On Sunday 07 April 2002 4:29 am, Linus Drouhard wrote: > Hi all, > I have following this list for some 8 or 9 months now and have obtained a > lot of useful advice and tips. I'm now operating what is close to becoming > a boat anchor. I have an AMD K6-2 running at 420 MHz in an ASUS P5A > motherboard. Most everything else is standard, SB16, Nvidia TNT2, 160MB > Ram, two 20 Gig Maxtor drives, Ricoh CD-RW and generic CD-reader. I have > been fighting a weird problem the last couple of weeks. I loaded MD 8.2 > and really liked it, but could not get a printer installed. Whenever I ran > PrinterDrake, it asked me for Disc 1 and tried to install something. My > computer would freeze solid during install, responding only to the reset > button. I tried a fresh reinstall of MD 8.2. Same. Tried a fresh install > of 8.1. Froze during the install. Civileme suggested a bad CD. I burned > a new one. Same. I tried installing from a different CD-drive. Same. I > pulled my soundcard and every other "non-essential" card and disk drive. I > was able to reinstall MD 8.2. I ran PrinterDrake. It wanted to install > some package again (CUPS and Foomatic, I believe). Out of frustration, I > just hit "cancel" and you guessed it, it worked! I now have a printer. I > thought I was home free. Remember the soundcard I pulled? I reinstalled > the card and tried to run "soundcfg". Not there. I ran software manager. > Froze. Solid. > > > At this point, I'm at a loss, other than tying it to a boat. Any > suggestions? Has anyone had good experiences with an ECS K7S5A > motherboard? > > Thanks for bearing with my rantings and ramblings. Even if I don't figure > it out... I feel better. > > Linus
As soon as I came to the bit when you said you had a K7S5A I had to smile. My sons computer is a K7S5A and I have spent hours wrestling with its 'eccentricities' I also know Civileme's opinion of that MB (it aint high) There are two issues with K7S5a which has caused me problems. The first is that after powering down I have to leave it for at least 30mins before powering up or else it will not reach 'POST'. This is irrespective if Linux or Windows. Consequently any messing about with putting boards in or out takes hours to accomplish. (Hopefully your one will not suffer from this) The second problem is the way IRQ lines are assigned in K7S5a which is based on the slot number the card is inserted in, as well as the onboard components having reserved IRQ lines. Your sound card problem is very likely due to an IRQ conflict. To fix it I suggest first disabling any onboard component you do not need. On board sound, midi, game port, Lan, usb (if not needed) Disabling ACPI may also help. Then try the sound card plus any other required cards in different slots and check the IRQ lines assigned, until each device ends up with its own IRQ line and works. (This might not be too bad if it were not for the 30 min delay between trials.) Its a pity the BIOS is so bad because once it is working the MB has excellent performance for a really low price :-( HTH derek
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