What not to do in BIOS when you're BORED

[cancer]

my system was down for just over a whole day (shock horror!)recently and to say i was a little bereft was an understatement (i need to get out more).
anyway I was piss-farting around on the net and everything started to slow up, ie windows were taking their time closing, text and mouse decided to work in a different time zone etc. at this point a reboot was probably in order. after the mem count i thought 'how can i screw up my bios today?'. i changed things like preference setup of pci/agp display adaptor to agp/pci (a reasonable change i thought). also changed the video rom bios shadow to disable & memory timings to see what would happen. as you would imagine not much happened, it just didn't boot.
at this stage i was mildly annoyed so i switched off my machine and turned it on again thinking the bios would reset due to failure to boot last time and return to safe default settings. again nothing, at this point i'm using profanity like there is no tomorrow. i took one side of the case off and looked determinedly inside willing the thing to work(i swear i could smell ozone from the fried transistors & capacitors). i turn it on again - nothing. i read through the manual about 3 times, nadda. now i'm in the throws of a full panic attack and running around the house shouting 'shit, what have i done, oh my god...etc'
later i fell asleep exhausted and when i woke up i decided to try something different. i started to put together my old system (bh6, celery 300a etc in my old case) so i could at least get online to the asus web site and find a solution. i thought my best hope was to find a way to clear the bios. the asus mother board manual has nothing to that effect so i was praying that this feature was something overlooked at the time of printing. getting my old system back up was more difficult than i originally thought. i stopped in despair & had several coffees and a packet of cigarettes, then it dawned on me, just pop the motherboard bios battery (see caffeine & cigarettes are good for you). presto, the machine boots to the default settings.
i learnt three things from this little traumatic exercise;[list=1][*] when bored don't fiddle with things that are detremential to your lifestyle (so i need to get out more)ie. motherboard bios settings.
[*] if you do screw with you bios setting and it doesn't boot, don't freak, just pop the battery.
[*] good old C&C (caffeine & cigarettes) are good for you. [/list=a]

cheers.


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Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.


[This message has been edited by cancer (edited 19 April 2000).]

[CHHAS]

Makes you feel alive, doesn't it

I have had several 'ohmygodI've****editupforgoodnow' experiences in my times with computer, most recently when I was trying to discover if my BH6 v1.0 supported lower voltages than 2 volts.
I sat it to 1.8v, booted ok, ran just fine.
Hmm, ok I thought, maybe it's because it doesn't supply lower than 2.0 anyway. Next up, 1.3volts, no boot, no post, no nothing.
After about 5 minutes of panic I found the manual for the board and read about the 'hold insert down while booting' function, ahh well.

The day I bought my G400 I tried to overclock it, 135/180 went ok, the mem maxed out at 180 but what the hell, I needed to find out how much the core could manage with the fan I put on so I went for it. 160/180 was ok, ran 3DMark99Max, seemed fine. 180/180 was the same, so I thought why not go for 200/180, well it didn't Polygon madness all over the screen, so i put it back to 125/166, and ran 3DMark99Max again, still polygon mayhem, now I was starting to get nervous, I really didn't want burn the card on the first day. Rebooted, still the same.
I sat down and thought hard about how to remove the superglued fan without leaving marks so I could return it and claim it never worked, but after about an hour I tried to boot again and everything was back to normal (phew!!).

Anyway, a long rant about some of the amusement one can get from tinkering with hardware (it's the only way to learn!)

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P3 500, 224 MB ram, G400 16SH,
Maxtor DM 40+ 30GB, IBM Deskstar 16GP 10GB, Maxtor 4320 13 GB
SB Live Value

[Maggi]

... isn't it great ?

It's only that sudden pain in my heart (when it doesn't reboot) that makes me think 'you shouldn't have done this' ...

[Pace]

How's about this then: about a year (I think) my friend was overclocking his Banshee and told me to overclock my G200 - and that the partial 486 I had could give up it's fan to help cool it - great I thought, although the 486 fan had lost it's connector so there was just two wires.

The (1st) problem was to figure out what to connect these wires too, the 4 pin power connector or the 3 pin header on my P2 board? Hmm, don't want damage my board so I'll use the 4 pin connector. Jammed the 2 wires in and powered on - no fan spinning but Windows is booting OK - so let's check the connection......

