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Old September 13th 04, 04:55 AM
~misfit~
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~misfit~ wrote:
kony wrote:
On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 11:35:28 +1200, "~misfit~"
wrote:

Ok, I've built a strange system from parts. It's an Atrend 6310M
mobo. It's an AT, Slot 1 board. I was quite pleased to get it as I
have a lot of AT stuff (cases, PSUs etc) that I've been loathe to
throw away. I welcomed the chance to use some with this board.

I Googled the board and found a manual in .pdf format. It says that
the board supports up to a PII450Mhz and 128MB SDRAM in each of it's
two slots. Great thinks I, I can make a decent machine out of my AT
stuff before I finally biff it (The back room is half-full of AT
stuff, including two boxes of working PSUs).


Something is wrong there, any box that can run a PII450 will
accept at least 256MB (low-density) modules, 512MB or more
total capacity.


I'm not sure about this one. All I know is it's a strange and uncommon
board. It didn't have a SECC retainer fitted and hadn't had one when
I got it. Just the slot. From what I remember it was only very early
boards that were like this. It's a VX chipset


My bad, it's a ZX chipset.

and, until I found the
manual, wouldn't have dreamed of trying a Deschutes CPU in it, I
originally set it up with a Klamath, then found the manual on-line so
put the 450 in.

So I put it together with one 128MB module, 10/100 3Com NIC (I'm on
a LAN here), 8MB AGP card (S3 but it's adequate for it's purpose),
ISA Soundblaster 16, ISA Rockwell 56k modem and a two-port PCI-USB
card. There are pins on the board for a USB header but I don't have
the header and there are pins for a PS/2 header. I *do* have a
header for a PS/2 mouse but it just has four wires in a row and I've
tried fitting it either way to the pins on the mobo and it doesn't
seem to work. I don't have a schematic for the board or a PS/2 port
to work out how to/if I can successfully connect it.


Being AT, it's going to have the 5V line connected to PSU
main 5V rail, you could check continuity between any/all
pins to 5V, and same for ground, and have two of the 4
figured out. The other two, try one way and if it won't
work, swap the two's pin-positions and retry... just be sure
the 5V and ground are right, an ohm reading would be a good
followup to the initial continuity check.


Cheers, my multimeter is a very basic model. I may have a play and
see what I can do.

Ok, the problem. This machine runs Prime95 for 24 hours no problem.
It runs SETI CLI sweet *but*, I have the monitor set to turn off
after 10 minutes, no screen saver. If the machine has completed a
SETI WU and it's got the monitor turned off it locks up. No mouse
movement or pounding of keyboard will wake it. A hard re-set is
needed. This has happened three times and every time the first thing
the PC does when it starts is complete the last 10 seconds of a SETI
WU and then connect to get another one. It's connecting through my
LAN at the moment.


You might see if the NIC driver properties has different
settings for power management, and see if any bios settings
seem related and enable them... hard to say on an old
lower-end board like that.


I can't find anything relevant.

Some boards with power management wakeup problems, benefit
from bios update.


I can't find a BIOS update for it. It doesn't have a very large
web-presence.

I got the manual from he

www.elhvb.com/mboards/ a-trend/manuals/

Atrend 6310M

At any other time I can just move the mouse slightly and the monitor
springs to life, it's only at the conclusion of a SETI WU that this
problem occurs *So far*.


You might try running SETI locally instead of across lan and
see if problem persists... I'd wondering if the NIC isn't
responding.


It's running locally, it just needs the NIC when it want's to get a
new WU from Berkeley.

Ok, the person I'm gonna give it to isn't going to run SETI but
this could be indicitive of a larger problem. Any Ideas? I was
wondering if it's maybe happening as a consequence of the machine
trying to access the network while the monitor is off?


LOL, i should read ahead more often.


g

I don't know. The NIC is fine, (3Com) I
pulled it form a machine that it's been functioning in perfectly. In
fact, I'll probably pull the NIC when I part with the machine
(although I like to leave NICs in machines I give away/build for
others so I can easilly connect to me LAN if I need to troubleshoot
at any stage).

Any thoughts folks? TIA.


I'd probably use/leave a cheaper NIC in it, presuming the
3COM 10/100 is PCI, not ISA, since it'd be better used for
NAS box than an old AT box. Something else I now wonder is
if the system has 3.3V for the NIC at all, you might
actually be better off with an older NIC. Since I have old
10Mb 3COM ISA NICs I can't reuse in modern boxes, that's
what i'd try & leave in it, for free at least, if NIC was
part of a system requirement then perhaps a better (faster)
NIC.


I don't have a spare ISA slot in it but I do have one or two
10/Base-T PCI cards. I'll put one of those in.

You might see if the board can be identified in a PCChips et
al flavor, or links followed produce the pinouts for similar
boards,
http://www.stud.fernuni-hagen.de/q3998142/pcchips/


You know, it's *almost* this board:

http://www.stud.fernuni-hagen.de/q39...cpics/m726.gif

Linked from that page except mine has an Intel chipset, the third
SDRAM slot nearest the AGP slot is missing (but there is allowance
for it) and the FDD connection on mine is over by the serial/parallel
connectors (which are also oriented at 90° to the ones on that board.

At first glance I thought that was it.

Thanks for your input Dave.