An used, cheap ECS board from capacitor plague era, that powers on erratically, what could it be, hmm... 🤣

The guy listed it booted into windows, the other board I have got into the bios and worked with the multiplier set correctly until I took the board out of the case

Yes look close at the caps for bloating, specifically the big ones near the ATX power connector and the VR chips. The green OST branded ones are well known to fail.

I’ve checked the caps on the new board and they look fine and haven’t bulged, the one next to the atx connector was replaced so I don’t understand the issue since there is no big load on anything

Capacitors can go bad without leaking or bulging... if your comfortable/able to replace them it may well fix the board.
I have had a few "capacitor plague" era boards that had bad caps that didnt leak/pop/bulge/etc.

Which rev of the K7S5A is the board ? Rev's before v5 (v1.1 and 3.1) usually need a BIOS update to run the XP2400+ and 2600+ as the stock supplied BIOS only support up to about the 1800+ from my experience.

Horun wrote:

Which rev of the K7S5A is the board ? Rev's before v5 (v1.1 and 3.1) usually need a BIOS update to run the XP2400+ and 2600+ as the stock supplied BIOS only support up to about the 1800+ from my experience.

The old board was a v3.1 and had a bios labelled 165 whereas the new board’s bios is labelled 155 but I can’t find the Rev version as it isn’t in the same spot as the old board. I know the old board worked with the cpu even when the multiplier was set correctly.

jamesp15 wrote:

Capacitors can go bad without leaking or bulging...

Definitely. Test capacitors around CPU's buck converter circuit first, at input and output stages. It's also possible that one of the el. caps is shunting to ground, in such case PSU won't even start due to overcurrent protection.

Well the board only just arrived so I could enquire about getting a refund, hopefully he won’t ask for me to ship it back. But I am curious as to what the beep code meant, I can’t find a definitive answer online, plus I am wondering if I should try swapping the bios roms between the boards in case the old board was flashed to a newer version hence why it was able to start up before. I don’t have a multimeter and wouldn’t be able to get one shipped to me in time before the guarantee ends on the listing.

Yeah you can try swapping the roms, make sure to also clear cmos again before powering up. AND as always: make sure you disconnect the atx power connector before doing the rom swap. AMI BIOS: 4 short beeps = System timer failure.

Horun wrote:

Yeah you can try swapping the roms, make sure to also clear cmos again before powering up. AND as always: make sure you disconnect the atx power connector before doing the rom swap. AMI BIOS: 4 short beeps = System timer failure.

Yeah, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to get them roms out with the stuff I have. Thinking back to that beep code, were the battery holders known to have issues back then? Because they don’t look like they’re making the best contact with the board. I have tried pushing the positive clip against the battery to make a better connection on both boards but I don’t think my interference is helping with the conductivity of the CMOS. If that’s not the issue then I guess I can try getting in touch with the seller tomorrow, it just seems odd that it only stops working when it comes to me... especially when I go out of my way to keep things in good condition and safely handle them 😢

bionicle_159 wrote:

Horun wrote:

Yeah you can try swapping the roms, make sure to also clear cmos again before powering up. AND as always: make sure you disconnect the atx power connector before doing the rom swap. AMI BIOS: 4 short beeps = System timer failure.

Yeah, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to get them roms out with the stuff I have. Thinking back to that beep code, were the battery holders known to have issues back then? Because they don’t look like they’re making the best contact with the board. I have tried pushing the positive clip against the battery to make a better connection on both boards but I don’t think my interference is helping with the conductivity of the CMOS. If that’s not the issue then I guess I can try getting in touch with the seller tomorrow, it just seems odd that it only stops working when it comes to me... especially when I go out of my way to keep things in good condition and safely handle them 😢

I've always found that the CMOS settings start to be lost on the K7S5A at a relatively good voltage, around 2.5v on the coin cell. Also something to note, the 2600+ CPUs weren't always compatible with the K7S5A (especially on an older BIOS), try with a cheap Duron or something instead just to be sure.

On caps, my NOS K7S5A worked perfectly for a good while, until recently when it started becoming very unstable. I strongly suspect the caps have gone bad, even though mine haven't bulged.

bionicle_159 wrote:

Yeah, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to get them roms out with the stuff I have. :

A very small flat blade screw driver works well to pry the DIP style BIOS chips out but the board cannot be in a case, it seems one end is always a bit easier to to start on then the other.

The seller was considerate enough to give me a full refund for the board. Since I’ve got a ton of stuff going on with college and getting stuff for birthdays I’m gonna set both boards aside for now, when I do return to them it will be a polymer recap of the board, especially around the VRMs, hopefully from that I’ll get one working board. Until then I’ll be more than content with my ultimate WinXP machine I just built myself, got a hd7970 for really cheap and it’s been flying through every title! (GOG really is a lifesaver for people like me who don’t wanna track down ISOs and game cracks online)