn't make any logical sense to me that the same individual who would allegedly change their Motherboard, CPU, PSU and who knows what else would reference a major production involved in reseating their memory because they have to remove drives. Similarly, we now have a reference to a SCSI card or device when this system as originally described had only IDE drives. Oops ....... I guess that one slipped. Perhaps we weren't supposed to know that.

Hawk, you know the routine - garbage in ---> garbage out. This problem could be caused by a lot of things and most of them are very simple to identify and correct. Unfortunately, resolving any kind of problem through this or any other forum requires honest and thorough two way communication.