1st Time Booting BP6: damn, sumpin's wrong!

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~~~^^^mercury^^^~~~
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Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2005 10:19 am
Location: Southern Indiana, in the woods

1st Time Booting BP6: damn, sumpin's wrong!

Post by ~~~^^^mercury^^^~~~ »

from what i read on another thread,
this may be a no - no.

just took out a SOYO slocket MoBo, on which
WIN95 was running.
plan to install clean HDs on this bp6 for a linux/xandros clean install, but
first thought is to check out the newly installed BP6, using
the old HD with the WIN95 install.

am doing it this way since i am new to both bp6 and linux.
thought it might work to first get familiar with the bp6 in WIN95, then
take out those HDs, put in clean ones, boot from the xandros CDs to
do the linux install.

but, the bp6 won't boot win95.
it gets to the win95 screen, then
the action of the progress line at the bottom runs for a while,
then it hangs.

have taken out all but the graphics card.
have taken out the 3 X 128MB SDRAMS and
put in the 1 X 128MB SDRAM from the working SOYO MoBo.
does not change a thing.
still hangs trying to boot WIN95.

thanks,
~~~^^^mercury^^^~~~
6 billion and counting
be one
hyperspace
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Post by hyperspace »

Your hard drive is SOYO centric. You really need to do a fresh install of the OS you wish to use.
Quantum WormHole

Image
lost in hypertime...
~~~^^^mercury^^^~~~
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2005 10:19 am
Location: Southern Indiana, in the woods

Post by ~~~^^^mercury^^^~~~ »

thanks hyperspace!

obviously this may take a little hand holding
hopefully i can throw away the training wheels
sooner rather than later.

entered the BIOS & set System Defaults,
then set the softmenu for 366(66)
last, set boot sequence to CDRom, C, A

the system hardware is back the way it was
Graphics: ATI RAGE IIC 8MB
Sound: Generic PCI card in PCI slot 2
Modem: AOpen FM56-PM PCI
PSU: new 550W by Power Magic

put in single NTSF reformatted blank HD (13.6 GB Deskstar)
have checked this drive out in another machine - its a good HD
this HD is plugged into IDE3 via an 80-wire cable,
blue to MoBo, black to HD.
HighPoint, whatever that is, sees this HD for what it is.

there is also a 3.5" FDD, and
an NEC 3001 CDRom (read only)
the green light on this drive flickers when the machine is turned on.
its 40-wire cable is plugged into IDE1.
the BIOS reads this as the Primary IDE on bootup.
(never seen that before)

going through the bootup, it correctly sees 2X366(66) cpus

it also correctly reads Extended Mem.: 392192K, and
Cache Memory : 128K/ 128K
It shows Diskette Drive A: 1.44M, 3.5"
IDE Pri. Master : CDROM,UDMA 33

However, it shows no Primary Slave or Secondary Master or Slave.
next,
it goes through the "PCI device listing ..."
next,
it (and this is only from a cold boot - a RESET is different)


OH SHIT!!!! ....
just did a cold boot, and its Loading Kernel ... Done.
and its Initializing Kernel ....
have booted and reset several times before without getting anything.
I gotta go.
will let ya'll know.

wow am I excited>>>>> bbooooiiiiinnnngggggg^

~~~^^^mercury^^^~~~
6 billion and counting
be one
hyperspace
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Post by hyperspace »

~~~^^^mercury^^^~~~ wrote:thanks hyperspace!

wow am I excited>>>>> bbooooiiiiinnnngggggg^

~~~^^^mercury^^^~~~
Careful! :shock:
Quantum WormHole

Image
lost in hypertime...
~~~^^^mercury^^^~~~
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2005 10:19 am
Location: Southern Indiana, in the woods

Post by ~~~^^^mercury^^^~~~ »

excellent call hyperspace
you saw it coming!

at least the system is reading the CDRom
trying to install the xandros distro of linux on a clean formatted HD
can get to the troubleshooting screen to go through
several anticipated hardware problems workarounds.
no luck with any of those.

after: "Loading kernel... Done."
problem: "Initializing kernel... " >hangs<

but, hey.
there are a couple of more basic problems with the system operation.
maybe i better try to get beyond these first.
1) Power Switch:
have the chassis "Power SW" 2-lead blue/white on PN2 - 8, 9
that is consistent with the manual and the printing on the bp6
the chassis switch works fine to turn the machine on, but
it will not turn the machine off.
to turn it off, i have to unplug the power cord from the PSU.
when a SOYO MoBo was in this chassis the power switch worked fine.

the only other question for now:
would the system be getting this far if the cmos battery needed replacing?

thanks,
~~~^^^mercury^^^~~~
6 billion and counting
be one
Dave Rave
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Post by Dave Rave »

if you want the win95 disk to look at it.....

get it into safe mode (F8 during boot up)
go device manager....
delete EVERYTHING except the plug and play bios in System Devices

go back to win95, fingers crossed....
changing from the Soyo board (what chipset) to the BX440 will change all the devices in your system.
takes a while, it is doable....
it is easier to do a fresh install.....

or just jump in the deep end with linux, but don't ask ME for help there ;-)
Dave Rave
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Post by Dave Rave »

1) Power Switch

most ATX boards will be set to turn off AFTER 6 seconds.
this might be changeable in BIOS to instant off, but you'd have to ge tthere and find it too.

with the system running, (DOS mode ...) press and hold the power switch.
count to 5 slowly ...
~~~^^^mercury^^^~~~
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Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2005 10:19 am
Location: Southern Indiana, in the woods

Post by ~~~^^^mercury^^^~~~ »

have not run across that one before, but
sure enough,
hold the button down for about 3 - 4 seconds, and
turns right off.

thanks,
~~~^^^mercury^^^~~~
6 billion and counting
be one
~~~^^^mercury^^^~~~
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2005 10:19 am
Location: Southern Indiana, in the woods

Post by ~~~^^^mercury^^^~~~ »

next step here:

on bootup, bios intermittently hangs on "Verifying DMI pool data... "

did some searching in the archives on DMI and see this may be nasty.
hoping it isn't, of course.

here's the thing:

on a cold boot, most of the time it gets through this oK,
and although it happens almost too quickly to see,
it seems to acknowledge the CDRom (set as first boot option) first,
then goes on to "Verifying DMI pool data... Success."
actually, it does not look like that text, but something else flashes by.
then reads the CDRom and attempts to install the OS (Xandros 3.0)

that install hangs at:
"checking if image is initramfs... it isn't (no cpio magic); looks like an initrd."

next, a RESET seems to always hang on "Verfying DMI pool Data..."

next, power off, wait 30 sec, power on, and,
usually, not always, the CDRom is acknowledged, very quickly,
then, a single line flashes too quickly to read (as mentioned above),
then, the attempt to install the os from the CDRom begins and hangs.

with the CDRom drive empty, on cold boot and on RESET it reads:
"Updating ESCD ... Success" (this sometimes appears, but not always)
"Verifying DMI pool data .........."
"Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM : Failure ..."
"DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER"
putting the Xandros install disc in yields the same hang mentioned above.

Question: What does this pattern for success for "Verifying DMI pool data ... " indicate?
It will sometimes hang here on a cold boot too.

Actually, when the boot succeeds, although the screen goes by pretty quickly, i don't think that "Verifying DMI pool data... " line even shows.

by the way, archives discuss bulging caps and such: all the electronic components on this bp6 look pristine, although i am certainly not an electronics guru. don't see anything "bulging" or "leaking."

Thanks,
~~~^^^mercury^^^~~~
6 billion and counting
be one
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