Strange LED behavior. RMA time?

[kyndigen]

I've been seing some strange behaviour while trying to get my apparently dead DFI board to work. When power is applied to the PSU, the DRAM and standby power LEDS (the two small yellow ones) blink repeatedly (the DRAM led is very faint, but it does blink). Once they become stable, I apply power via the power button, but all I get is 4 red LEDs indicating no CPU is detected.

 

Here's a bit of history of the problem:

1) We have 2 nearly identical boxes (except for the video card. one is a 7800, one is a 6800). One works, one doesn't.

 

2) Around oct - nov we determined that one box had a PSU problem. When power was applied, one of two things would happen: either the yellow LEDs would come on solid, or they would blink twice before staying solid. If they blinked, we got 4 red diagnostic LEDs, if not, everything was fine. Running with the other machine's PSU solved the problem. Since it was itermittant, we just put up with it.

 

3) Just after Christmas, the PSU died. No lights, no nothing. We RMA'd it.

 

4) Now we have the new PSU, but we get about a dozen yellow blinks when applying power to the board. The one time it didn't blink and just stayed solid, we still got 4 red leds.

 

We've cleared CMOS, checked the DRAM, and reseated the CPU. The only thing we haven't tried is putting the CPU in the other computer, but since the system has always run just fine if it gets past the initial power-up, I don't think it's the problem.

 

Have I managed to fry my mobo due to a bad PSU? It sounds like RMA time to me, but I figured I'd ask here first.

 

Thanks in Advance.

[yekim]

If you have the patience, try swapping out parts with your other "nearly identical" box until you find the problem :-| ?

[kyndigen]

Well I'm curious if anyone knows what the flashing standby LEDs mean. If it's just an indication of a generic problem, then I can potentially keep swapping components until I find out which one's bad. If it means that say, I've shorted the board out and I'm slowly frying the other components, then I should really avoid putting much more expensive hardware in contact with it.

 

Has anyone ever seen an issue with flashing yellow LEDs? Especially one where the DRAM power LED would flicker when power is applied to the board, but before the power button is pressed?

[cnknudson]

Well, I have had this problem in the past. It only happens when I have had to do a hard reset of the system. I was able to get rid of it by using a different power supply OR by turning off the PSU switch and waiting a for about 5 or 10 minutes. Once I had things running again I replaced my replacement power supply with the one in my sig (originally used). For what its worth, the replacement PSU was only 460W.

 

Today I was screwing around with the RAM timings and had to do a hard reset. Now I am back to the same problem, but I do not have the spare PSU to swap. The procedure that I used successfully in the past (PSU - off) is not working.

 

I've tried clearing the CMOS, etc. (not the 24 HR solution).

 

The flashing upper yellow LED seems to be some type of power supply indication (and I notice that the DRAM yellow LED blinks correspondingly). Does anyone know where to find the decoder ring for the flashing yellow LEDs?

 

CNK