HELP! Xeons won't POST!

S

Soujiro

Gawd
Joined
Jul 21, 2004
Messages
597
I recently got a dual Xeon 450 from a friend, specs are:

Dual PII Xeon 450 1MB cache 100Mhz FSB
256MB ECC Registered 100Mhz SDRAM
MS440GX motherboard
Liteon 200W PSU

So anyway, I plug in a hard drive and video card, installed windows and rebooted a few times without a hitch.

I then proceeded to add a SCSI card and a old external SCSI 6x cd-writer. I go into windows and try to load stuff with the drive. Windows crashes, which I thought was fine since windows always does it to me.

But then when I rebooted the screen stayed blank. The power LED's on, the hdd LED's off, blank screen, no POST screen, no beeps.

I don't have a port 80h card so I don't know what's going on. Anyone have any ideas?
 
200W power supply? I don't think that's nearly enough for that setup. I had trouble driving my dual PII Xeon 450/2M MS440GX setup with a low-end 300W power supply. Find a power supply with more stones.

Try the good ol' "re-seat everything" routine otherwise.
 
200 watts, damn. Get something with some balls like [H]EMI_426 said. Nice 400 watt will do fine as they are cheap enough and you will be able to use it later on for other things, or add a bunch of drives to the current box.
 
The power supply is also smaller than standard PSUs so I can't fit it in the case, but I do have a 300W lying around I think. I'll try that and see.
 
If you remove the SCSI card does the system return to its normal state of operation?
 
I have to agree with the rest of the guys, get a bigger powersupply. I'm running mine with a generic Allied powersupply 350watts. I know, I know, I need a better powersupply myself, I will get it really soon. It has suffered through poweroutages, which btw was protected by an APC UPS. The UPS I had for it was only rated as a 120watt, so I am also looking for a higher ups also. I have also a 440GX MB and it takes an regular size atx Powersupply.

But please up your powersupply to a well known manufacture, and your voltage 400w minimum for your machine.
 
400W?

No... For a PII duallie, you'd be looking at 300-350W tops, even with 3-4 HDDs and couple of optical drives. I ran a PIII 500 duallie with 3 HDDs and 2 optical drives with a generic 300W for years.
 
Heh. My PII Xeon lives on a True430 from Antec. Of course, I think it deserves a nice power supply...
 
[H]EMI_426 said:
Heh. My PII Xeon lives on a True430 from Antec. Of course, I think it deserves a nice power supply...
Click to expand...
I agree. The psu is no place to cut corners. I tend to overdo it, I suppose, but better safe than sorry, right?
 
just to offer the pessimistic perspective (i had to suffer through this) - is there any chance the mobo or something like that got shorted?
 
Hey how long do you wait for any feedback upon powering on?

My MS440GX has absolutely the *slowest* POST I have ever seen. It's even worse with SCSI + IDE cards with their own BIOS. But it takes close to 30 seconds IIRC from the point where I turn on the power to anything appearing on the screen.

That time before you get any visual feedback may vary with the number of components installed, I'm not sure... this things been running and more or less configured like this for years. Solid as a rock too with a Enhance 300W and a bunch of drives. It came with my case and I meant for it to be temporary, but forgot about it until a few months ago when I looked at the label. Oh well it has worked great for 4 years!

200W is kinda weak dude. Look for something better!

If you find yourself reseating everything don't forget the VRM.

If you are adding SCSI hard drives be sure to add a power up delay. Having numerous hard drives start spinning up at the same time is not a good idea with a small power supply.

I can't remember if there is an option in the BIOS to add a delay to IDE drives on the integrated PIIX4. It sucks anyway for anything other than optical - it is only ATA33!

If you find yourself reseating everything don't forget the VRM.

I would have gone crazy if I wanted to run windows on this box. Waiting for reboots sucks. Lucky I don't need to do it often with linux!
 
XeonTux said:
Hey how long do you wait for any feedback upon powering on?

My MS440GX has absolutely the *slowest* POST I have ever seen.
Click to expand...
Amen to that...The thing takes forever...Probably ten or fifteen seconds before waking up the monitor...Then another good, long while to count up the gig of RAM, load SCSI BIOSes, Intel NIC stuff, etc.

I ran Windows (XP) on mine for a while. Didn't have to reboot very often. I hardly ever reboot with FreeBSD. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top