Building New PC - Will Not Boot

[eaolson]

I am putting a system together, PIII 933, Supermicro 370SSA motherboard, 256 Mb DIMM, older 4.3 Gb Seagate Medalist IDE HD, 48X CD, floppy. No other peripherals are attached currently. The motherboard has onboard video, sound, IDE controller. Installed all the above hardware, started system. System will not boot past memory test with CD attached, and will only intermittently boot past memory test without the CD attached. I have checked, rechecked, and triple checked my jumper settings. Also, the power supply seems to be on the fritz. Occasionally, the PC will not post at all when the power is turned on. This is an ATX power supply. This will still occur even after the power supply itself is powered down. All hardware is new with the exception of the HD. Any help or advice would be appreciated... I am thinking that it sound like two separate issues: 1. Bad power supply, and 2. bad DIMM. Let me know. Thanks.

[Gweedo]

Sounds like your power supply. I think if you have another you can try that you know is good then your system will come up.


Usually if you memory is bad it will never make it past a mem check in any circumstance.

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[georgesr]

A couple of quick thoughts. If you even thinmk your power supply is on the fritz, dump it and get a new one. A bad power supply will fry all of your compoments real fast. You didn't say if you could get the machine to boot from a floppy try it. Is your CMOS set up to boot from the CD rom drive. Check the specs on your IDE controller. It may be an ATA ultra 66 controller which is not backward compatable with your older hard drive or your drive may not be compatable with your controller. If you can't get the info from your manual try segate's or Supermicro's websites. These are all common problems that I have encountered in the course of building many machines. The power supply is a serious issue though. They cost about 35 bucks and you must have over $500 tied up in your new hardware http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/frown.gif No brainer there, dump the old power supply. I hope this helps.

Linux rules.

Originally posted by eaolson:
I am putting a system together, PIII 933, Supermicro 370SSA motherboard, 256 Mb DIMM, older 4.3 Gb Seagate Medalist IDE HD, 48X CD, floppy. No other peripherals are attached currently. The motherboard has onboard video, sound, IDE controller. Installed all the above hardware, started system. System will not boot past memory test with CD attached, and will only intermittently boot past memory test without the CD attached. I have checked, rechecked, and triple checked my jumper settings. Also, the power supply seems to be on the fritz. Occasionally, the PC will not post at all when the power is turned on. This is an ATX power supply. This will still occur even after the power supply itself is powered down. All hardware is new with the exception of the HD. Any help or advice would be appreciated... I am thinking that it sound like two separate issues: 1. Bad power supply, and 2. bad DIMM. Let me know. Thanks.

[eaolson]

Thanks for the input... I had a feeling it was the power supply because I bought the case from a vendor that my employeer bought PCs from and we had power supply issues with those PCs. You'd think I would have saw that and bought a different spec. But no... I will pick up a new power supply and try that.
Also, the HD is an Ultra ATA. It does not specify on the HD or the Seagate website if it is an Ultra ATA66... I hope that it is... I will be purchasing a new HD soon regardless. Also, the onboard IDE controller is ATA100... is that backwards compatable??Thanks again.

[This message has been edited by eaolson (edited 18 November 2000).]