I’m putting together a pretty simple box with the following parts:
Abit VA-10 1.2 BIOS rev 16 (unflashed)
XP2600+ retail
Antec SmartPower 350W PSU
Currently 1x 256MB Mushkin PC2700 - will be 2x 256MB Corsair PC3200
Western Digital WD400 40GB HDD (Pimary Master)
Toshiba DVD-ROM SD-M1712 (Secondary Master)
From the moment I first booted the box it has been running extremely slow. It take approximately 60 seconds for it to post. It doesn’t seem to hang on any particular activity, rather it feels like I’m looking at a 25 Mhz 386sx booting up... actually slower. For instance, it takes at least 30 seconds for the system to detect the measly two devices I have on the IDE bus. It takes another 30 or so seconds until the device listing screen appears. It is recognizing the CPU as a 2600+, as that’s what it displays just before checking the RAM. BTW, the only CMOS setting I have changed is to disable checking for IDE slaves on both channels, changed the CPU speed to 166 and finagled with the boot device order while testing. When I made the CPU speed change the system hung when I tried to save and exit, though upon reboot it did display 2600+ as the processor.
I can get the CD-ROM to boot, however when attempting to install Windows XP from the boot CD the installer cannot find any HDD devices, despite the HDD being listed correctly on the device screen. During the small portion of the install routine it can complete, the box again runs consistently slower than anticipated. I changed out the HDD for a known good one and the same thing happened. I tried just booting to the HDD and when using an old drive from another hardware configuration, the 'DISK BOOT FAILURE' message displays. I find this odd as an old build of Win98SE is on there and should at least try to boot. Again, I can’t stress how slowly this thing is running.
I’ve seen opinions that 350W is inadequate for this board. I don’t know that I agree with that given the small number of devices I’m running at present. I think it may be the mobo, but wanted to run this by the folks here for opinions or suggestions on additional testing. BTW I do not have access to another mobo or CPU compatible with the VA-10 at this time.
Thanks,
Kerr
Temperature readings (Fahrenheit):
CPU Core: 125
CPU Surface: 129
System: 129
Voltage readings:
CPU Core: 1.64
DDR: 2.65
AGP VDDQ 1.50
ATX +12V: 11.67 – 11.73
ATX +5V: 4.91 – 4.94
ATX +3.3V 3.26
Battery +3V: 3.16
Standy +5V: 5.15
Abit VA-10 1.2 BIOS rev 16 (unflashed)
XP2600+ retail
Antec SmartPower 350W PSU
Currently 1x 256MB Mushkin PC2700 - will be 2x 256MB Corsair PC3200
Western Digital WD400 40GB HDD (Pimary Master)
Toshiba DVD-ROM SD-M1712 (Secondary Master)
From the moment I first booted the box it has been running extremely slow. It take approximately 60 seconds for it to post. It doesn’t seem to hang on any particular activity, rather it feels like I’m looking at a 25 Mhz 386sx booting up... actually slower. For instance, it takes at least 30 seconds for the system to detect the measly two devices I have on the IDE bus. It takes another 30 or so seconds until the device listing screen appears. It is recognizing the CPU as a 2600+, as that’s what it displays just before checking the RAM. BTW, the only CMOS setting I have changed is to disable checking for IDE slaves on both channels, changed the CPU speed to 166 and finagled with the boot device order while testing. When I made the CPU speed change the system hung when I tried to save and exit, though upon reboot it did display 2600+ as the processor.
I can get the CD-ROM to boot, however when attempting to install Windows XP from the boot CD the installer cannot find any HDD devices, despite the HDD being listed correctly on the device screen. During the small portion of the install routine it can complete, the box again runs consistently slower than anticipated. I changed out the HDD for a known good one and the same thing happened. I tried just booting to the HDD and when using an old drive from another hardware configuration, the 'DISK BOOT FAILURE' message displays. I find this odd as an old build of Win98SE is on there and should at least try to boot. Again, I can’t stress how slowly this thing is running.
I’ve seen opinions that 350W is inadequate for this board. I don’t know that I agree with that given the small number of devices I’m running at present. I think it may be the mobo, but wanted to run this by the folks here for opinions or suggestions on additional testing. BTW I do not have access to another mobo or CPU compatible with the VA-10 at this time.
Thanks,
Kerr
Temperature readings (Fahrenheit):
CPU Core: 125
CPU Surface: 129
System: 129
Voltage readings:
CPU Core: 1.64
DDR: 2.65
AGP VDDQ 1.50
ATX +12V: 11.67 – 11.73
ATX +5V: 4.91 – 4.94
ATX +3.3V 3.26
Battery +3V: 3.16
Standy +5V: 5.15
