Golden Tee Fore 2005 Red Board Freezing

[mclovin]

Good day all, my buddy's 2005 GT keeps freezing or locking up at random times. The strange thing is the sound keeps going but the video freezes and none of the buttons or controls respond. Once you reboot it will work for a while and then freezes at a random time again. It will do it both during game play or during the demo mode. I have swapped video cards and hard drives so far and the problem still exists. I assume it is something with the motherboard? Ed you see this before?

[ed12]

video card
or lower set of codec's (under video card) with it removed.
also chk the zener diode by the sound amp >6.5v<

ed

[mclovin]

Unlikely it is the video card itself as I have tried a different one with same results. How do I find and check the codecs, I don't know what that is m, and I also don't know where the sound amp is for to find what diode to check.? Sorry I have lots to learn🤓

[ed12]

its a strange chain
under the video card is 2 codecs
1=video buffer
2=audio buffer
audio out put amp is the to220 style pkg over by the jamma input on a heat sink
if u need I will upload a picture of the circuit
also a side note here
on a green board 1 of the 2 banks of ram act as video buffers
on the red board  there is only 1 bank of rams, so u would need to scope it to find it
u need to hold and I will find u the video/cpu ram map

ed

[ed12]

well it will not hurt to understand the chain

ed

[mclovin]

Tried another video card and it seems to be working so far, video card heatsink is getting very hot though. This did happen at first with the other video card. Could the board somehow be cooking video cards? The only diode I see is below the video card and tests 6.2v with video card removed.

[ed12]

ya 6.2v zener
put a fan on the video cards heatsink
I use a black silcon on 4 corners

ed

[mclovin]

Damn I spoke too soon. this 3rd card is freezing up now, so definitely not the video card, can't be 3 bad ones. What can I try now? I have a dead green board for parts of I need to try swapping stuff to troubleshoot.

[ed12]

if u remove the video card
u will see 2 surface mount ic's
the larger 1 creative labs is a dual type unit (both audio/video) buffer if it is going south ?
and or the requlater feeding it u will get video freezing
do u have a scope ?
if so the pdf I posted for u is the red board chain (scope it)
also 1 thing u never told me which is important
WHAT EXACTLEY IS THE IDE LED DOING ? when it freezers ?
on/off normal?
fast ?
slow?
solid on ?
solid off ?

ed

[mclovin]

IDE light is off, no activity when it freezes. The status 1 and 2 LEDs stay flashing green as normal. I do not have a scope. When it gets warm i can get it to freeze solid within a minute of a reboot.

[ed12]

and I take it u replaced the hard drive also ?

ed

[mclovin]

Yes, not hard drive.

[ed12]

ok we need to do some vcc readings
on the 24 pin atx header start with pin1-24 and list them for me (when it freezes).. most important
WHEN IT FREEZES.
include ground as such
me is thinking u have a bad ram and or a wacky ps. cannot tell until I know u have a stable and clean ps
                                                                                                                            ^^^^^^^^^
I smell a scope at work here also

ed

[mclovin]

Yeah, tried another power supply as well but here we go:
1-3.419
2-3.419
3-0
4-5.06
5-0
6-5.06
7-0
8-5.07
9-5.08
10-12.17
11-3.417
12- -11.45(negative)
13- 0
14-0
15-0
16-0
17- 0
18- -4.774 (negative)
19-5.06
20-5.06

[ed12]

on the red board under or just about under the video card is a 5v req
chk it also . it is a surface mount job

1 question I never asked and should have (my bawd) is the sound freezing also ? studdering ?

I would think time to warm up the scope

ed

[mclovin]

I don't have a machine at the moment to test for sound as I am bench testin the unit, but when it was in a machine the sounds continued to play while frozen but everything else was unresponsive. Unfortunately I don't have a scope or would not know how to read it anyway. But I can swap chips and parts from a parts board I have.

[ed12]

without scoping and or digital probing
u are shooting blanks in the dark
there is 4 rams in a row 2 of them feed the video bank as a buffer
that is where I would start , them chips are easy to buy brand new (watch the speed)
if u refer to the pdf I upload it is for the red board any gen (red board) there is 3 that I know of.
also on the down side the co-processer will also cause that same problem

ed

[mclovin]

Do u know what U# they are on the board? Worth a try at this point.

[ed12]

red board (ONLY) rev 9.3
48lc1m16a1
as a rule u18-17-19-16
this board has 2 rows of ram
4lcm16r6
as a rule
u11-10-13-12
if mem servs me right u want row u18-17-19-16

now 1 bank is r ram
the other is s ram

ed

[ed12]

1
ed

[ed12]

2
ed

[mclovin]

Well looks like she's a gonner  I started replacing the memory chips one at a time, got to only the 3rd one and now it won't boot, it goes through the first load stage and then gives a boot checksum error. I tried removing and reinstalling it a few times, same problem. Messed up something in the process.. Oh well it was worth a shot, as always thanks for your help Ed. My buddy was planning on buying another one anyway, I tried my best. Now it looks like I have a red board for parts now. 

[ed12]

sorry to hear that..
i should have warned u though
that the red/green board are multi layer jobs
90% of the time ground runs inside 1 of the layers
as with some data lines
its-gamming will not tell u this
but if u look real colse at a ic's foot-print once the ic is out. u can tell  (ground/data-lines) that do not seem hooked up
until u meter them. so hi heat gun to remove them is some times enough to damage these traces

ed

[mclovin]

It's ok I knew it was a good chance I would wreck something. I would be much more upset that if it didn't already have issues that I probably couldn't repair anyway.