Bought an MSI 694T Pro, paying a bit too much, but it was a locked package deal with a Pentium3 + full set of RAM.
And it was s […]
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Bought an MSI 694T Pro, paying a bit too much, but it was a locked package deal with a Pentium3 + full set of RAM.
And it was supposed to be my very first ever mobo combining socket 370/Tualatins natively with (one) ISA slot, so I went for it.
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/694T_Pro/support
But... I am not able to get it to boot!
Now, this mobo has an interesting 'traffic light' system, using 4 diodes to code certain levels of progress at boot, quite visionary for such an old board.
The cpu itself seemed to be the first issue, as I could not get it past the first hurdle, the Power ON.
Swapped out the cpu, and voila, we got to level 3 in my picture, memory detection. Where it got stuck again, and is where I am now.
Even after trying several versions of random memory sticks I have, from 16Mb and up, moving it into all the 3 slots one by one, still the same result.
So, given that my RAM is fine, I am clueless of where to go next.
Now, have to mention, 1 single capacitor, the largest on the board, and number 2 down from the top (left side of CPU socket) has a visible bulge.
So that may or may not prevent booting. But I have booted boards with semi-bulged caps like this before, on board of the same era, so was hoping to at least get into the BIOS/see POST.
The rest of the board shows flat caps all over, not that it necessarily means they are fine, but... the seller tells me it booted/was working 1 month ago, so who knows.
Apart from swapping out the BIOS chip (have already reset it several times) or fixing that cap, I know of no further tricks to try.
-> If anyone owns this board, feel free to share any trouble shooting tips here.
Such S370+ISA boards are not that common (anymore), so it would be bummer if this one had to be scrapped.
From the manual (also available as download in that link above):
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Bulged cap is here:
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