argh! part 4

so i went to Re-PC yesterday and bought a new socket A mother board which is an Asus A7V. i got it installed and fired it up and, apparently, the mother board sent a signal to the power supply that said “shut down now, before you start frying things”. not only that, but i had to get a video expansion card because it didn’t have onboard video, like the previous mother board had, but i neglected to get a network expansion card, because it doesn’t have onboard network, like the previous mother board had, because i neglected to think of it until i got it installed, so even if it was working perfectly, i still couldn’t get on the network. not only that, but there are two rows of switches, one component with 4 switches, which, according to the review, has something to do with the front-side bus (whatever that is), and one component with 6 switches, which has something to do with the CPU speed, or something like that, but i don’t know what. there’s a good bet that they have something to do with the fact that the mother board thinks the power supply is going to fry something.

6 thoughts on “argh! part 4”

  1. Ah. Well, fear not, as there’s a way that you can set the switches so that the BIOS takes care of the processor speed and multiplier stuff.

    The manual for it is available in PDF form at

    http://www.motherboards.org/files/manuals/1/a7v-104.pdf

    and that should be able to let you know whether you’ve got it set to Jumper or Jumper Free Mode. I’d say setting it to Jumper Free Mode, if it isn’t already, would be best for you. Then you can go into BIOS and make sure that everything is set properly.

  2. Ah, okay. That list will still help, then, but supposedly there is a Jumper Free mode, which will let you set things in BIOS rather than the motherboard itself, which is probably what you would like to do.

    http://www.overclockersonline.net/index.php?page=articles&num=61

    has pictures that you can look at to see where things are and

    http://tool-box.info/blog/archives/5-Asus-A7V-Dipswitch-Jumper-Settings.html

    has the right settings to go jumper free with, which are also printed in various places on the motherboard, it looks like.

  3. argh, i meant an athlon 1300, which i know from looking on the processor chip itself…

    but i didn’t get a manual, i bought the mother board from Re-PC, which sells recycled computer components. you are assumed to know what you’re doing with them or know where to get the information you need most of the time… which is why i only had to pay $25 for it.

  4. Well, the specs for the chips and memory can be found on-line, and the jumper/switch settings for the motherboard should be in the manual you got, so if you match settings to jumpers, you should be able to make it all work.

    The following list should help.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Athlon_microprocessors

    Which, for an Athlon 1400, Socket A… well, which type is it? 1400B is a 100MHz FSB with a 14x multiplier at 1.75V, and the 1400C is a 133MHz FSB with a 10.5x multipler at 1.75V.

    Depending on the two, then you can set the switches on the Motherboard for the 100/133 FSB and the right multiplier switches to get to 1400 MHz (Your Athlon 1400 should be running at 1.4 GHz)

    The memory itself, actually, should resolve without having to fiddle, assuming it fits and the motherboard takes that kind of memory. On that, I misspoke.

  5. okay, now we’re getting into a realm of computer-geekdom that i never thought i would have to discover… how do i tell what clock speed my memory and CPU are? i’ve never worried about things like that, i’ve always just assumed that the things that i was using were compatible with each other… which i know, intellectually, is hopelessly untrue, but at the same time, i’ve never had to figure out what clock speed i am running at.

    i have two 256mb DIMMs, which, i believe, are SDRAM (although i don’t know for sure, because they could also be DDR, i’ve never had to worry about that, either), and an AMD athlon 1400, socket A, 1.2ghz (or 1.3ghz, i’m not sure) processor…

    and this is all information that i have learned about my computer in the past week. before that, in spite of the fact that i built the box myself, i could only have told you that i had 512mb of RAM and a 1.2ghz (or 1.3ghz, i’m not sure) processor… 8/

  6. Those switches are there so that the motherboard knows what clock speed your memory and CPU are, so that it can provide the correct amount of voltage to each and not fry things. Depending on the chip you have, if you set them the right way with the correct core/multiplier values, then hopefully you should be able to get things to fire up. You’ll still need the network expansion card, of course, but this motherboard appears to be a bit smarter in that it won’t let itself burn out.

Comments are closed.