Now what? New Rig Won't Boot

[wevsspot]

Try ExRoadie's advice and only have the optical drive connected with TMOD's CD in the drive. Leave your other drives disconnected. My suspicion is that a slight change in hardware confirguration tricks the BIOS into letting you get to the BIOS utility. Of course, only speculation or hoping for a miracle here, but it's worth a shot.

[BadWillHunting]

You are on the last ditch solutions... Long CMOS clear and if that doesn't do it, try spurring it with the CD boot mentioned.

 

I know it doesn't want to boot, but you have to remember that the board logic is set up (and has been for years) on ROMBIOS loader faiure to look to the floppy (or removeable) drive for a Bootstrap and BIOS flasher with ROMFILE... for more than a decade, this has been the only possible way to repair a flashbios with a problem that prevents the normal boot sequence. If that is what the problem is, the only other thing you can do is RMA the sucker, so I recommend trying it first.

[red930]

When I hook up a cheap PSU tester from Ultra, all the lights light up like they should, with the exception of the light for -5v. They could be a clue, but it could also mean the -5v bulb does not work. More tomorrow night, probably.

There is no -5V rail on modern powersupplies. It was done away with in the ATX 2.X spec.

 

These new high-power PSUs may not start properly on a PSU tester. Many units need at least some load on one or more rails before they will start.

 

Some of the OCZ GameXtream units will start with just the tester I have while some need a fan on one of the leads to start.

 

I use the COOLMAX PS-124 tester that's available on newegg at the office and at home. It has connections for every powersupply on the market.

 

BTW I think it was MSI that released a motherboard with the built-in Soundblaster module. The only problem was that the board required a PSU that provided -5V when most PSUs had already dropped the -5V rail. There were a lot of pissed-off customers and MSI ate a lot of boards.

[whovous]

I posted here this AM, but it is not here now.

 

If there is no -5v, then that seems to take a PSU problem out of the picture. I will try the 24 hour clear and the TMOD boot disc. I will probably try a floppy disc boot as well, just for the sake of completeness before giving up.

[whovous]

I tried a 22 hour clear and attached both an optical drive with a TNOD disk and a floppy drive with a basic DOS disk. Three red LEDs and nothing more. Now I need to figure out how to get Monarch to do an RMA.

 

Thanks all.

[Quinn]

I tried a 22 hour clear and attached both an optical drive with a TNOD disk and a floppy drive with a basic DOS disk. Three red LEDs and nothing more. Now I need to figure out how to get Monarch to do an RMA.

 

Thanks all.

 

I'll be interested in hearing if your successful. The mobo (LP UT nF4 Ultra-D) I recently purchased has a (different) problem and Monarch will not RMA it because I didn't buy their $16 warranty. I'm having to RMA it thru DFI directly, and DFI has been slow (2 days now) getting back to me with an RMA #.

[whovous]

We may be learning why their prices are so low...

 

I still need to contact them. Wish me luck.

[whovous]

They blew me off. On to DFI...