BIOS Troubles KT7ARAID

[Mip]

Hey Gang,

I just built a new system for my brother in law. It's the first time I've done this, and was frankly more surprised that it all seemed to come together than I would have been had smoke started coming out the back.

Here are the relevant parts:

AMD T-bird 1 GHz
1 256 mem stick
Abit KT7A Raid
IBM 45 GB 7200 rpm HD
Aopen 52x CD drive

The problem is that the machine would run the BIOS (Award), but then wouldn't search the HDD or FDD during boot. It would boot from CD, so I was able to load Linux on it (Mandrake 7.2), but it never made the HDD or FDD lights even blink upon several restarts.

The BIOS was able to recognize the HDD correctly (size and brand), as well as the FDD, so I figure that they must be connected properly (although I wasn't sure that I had the cable correctly attached to the FDD, as there was no documentation that came with it (Mitsumi), nor was there any on their website about which was Pin1).

I changed two things on the BIOS in my trouble shooting, and now it powers up, but doesn't send any info on BIOS to the screen:

1 I switched the boot order to boot HD1 rather than HD0, thinking that perhaps this was the problem (the drive is on IDE1). I now think that HD0 must be the first primary IDE HDD.

2 THere was a place on the advanced CMOS settings where one could bypass the motherboard testing. It looked to me like it was set up to bypass, so I changed that. I now think that I must have misunderstood the wording, as it now won't even let me hit DEL to enter setup.

I think the only thing I can do is to pull the 5V battery, and switch the jumpers for a few seconds to erase the BIOS settings, and start from scratch. I'll do this tomorrow morning.

Any ideas as to why it wouldn't look to my FDD and HDD during boot (prior to my messing with it)?

The manual did say to erase the CMOS settings when installing a new CPU - but I didn't do this, figuring that everything was new, and so would already be set to factory defaults. Interestingly, the clockspeed on the CPU when I first powered up said 600 - so maybe the board has had another processor in it previously. If that's the case, then perhaps resetting the CMOS will take care of things.

Any ideas would be much appreciated.

M

[Lorithar]

*eeeps*

and hopes you have the mobo manual handy

I will poke at the website for details.
1) in advanced settings there is a boot sequence .. that lets you choose which devices are eligible to boot the machine and which order to look at them
2) floppy drives are *usually* backward compared to harddrives. (harddroves pin 1 is *usually* toward the power connector floppies not) - verify by the fact that on power up the floppy light comes on for about 15 secs and goes off.

To get around the 'bypassed del' press any key on the keyboard *before* powering up. hold the key down until you trip the keyboard error and it will give you the F1 to enter bios.

Since Abit's website uses nonstandard, broken javascript, I cant get to the manual online, however, it looks like this bios is built to setup the cpu settings in the bios, not onthe mobo. The default lowest setting is 600 .. thats why you are getting a 600 mhz showing up..

[Mip]

THanks Lorithar.

I remembered reading about keyboard error, but didnt' think about the implications for forcing an error as an entrance to the BIOS settings.

As it turns out, I hadn't reset the CMOS when I began, so I did that yesterday. It worked like a charm. Interestingly, the CPU speed was 500 MHz this time. I set it to 1000 GHz, and it worked fine.

Also, I was able to reset the boot order. I hadn't noticed that prior to booting from the CD (if that's the first on the list), the BIOS asks for a confirmation of that selection. That's actually a nice feature if one happens to forget to change the boot order, and leaves a CD in there.

The Floppy Pin1 was actually closer to the power input, just like the HD. It works, so that must be it.

Anyway, all is well now, save for my modem. I have an AOPEN ISA modem that can't be found. I foolishly didn't double check the jumpers on it prior to install (maybe I shouldn't work unil 4am!). Upon examination of the manual, I discovered that it was set to COM4. I suspect that once I place the jumpers across 1+2, it should be on COM1 (at least according to the manual).

One additional question:

Some of teh parts I bought were OEM. I'm missing an 4 wire connector to connect the Aopen 52x CD player to the SoundBlaster Live value card. I assume that any 4 wire connector will work, provided I can figure out the correct orientation of the pins.

M

[Lorithar]

*nods*

Good for you ... sounds good so far ..
the cd to soundcard cable .. most comp stores sell gang plugs .. that have all connectors on each end .. works like a charm..

[Mip]

Thanks. BTW, you were right about the Pin1 being on the opposite side of the power connector on the floppy.

M