What Happened???

[Bonesdad]

EPOx 8rda+ with a 2500+ on top. Worked fine this afternoon, did some work around the house for an hour, came back to a blank screen. Off, then on, and nothing! Codes on mobo alternate between C1 and 26. C1 is bad memory module (PC3200 Buffalo Winbond Ram), while 26 is bad CMOS.

Is it fried? I still have to swap out parts to this machine to see if anything specific is wrong or ruined. I think the video card is OK, I swapped out another and got the same result. Tried reseating the memory 2 or 3 times.

There was no forewarning, there is no burned odor. I do see some crusties on a couple of the mobo capacitors, tho. Am I missing something???

 

[imported_Fitz]

Originally posted by: Bonesdad
EPOx 8rda+ with a 2500+ on top. Worked fine this afternoon, did some work around the house for an hour, came back to a blank screen. Off, then on, and nothing! Codes on mobo alternate between C1 and 26. C1 is bad memory module (PC3200 Buffalo Winbond Ram), while 26 is bad CMOS.

Is it fried? I still have to swap out parts to this machine to see if anything specific is wrong or ruined. I think the video card is OK, I swapped out another and got the same result. Tried reseating the memory 2 or 3 times.

There was no forewarning, there is no burned odor. I do see some crusties on a couple of the mobo capacitors, tho. Am I missing something???

:QSounds to me you got a bad bios chip.(1) Clear the cmos (2)reload the newest bios and re boot see if this works,If not you can take it in to reflash that chip,let me know if all is good.

 

[Bonesdad]

Thanks, I already cleared CMOS a couple of times, no difference. I can take it in to have it reflashed...just not sure it's worth it. I wanted to upgrade, but won't have the $$ for about 3 months. Dang, I wish this would have held out for a few more months...

I just popped my Buffalo Ram into my fallback PC and it seems to be fine, same with the HDD. That's good news anyway. Can I buy a new CMOS chip?

 

[stevty2889]

Crusties on capacitors? Sounds like you got some leaking capacitors. If you are good with a soldering iron, you could replace them yourself, it's more likely that the capacitors are your problem, BIOS chips don't normaly just go bad, without flashing them with the wrong bios, or loosing power while in the middle of a flash. Any way you could post pictures of those capacitors?

 

[Bozo Galora]

brown tannish crusties on top of caps is def sign mobo getting ready to go south and maybe take some components with it.

better take care of it

 

[Bonesdad]

thanks, already took care of it. RMA'd the board to EPOX...had 2 months left on my 2 year warranty!!!

Sorry, I didn't take picutres, but about 8 of the capacitors were swollen, with about 4 of them leaking. The board was dead, but nothing else got damaged. I transfered my CPU, HDD, memory and video card to my standby box (which was a Duron 1.8) and everything works great. Put the EPOX board back into the case with the Duron and other memory and get the same results. It's definately the mobo.

Looking forward to getting my board back...wish it would have held on for about 3 more months...when I plan to upgrade to a 939 board and a 6600GT. Still will, but now I will have a new Socket A board to sell!!!

 

[crash]

I had my gigabyte ga-7vaxp motherboard die on me a few days ago, I replaced it with el cheapo ECS that was bundled with a Sempron 2600 from Fry's and everything works. My question is, I noticed a burning smell like the original poster mentioned, what would this mean?