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From: Peter Bogiatzidis on 27 Apr 2007 12:15
Hello,

I'm trying to fix a Compaq SR1365CL that has an OEM ASUS K8S-LA motherboard
with an AMD Athlon 64 3300+ processor. The PC will boot (not completely) and
I am able to enter BIOS, but it will never start Windows XP Home. I've even
tried using a new SATA drive in order to install a fresh version of XP
without any success.

In the process, I brought it to a local computer shop and was told that
either the motherboard or BIOS is at fault. On this motherboard the BIOS
can't be updated unless you can start Windows. So I'm not really sure if one
or both are causing the problem.

I'm doing this as a favor for someone who can't afford to buy a new PC and
was given this with the hope that they could have it fixed. I just want to
help them get started using a PC. It would be nice if I could fix it for
under $100. I should also mention that the person who passed the PC along
did something that either broke it in the first place or tried to fix
whatever had happened to it, but I'm not aware of what occurred or was done
to it.

Searches haven't turned up much. I would like to reuse the processor that I
mentioned above (socket 754) in order to keep the cost down. Does anyone
here have any troubleshooting tips that might help to get this PC fixed? If
I have to replace the motherboard, does anyone have any specific sources or
know of one that I can substitute in its place? Does it make sense to stay
with an ASUS motherboard or would any socket 754 board do? Also, do the
chipsets matter?

Thanks in advance to those who post a reply to the group.

Peter.


From: Paul on 30 Apr 2007 15:52
Peter Bogiatzidis wrote:
> Paul,
>
> Thanks for your response.
>
> I checked the BIOS chip and unfortunately it is soldered in place. I also
> tried resetting CMOS. Afterwards, I was still unable to install Windows XP
> Home on the original SATA drive.
>
> As you suggested, I was able to run Knoppix Live 3.4 from CD and could
> access the Internet as well as print to a network printer. One thing that I
> noticed was that the SATA was not recognized, or, perhaps better stated,
> that it couldn't be mounted in Knoppix. I'm not very fluent in Knoppix (aka
> Linux?), so I may be missing some key points here.
>
> What does all of this mean? Does the fact that the PC will boot Knoppix from
> CD and work mean that both the motherboard and the BIOS chip are okay?
>
> I should also mention that prior to my original post I found that there are
> 6 potential channel devices that appear in BIOS. The first and second
> channels allow for 2 IDE devices each, while the third and fourth only allow
> one SATA device each. I learned this by trial and error while trying
> different type drives (IDE & SATA) and connecting them to the various IDE or
> SATA connections on the motherboard.
>
> Currently, there are no first channel devices shown, as there are no IDE
> hard drives connected. The second channel devices show up as the two CD/DVD
> drives that have always been connected to the system. The third channel
> device shows just the one SATA drive. If I switch the cable to the second
> SATA connector on the motherboard the drive will appear as the only device
> on the fourth channel.
>
> With that, I'm still at a loss at understanding why the PC won't work or let
> me install Windows XP Home again. If it helps, I believe that the BIOS is
> dated 10/29/04 and reads as SIS 760-6A7I7A09-00.
>
> As I said, thank you for your response. So far, booting Knoppix, accessing
> the Internet, and being able to print are the most productive things that
> I've been able to make this PC do since I began working on it. If you have
> any other ideas as to what is going on here, your help would be greatly
> appreciated.
>
> Peter.
>

For native SATA support, it might help to use WinXP SP1 or later. If your
Windows XP Home disk is the original version, you can use a program like
AutoStreamer, to incorporate WinXP + SP1 and burn a new install CD.

The SIS964 Southbridge has been around for a while. Some motherboards
have a BIOS setting, allowing the SATA ports to be either set to
"native" mode or to "RAID" mode. Older boards might only support RAID,
and that could be an immature BIOS issue. Or, it may be possible there
are several revisions of 964, but that would be unfortunate if there were
true. I don't really know the history of the 964, except that it has been
around longer than a lot of other Southbridge chips.

The "native" mode *should* be supported by the native driver in WinXP SP1
or later. The "RAID" mode would require pressing F6 early in the install,
presenting a floppy with the driver, and giving windows a RAID driver.

You can get drivers from the download page of www.sis.com . For example,
this is the RAID driver. This is an 11MB download. To build a floppy,
you unzip the file, then find the "floppyimage" folder, and copy the contents
of "964_180" to your floppy. You should have a "txtsetup.oem" at the top
level of the floppy, plus the RAID folder and the SISRAID file. When you
press F6 during the install, the Windows installer should open the
floppy, read the txtsetup.oem, and if the enumeration of the chipset
matches the drivers, it will use the drivers as requested.

http://driver.sis.com/raid/raid411a.zip

If you are still having problems, another problem is apparently some
SATA drives that operate at 3Gbit/sec cable interface, have an
autonegotiation feature. Jumpering the drive to run at 1.5Gbit/sec
is sometimes needed, so the chipset can see the drive. And this is
because the chipset doesn't like the antics of the drive, during
startup. Forcing the disk drive to run at 1.5Gbit/sec, by using a
jumper, stops the autonegotiation function.

You can try downloading the SATA drive testing utility from the
hard drive maker's web site. Usually, such a utility boots from a
floppy, and allows testing of the drive. In the past, such utilities
have been picky about what silicon controls the hardware, so the
most likely thing to work, would be if the 964 was in "native" mode
in the BIOS. But that is another thing to try, if you want to
prove there is a working hardware interface.

So you still have some more testing to do, to prove or disprove
the "busted hardware" theory.

Note that the latest versions of Knoppix or Ubuntu Live CDs have
an install option. That would be another way to test whether software
is capable of using your hardware as it stands. You can always
blow away the Linux install, once you've proved it works, and install
WinXP over top.

So you have plenty of toys to play with :-)

Paul
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