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Date:	Thu, 13 Jun 2002 16:31:28 PST7
From:	"J. R. Fox" <jr_fox@pacbell.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: System Problems Continue

Content Type: text/plain

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> >A few other odd symptoms have been cropping up, and I'm not a big
> >believer in coincidences. The Warp Center is getting tangled up with all
> >sorts of things and crashing. The screensaver is freezing up, requiring

Steven replied:

> Reseat the RAM chips and the PCI cards.
>
> >Does this suggest anything to you ? Or is it consistent with what you
> >said in your previous post ?
>
> Still looks more like a hardware problem than anything else.

Unfortunately, I have not had a good & proper opportunity to trouble-shoot vis-a-vis
your suggestions, and may not have one until after an upcoming trip. I need a certain
block of time, during which I'm able to risk things getting worse, hopefully as a prelude
to their getting better. I would expect my 'Net & mail access to go out again, at least
for awhile.

At the moment, some cold boots are bringing up an Award screen warning me that my
CPU speed may be set improperly (it **isn't**), which it says can have bad consequences.
This really ain't much fun. If I can't sort this out on my own, once I get the chance,
I may have to come down to the Help Desk.

> FWIW, I own a P3B-F, so I have some familiarity with it.

>> Exactly what did you mean re "making sure the MB is properly isolated ?"

> When a MB is mounted in the case, the signal paths are supposed to be isolated
> from the case ground. That's one of the reasons for the fiber washers that sit on
> top of the mounting post.

Maybe I'm not looking at it right -- in terms of what I can see inside the opened
case -- but I don't see these washers . . . nor do I see them on the prior P2B-F we
removed, which worked fine for 5 years. I did find a couple of plastic (mounting ?)
screws on the latter.

One thing I find a bit curious: the P-II / 450 was affixed so firmly to the P2B-F that
it just wasn't going anywhere. You'd need to pry it off with a crowbar. Yet, there
does not appear to be any obvious way to achieve this with the P-III / P3B-F combo.
Having the box in the car on a relatively short trip, over reasonably smooth roads, is
enough to cause the CPU to pop out every time. Makes me think the earlier builder
had some trick for this (please don't say Super Glue !), in which case it would just
be one of many such tricks.

>> And are you saying that PNP turned ON, and AUTO for all PCI slots, is
>> just fine for OS/2 ?

> Not quite. PnP OS off and Auto On works fine here.

Yeah, but this was always a multi-OS box, and I'm thinking PnP OFF is gonna
cause W2K to wig out, somewhere along the line.

I have a duplicate of the same NIC I can test with, but if it's a hardware failure
(as you speculate, and I tend to doubt), I'm thinking you're thinking maybe it's
more like the motherboard ? I'm sure I've only used a fraction of the H/W that
you have, but, outside of a FDD and some very early hard drives, I just haven't
seen much in the way of H/W failure.

>> Is it the "Reset Configuration" option (where during the H/W boot it will
>> say "ECSD Successfully Updated"), that does this ?

> That clears some of the settings and is worth a try. There's jumper on the MB
> that clears the entire CMOS.

I'll need someone to pinpoint its location for me. I went through the whole MB
manual looking for it, and could not find any mention of it.

Jordan

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