raidion mobo's

[ed12]

ok here is a new 1to me
5-x raidions..
1-x ion style cab >with raidion mobo 2006 s/w<

problem
board may or may not boot
power cycle board's and they will boot.

now i have done the power bypass trick on the atx supply >green to grnd<
so that is not it.
have swapped the 533's with known good 1 for testing,same result's

my thought's are a reset timming issuie at boot or ram going south.??
now rember these board's all use the merit bios chip.
so this is to in question.

any 1 had this problem ?

these are the gold board
2=pcmi
2=ide hd interface
1=floppy
1=the mini video interface

ed

[mahkeymike]

replace caps.
must be a cap issue not holding charge.
check for leaking, dome top of caps.

[ed12]

i agree with u there..but i have chked all cap's
0-% were out
will monitor the power-supply rail's to see..
it has to be simple..
i say this because as i said,if i power it up
they may or may not make boot..thus the reason i did the nasty trick with green to grnd.
it some time's takes a fast re-boot to make them go,then they are soild..
and i cannot really think it's the bios chip
as the bios on these 6-x board's are of the 2 different types they used
in plc package chip >not dip<.
now please eveyone rember i am not running there i/o's and or hd's etc,
they are just hooked to a power supply and monitor for bare bone's testing
plus of course a keyboard so i can break into bios..

ed

[mahkeymike]

I had an issue like this aswell. At first i thought it was caps, but as you mentioned, I also tested the caps. Eventually the board died and would not boot at all. It ended up being the Northbridge chip. Some of those radion mobo's did not come with a heatsink on the NB. I always add heatsinks to both NB and SB chips from now on.

[ed12]

yup i have to agree
the northbrdge need's a heat sink..
where do u get your heat sink's from ?
if u do not mind the question..?

ed

[mahkeymike]

I yank them off of old mobo's.

[ed12]

glad to know i am not alone in that 1 ..
ok did the power monitioring thing
the rails are all fine


ed

[ed12]

ok do not cast his in stone just yet...
but here we go
removed sa0356-01 jumper
it goes from j2-2pin to the power sw
test board #1 will boot right into merit..ever time...
had the same problem with a nasty ion,removed the jumper,never a call back..
so what give's ?,do i need to break out the logic anaylizer to trace route.?
repeating test over the last hour..boot's right to merit every time..
what give's ?

ed

[ed12]

ok i have not as of yet with trace routing found what is causing it.?
but these board's >tester's i have here,with the jumper removed will boot every time..
here is what i did
went to bios >delete<
on these board's
told it to error only on keyboard/hdd error
do not display bios chk.
saved
removed jumper
will boot every time to merit
screen will go blank 5-7 sec's >normal<
then go right to looking for boot media..
this is the exact result i had from the ion i did over a year ago..
man i have q's
traced it back to the bios chip with the logic interface >looking at 16 channels<
with the jumper 1 channel went flat line,with it un-hooked,it did it's proper timming..??

ed










,

[lilshawn]

Doublecheck the CPU. if it's been overheated they do all sorts of weird stuff.

if you take out the CPU and flip it over and look at the bottom side, if it's been really overheated you can see the substrate board the CPU die is on is discolored. I swap those CPUs out. they get flakey.

while you are at it, scrape off that stupid aluminum/graphite thermal interface material they use on the heatsink. all it's good for is to keep your temps UP. replace it with some good silicone based grease.

also reset the BIOS with the jumper....replace the BIOS battery with a brand new one....  then go into the bios and load the "fail safe defaults" and then load the "optimised defaults" and reboot and let the software reset the BIOS settings.

this fixes all kinds of junk too. damn bios data gets corrupted on them.

be sure the system reset/power wire is hooked up properly too (should have a single black wire to the front panel connector then stops at a 2 pin connector just to the side of that one, and then off to the IO board)

[ed12]

thk's shawn
i did all that..
the kicker is i removed the jumper altoghter..and it boots's every time
just like i pointed out with the ion..
so i tested it once again on a machine at the shop,it is on a heat run,
exact same thing,removed jumper..boot error is gone,so i did some chking
bios is going south..
makes me wonder if these thing's did not have built in kill timer's ?

ed

[lilshawn]

makes me wonder if these thing's did not have built in kill timer's ?

wouldn't doubt it. "suicide" hardware.

ive also seen the monitor cause issues with the radions. the frikin HD cable runs right overtop of 25kv line... you crank up the screen cause the guns are getting weak and the machine starts crashing. 

i think we've pulled all our radions off route now. gone by way of dodo. tubes are all crapped out.