at wit's end with new box - can ya help a dumbass?

hey pc gods,

i *thought* i was a decent tech. just putting together a new box with
the following specs:

athlon 2600+ barton 333 fsb (w/ stock grease 'n cooler)
asus a7n8x-x mobo
2 sticks of samsung 512mb pc3200 @ 400mhz/2.5 lat rated for the
nvidia2 chipset
wd 100 gig hd (no os but was using previously as a storage drive)
52x cd/burner combo
480w demon something or other psu
old agp fx 5200 w/ 256mb video card

anyway... all hobbled together and when powered up the ram gives
166mhz speed rather than the expected 400 (and just learned this mobo
can't do dual channel). then it takes a long time to find the drive
and tries to boot from the cd-rom where my xp installation cd is.
after a while the setup is checking your hardware message comes up and
then screen goes blank and stays blank.

when i put in another drive with xp the same post but i get an ever so
brief blue screen before it reboots.

i've messed TO DEATH with the fsb and multiplier settings trying
umpteen million combinations but to no avail. settled on 166/11.5 per
regs. tried different ram too but also no diff. tried different video
card, same deal. temps are running at a cool 30c thanks to 5 case fans
plus the cpu and psu fans.

what have i missed?

thanks for any help,
rasiel

ras wrote:

hey pc gods,

i *thought* i was a decent tech. just putting together a new box with
the following specs:

athlon 2600+ barton 333 fsb (w/ stock grease 'n cooler)
asus a7n8x-x mobo
2 sticks of samsung 512mb pc3200 @ 400mhz/2.5 lat rated for the
nvidia2 chipset
wd 100 gig hd (no os but was using previously as a storage drive)
52x cd/burner combo
480w demon something or other psu
old agp fx 5200 w/ 256mb video card

anyway... all hobbled together and when powered up the ram gives
166mhz speed rather than the expected 400

Why would you expect 400? 400 is the DDR (double data rate) speed and not
the clock speed it's capable of: 200 MHz.

Second, you have a 333 (DDR) FSB, 166.6 Mhz clock, CPU so that's what the
FSB should be and I'm not surprised the memory defaults to 1:1.


(and just learned this mobo
can't do dual channel). then it takes a long time to find the drive

That sounds like a Single Master/Master with Slave/Slave/CS jumper problem
on either the hard drive, CD, or both.

and tries to boot from the cd-rom where my xp installation cd is.

Which is what it should do with no O.S. on the hard drive.

after a while the setup is checking your hardware message comes up and
then screen goes blank and stays blank.

I'd suggest it's probably the WD hard drive that's jumpered wrong.

when i put in another drive with xp the same post but i get an ever so
brief blue screen before it reboots.

That's to be expected. Wrong drivers for all of the hardware so it crashes,
and it's probably set to the default behavior of restart on a crash.

i've messed TO DEATH with the fsb and multiplier settings trying
umpteen million combinations but to no avail. settled on 166/11.5 per
regs. tried different ram too but also no diff. tried different video
card, same deal. temps are running at a cool 30c thanks to 5 case fans
plus the cpu and psu fans.

what have i missed?

Barring a flat out hardware fault I'd say the WD master/slave jumper. It
should be single master is it's alone on the primary IDE port (best
practice) and master w/slave if you have the CD (as slave) also on the
primary IDE port.


thanks for any help,
rasiel

David Maynard wrote:

Second, you have a 333 (DDR) FSB, 166.6 Mhz clock, CPU so that's what
the FSB should be and I'm not surprised the memory defaults to 1:1.

That sounds like a Single Master/Master with Slave/Slave/CS jumper
problem on either the hard drive, CD, or both.

I concur.