939 mobo job lot

[Mainframeguy]

*sigh* in my penury I resorted to an Ebay bid for six 939 socket set mobos around £50 - they get delivered tomorrow.... need to get my old dual core 4200 back into service.... the question is, wil they all be SNAFU or will there be a working one in there - I have a pizza box build time ahead of me... if I even just get one I am quids in - two and up I could Ebay back the surplus and I'd have got a freebie....

If anyone has any sound advice for ways to go on visual ID for best working candidates that'd be cool....

When they arrive I may be able to say what brands etc.... the info on Ebay was scant to say the least (though seller was legit).

 

[Mainframeguy]

They're here - and they LOOK semi virginal by a careful visual, one GIGABYTE with SLI, couple of Winfasts (one with SLI), an Nforce, a generic, and just ONE Nforce3 AGP which is a Rev.1.0A...

I'm well nervous now, 'cause I needed AGP for my use! Just hope that ONE is a goer... otherwise I could get sucked into more expenditure for a PCIX graphics.... cause only TWO of the remaining five have onboard graphics!

Oh the perils of Ebay (listing just "job lot" and seller unresponsive to queries....).

If I have bad luck anyone interested in swapping 939 with PCIX/SLI for AGP? two for one... get one free!

Wish me luck - I'm going in.... :smoker:

 

[Mainframeguy]

DOH! AGP Nforce seems dead as a dodo - done CMOS reset and still not a sausage on the AGP board coming out - got one other AGP but that was my rock solid - so guess must be modo and cannot think anything else to try - time for some onboard in the pizza box I guess...

 

[Mainframeguy]

OK OK, been thinking about this and there are TWO more things I should try I reckon (IF I can do it in a cost effective manner!).... One is the BIOS battery - someone out there will know this, does a dead mobo battery cause a mobo to "brick" so that fans'll spin up and network led light and not a lot else?

Second most likely possibility; bad BIOS flash to brick the mobo - anyone had experience of this? And if they did was an EPROM programmer necessary to resolve the matter? I can't really justify expense of one of those... This is a dumb question I think, but the BIOS is highly mobo specific, no? or is it only chipset specific? I'm just toying with the idea of swapping around BIOS chips but not sure if that is viable....

Hopefully THIS time I'll not just be talking to myself again!

 

[LordOfLA]

1. Nope
2. Bootblock flash may save it if its a dead bios.
3. Talking to yourself is fun

 

[Mainframeguy]

bump... perhaps I should start a bootblock thread? Not sure where I am going to go with this... the boards are all too young for it to be the CMOS batteries I would say so my best hope is that they have been bricked by bad BIOS flashing and that I can restore them. Anyone know if BIOS is highly specific to Mobo? I would reckon definitely so, and that scope for swapping BIOS chips is limited.... you may wonder why I ask if they are all bricked BIOS chips (in theory). Well you see if I can get bootblock recover on any ONE board then maybe it would be a way to swap out BIOS and recover others? Not that I have got that far yet

 

[dreamliner77]

You could try it with the Nforce BIOS. What's the worst that could happen at this point?

 

[Mainframeguy]

>> BUMP >>

Dreamliner and Lord combined - useful, repped.

To justify the bump:-
Anyone else ever "met the challenge" of no money and lots of (good) hard drives, a good CPU (do they ever break?), old graphics/snoud, case or two, and DDR ram but not a working machine and questionable mobos?

I have some enforced build time until a host backup comes through and since I feel insecure coding when it may be lost I need something to do.

And I think I need a "plan" or "strategy" for making a box out of nothing... I have an even older 462 socket A Athlon 1900 machine that died... but I thought I'd be better going with the 939 4000 (which always gave trouble, I blame MSI Neo mobos!).

Get annoyed with having to pay premium for old parts and seem to risk throwing good money after bad with Ebay...

Thoughts? Experiences? I know there's no quick fix sure fire recipe, but I feel the need to plan methodically and this could help straighten that out.

PS least the Tagan PSU is rock solid (have TWO of those!) Anyone want to swap a Tagan for a proven good 939 AGP/onboard mobo?

 

[LordOfLA]

Well I happen to have rebuilt my athlon 64 from nas box to replace a prescott p4 for work stuff, except the video card has hdmi and dvi-i. Not too good when I have to analogue VGA lcd panels to work with. Limits me to one 1024x768 screen

If anyone has two 24" Dell or Digimate monitors going free I'll be keen on them be a while before I can fork out £400 or £800