Advice on Motherboard Diagnostic Board

"yaugin" <yaugin.TakeThisOut@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:19b75ba5-3809-46cd-99d3-3dff6bfe69b7@t1g2000pra.googlegroups.com...
> On Dec 10, 9:55 pm, "RD" <reddog....TakeThisOut@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> I have seen a bunch of different types of PCI plug-in analyzer boards all
>> over eBay. Finding info on the Internet about them is sparse. I have a
>> couple of suspect socket 478 motherboards with no bad capacitors and
>> seemingly in very good physical shape that will not pass POST. I've been
>> thinking about buying one of the analyzers and trying it out. Does anyone
>> have any experience with plug-in diagnostic/analyzer boards? I would like
>> to
>> hear what you think about them.
>>
>> RD
>
> I'm not an expert on them, but I too was curious and did some digging
> about how they work. The post cards don't do anything on their own,
> they just relay post codes from the bios, so they can give you more
> specific details about what you would learn from a beep code for
> example. If the motherboard/cpu is dead, the post card likely won't
> tell you anything, because it depends on the motherboard and cpu to
> run the post. So when you say that your boards will not pass post, are
> you saying they don't run post at all, or that they give a post error?
> If you are looking for more detailed error info, that's where the post
> cards might be handy. If your boards aren't posting at all, the cards
> probably won't help. At least, that's what I gathered.

No beep codes on the boards I want to check. The CPU has tested good in
other boards, so I think it is good. The CPU I have is an Intel Celeron
2.4GHZ Northwood.
 >> Stay informed about: Advice on Motherboard Diagnostic Board 

I have about every one of them that came out.
I might have tried each once, and it told me
nothing that I did not already know .. I had
a bad mobo. I do much better by just swapping
parts in a minimal config. The problem with all
this junk is that "compatibility" among the various
parts is very time dependent. You can't put a
newer DVD in an older mobo. The BIOS won't
support it. I must have 20 nice Plextor CD drives
that are not compatible with anything new.
So "fixing" this stuff is a good trick at best
even if the parts are good, you probably can't
collect all the compatible parts you need to
build an efficient working PC.

johns
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"johns" <johns321.RemoveThis@moscow.com> wrote in message
news:dbdfb300-21e4-4496-ad12-f9bc8d624836@d27g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
>I have about every one of them that came out.
> I might have tried each once, and it told me
> nothing that I did not already know .. I had
> a bad mobo. I do much better by just swapping
> parts in a minimal config. The problem with all
> this junk is that "compatibility" among the various
> parts is very time dependent. You can't put a
> newer DVD in an older mobo. The BIOS won't
> support it. I must have 20 nice Plextor CD drives
> that are not compatible with anything new.
> So "fixing" this stuff is a good trick at best
> even if the parts are good, you probably can't
> collect all the compatible parts you need to
> build an efficient working PC.
>
> johns

This was the reply I was hoping for--someone with experience in using these
devices. I have some antiquated test equipment (50MHZ O-Scope, couple of
pulse generators, a logic probe, analog and digital multi-meters) and used
to do component repair on military aircraft a couple of decades ago. I was
hoping to get a jump on the troubleshooting by using one of these "cheap"
diagnostic boards. The peripheral devices are of no interest to me as I
would probably strip the MB down to bare essentials anyway. But your comment
regarding the timing of when the diag board was made does make sense as I
doubt any of the makers provide the ability to flash upgrade the firmware.
There is practically no information on the Net on how to go about
troubleshooting a motherboard other than obvious physical inspections, how
to interpret beep codes, and swaptronics. And believing that these boards
are throw away items baffles me. i.e., today, for Intel anyway, the Socket
775 boards are abundant and are relatively cheap (esp. with mfg's rebate
incentives), but Socket 478 boards are tough to come by and expensive.
"Upgrading" by buying a new MB, possibly RAM, definitely CPU, etc..gets
really expensive. And quite honestly, unless you are a hard core gamer or
making a living at multimedia productions, who needs all the new stuff??
Sure wish ppl would get into repairing instead of lining landfills with 5
year old computer components...

RD
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On Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:55:50 -0500, "RD" <reddog500.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> put
finger to keyboard and composed:

>I have seen a bunch of different types of PCI plug-in analyzer boards all
>over eBay. Finding info on the Internet about them is sparse. I have a
>couple of suspect socket 478 motherboards with no bad capacitors and
>seemingly in very good physical shape that will not pass POST. I've been
>thinking about buying one of the analyzers and trying it out. Does anyone
>have any experience with plug-in diagnostic/analyzer boards? I would like to
>hear what you think about them.
>
>RD

The BIOS POST routines write the number of the failing test, or the
previous test, to diagnostic port 0x80. All that the POST card does is
to display the 8-bit data written to this port. At least that's how
the original IBM AT did it.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
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