Mobo vs PS problem
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From: Mike Easter on 21 Nov 2009 13:29 Oops. My brevity answered the stress test assignment qx/s ambiguously. Paul wrote: > If you want an interesting test to try, use Prime95 Torture Test from > mersenne.org/freesoft . In your particular case, you'd want to run > "small FFTs", so that the Torture Test runs within CPU cache, and > makes the CPU get as hot as possible. Can the processor and Vcore > run the Torture Test for at least ten minutes ? Yes. test completed. > Does anything overheat ? No. > Are your symptoms reproduced ? No. > Did the computer shut off ? No. Nothing even speeded up. In the past, but not recently, perhaps since I added more ram, I had observed 'something' - that sounded like a fan speeding up or becoming louder - under certain conditions, say maybe booting up from a linux live CD - temporarily becoming louder for a little while, some 10s of seconds, not a minute, before resolving. However, this transient increased loudness was not associated with any kind of shutdown or problem at all. -- Mike Easter
From: Mike Easter on 21 Nov 2009 13:58 Mike Easter wrote: > I'm trying to conceive of the mechanism behind this hardware problem > Here is the hardware: mobo ECS 741GX-M2 which is a AMD socket A using a > AMD Geode NX-1750 which board has integrated everything, video, sound, & > ethernet via the SiS chipsets 741GX north & 964L south. What are the chances of some kind of 'mismatch' (involving something that is triggered betwen the cpu and the supporting chipsets) between the mobo and the cpu? Even tho' the cpu came with the mobo, the socket A mobo is described as supporting athlon xp, sempron, or athlon, but it doesn't actually say anything about the geode, nx or otherwise. I'm reading this about the geode nx Features: * 7th generation core (based on Mobile Athlon XP-M). * Power management: AMD PowerNow!, ACPI 1.0b and ACPI 2.0. * 128 KB L1 cache. * 256 KB L2 cache with hardware data prefetch * 133 MHz Front Side Bus (FSB) * 3DNow!, MMX and SSE instruction sets * 0.13 �m (130 nm) fabrication process * Pin compatibility between all NX family processors. * OS support: Linux, Windows CE, MS Windows XP. * Compatible with Socket A motherboards And then I'm reading in the wiki about the athlon xpm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athlon#Mobile_Athlon_XP Also, I'm confused about some bios settings regarding AGP. There is no AGP card installed, but somehow what I read from hardware reports from lshw or SIW, it seems that the SiS chipset is trying to tell me that it is acting like AGP for the VGA. If I am supposed to make some intelligent choices about how anything about how the AGP aperture size is configured, then maybe I would also need to make an intelligent choice about other AGP related issues. -- Mike Easter
From: Paul on 21 Nov 2009 19:20
Mike Easter wrote: > larry moe 'n curly wrote: >> Brevity, Mike, brevity. :) > > I'll try. :-) > > Paul wrote: >> If you want an interesting test to try, use Prime95 Torture Test from >> mersenne.org/freesoft . In your particular case, you'd want to run >> "small FFTs", so that the Torture Test runs within CPU cache, and >> makes the CPU get as hot as possible. Can the processor and Vcore >> run the Torture Test for at least ten minutes ? Does anything overheat > ? >> Are your symptoms reproduced ? Did the computer shut off ? > > No. No. and No. > > I don't see how these explanations help me understand... > > -1- why this symptom is only reproducible with one specific type of > scrolling in a browser window regardless of OS or browser > -2- why part of the mobo still has power to light the ethernet lights > after general failure protection shutdown > In terms of things to look at, if the motherboard had a LED that monitored +5VSB, I might watch that during a scroll-related failure. +5VSB should never blink or glitch. Asus motherboards generally all have a LED fitted to +5VSB, which is a convenient warning that the motherboard still has power. Other brands, aren't likely to provide that. (My Asrock doesn't have that LED, which is an annoyance.) Some oscillating power supply faults, end up causing the Asus green LED to blink one or two times a second. Connecting a multimeter to +5VSB, isn't as likely to catch any transient behavior quite as well as the LED can. Naturally, if the transient is in the nanosecond region, you can't see it. But power supplies tend to misbehave in the millisecond region. If the +5VSB disappears for even a fraction of a second, that can deprive the chip driving PS_ON# of drive, and PS_ON# goes to the off state. So you may find that, say, shorting out +5VSB, causes the supply to switch off. But your latch-off symptoms are significant. As Larry points out, a power supply can latch off if there is a failure. So you could try another power supply and repeat your test. The motherboard Vcore also has latched fault capability, but the motherboard designer would have to make an extra effort to cause that to require turning off all the power. So the simplest explanation is the power supply did it. It could be a problem with the transient response of the supply - some unique combination of current waveforms between the supply and the motherboard, when the scrolling thing happens. If the computer was just switching off, that would be much harder to isolate, since a crafty person could write code to trigger turning off the computer. But pressing the power button on the front of the computer, would cause it to come on again. It is the fact that your machine requires switching off power on the back, which is significant. The power supply can latch up easily. The motherboard designer can do it with a bit more effort. If I didn't know which to swap out first, I'd have to try the power supply. Even if there is no good explanation as to why it should happen. To do the necessary debugging, it helps to have a $35000 four channel storage scope on your bench. You can trace down all sorts of craziness with one of those. I worked many years with one of those sitting next to me. But if you don't have one of those, then swapping a power supply for $50, is the next best option :-) Paul |