*Tzzt*...*Kerang*...*Fizzle*...and my 8.4Gb goes *POP*.

What I learned:

1. Don't fiddle with electricity
2. Don't fiddle with a PC's electricity
3. Buy from a company which offers a years warranty against failure, send it back, and get a UDMA/66 drive (instead of 33) in it's place

Paul

[cancer]

i'm with you CHHAS, tinkering with various hardware settings is the only way to see what your system is capable of. next time i think of stuffing around with my pc i'll check the various web sites on my particular hardware or discuss it on a forum before i attempt anything radical. and Maggi i think i could do without the heart palpitation thing every time i consider something foolish. but i tell you what, isn’t it satisfying to change something beyond spec had have it work! i guess next time i’ll let some other fool fry his own hardware and post the results before i contemplate changing mine. i don't know Pace, i think sticking a screwdriver in a power point is a great/fun idea(kids don't do this at home unless properly supervised). Well i still think i learnt a valuable lesson, smoke & drink coffee while stumped over a problem, it speeds the synaptic activity in the brain.
cheers.


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Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.

[alpha]

Not too long ago, I had 220v run through my arm. What I learned:
Check the insulation on PSU in wires.
Don't hold grounded pieces of metal while turning on PSUs with bandy insulation.

[Pace]

Hehe

I also had the worry of seeing the sreen go *Tzzzt* and look messed up when I oc'd the G200 a little too much - I'd never hit the power switch so quickly!

Ah yes, the joys of tinkering and breaking (the G200 was fine again though - my first experience of overclocking went OK - then I went to cool it - D'OH!)

[Nuno]

I have a interesting but not happy-ending story. I had a celery 300@450 2.2v (who didn´t ) on an Abit BX6. It worked fine for about a year, and suddenly *poofff*. It rebooted and the monitor light went yellow. WTF? - I though. I reset. Nothing. I turned it off. Nothing. I opened the box and reseated everything. Nothing. I reset the bios (yes Abit has a jumper for that ). Nothing. Oh well, the poor celery came to an end. I borrowed a friend´s PIII 550 just to confirm that. I pluged it in. Nothing. Then I started to sweat. I brought the cpu back. The PIII didn´t work in my friend´s pc either. It was dead.
So to sum it up: The mobo shorted, fried my celeron, fried the PIII 550.
Then it was the start of a love affair with AMD

[cancer]

bugger, that was an expensive little trip.
sorry to hear about your celery 300a, i must say i still love that chip... sniff, sniff.

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Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.

[cancer]

how do you get rid of double posts without deleting the original message?

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Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.

[dZeus]

Edit the duplicate so that it looks like you did not double post.... :-)

[Guyver]

Edit the duplicate, but select "Delete this message"...

Guyv

[cancer]

cheers guys...

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Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.

[Thundrchez]

One day I got adventerous and decided to up the memory timings in the bios of my Asus K7M mobo. That was too much and nothing on reboot.

Asus doesn't provide a clear bios jumper on the mobo, so I ripped out the battery hoping to reset the bios. Unfortunately, it had enough of a trickle left in a capacitor somewhere to not reset! OK, so I rip it out for 10 minutes, and nothin. Now I'm beginning to panic and utter curses.

Then I take a close look at the mobo, and I see two solder point leads very close to the battery exactly where the clear bios jumper should be. I double checked the manual and it was undocumented. With it turned off, I get a piece of metal and short those puppies together for 10 seconds. Presto, that was the jumperless clear bios jumper!

I wouldn't be surprised if your Asus P3V4X had a very similar layout of a lack of a clear bios jumper.

[CHHAS]

Gutsy move Thundrchez

The first PC I ever put together myself was bought in a hardware surplus sale, it came i a large cardboard box, without any instructions, I spent an entire weekend trying to figure out what went where.

It was great fun, although I had a cricis when I, by mistake, put the AT power plugs on the motherboard in the wrong order (black wires point away from each other, instead of together), I was told later that I could have fried the whole thing, ahh well.... (I've never been in doubt as to how they are placed since )

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P3 500, 224 MB ram, G400 16SH,
Maxtor DM 40+ 30GB, IBM Deskstar 16GP 10GB, Maxtor 4320 13 GB
SB Live Value