Gigabyte GA-K8NS

Only for programmers and BIOS gurus with technical questions.
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nicolae788
Chip off the ol' block
Posts: 105
Joined: Thu Mar 11, 2004 8:24 pm
Location: Bucharest,Romania
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Hello,

I have an old motherboard that i am resurrecting. Make/Model : Gigabyte/GA-K8NS

At first it was hanging at post code CF which meant that the write test had not passed. As i know this is the part were it identifies the CPU based on the BB table and then it writes it into the CMOS. Anyway this it's fixed now and i am able to boot into BIIOS setup and partly into an OS.

What's left, it's an error message on the POST card that says " Initializing slot 5 " ...what are these slots?? and why would the bios hang on this message, but pass on to the boot sequence ??

I presume these are the PCI/ISA/AGP/PCIex slots that need initialization ! ???

Some light on this subject would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!
edwin
The Hardware Archivist
Posts: 6286
Joined: Wed Mar 20, 2002 7:11 pm
Location: Netherlands
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Clear CMOS (reset to defaults)
Replace the CMOS battery with a NEW coin cell CR2032 3V lithium-ion
Check for bad capacitors on the board and in your power supply (reference http://www.badcaps.net )
edwin/evasive

Do not assume anything

System error, strike any user to continue...
nicolae788
Chip off the ol' block
Posts: 105
Joined: Thu Mar 11, 2004 8:24 pm
Location: Bucharest,Romania
Contact:

Hi, i did all that. Everything looks ok and tests ok on the board. The only problem was that it hanged at CF testing and that it's solved, it was a bad resistor on the 3.3 V supply for the BIOS chip . Also the BIOS it's the last release from the Gigabyte site, no corruption inside the file, etc.

I just wanted to know exactly what are those slots. Are actually the slots on the main-board? like PCI, AGP, ISA, PCI Ex, RAM slots? Or it is referring to some logical non-physical existent slots ??

If it's about physical slots present on the MB then i actually have some problems with one PCI and one RAM slot...Maybe it sees something there and wants to initialize, but stays hanged like that because there is actually nothing to init, just a ghost voltage or signal of a kind.
nicolae788
Chip off the ol' block
Posts: 105
Joined: Thu Mar 11, 2004 8:24 pm
Location: Bucharest,Romania
Contact:

Looking at initialization steps looks like bios it's intializing slots 1-15 from address 21h to 2Fh and at 25h in the ITE IT8712F ( the super I/O onboard this MB ) datasheet looks like it's initializing the following items. I guess i have to look in that area for some malfunctions !? Correct?

7 Function Selection of pin 28
0: MIDI Output (MIDI_OUT)
1: General Purpose I/O 17 (GP17)
6 Function Selection of pin 29
0: MIDI Input (MIDI_IN)
1: General Purpose I/O 16 (GP16)
5 Function Selection of pin 30, if bit5 of index 2A is 1.
0: Consumer Infrared Transmit Output (CIRTX)
1: General Purpose I/O 15 (GP15)
4 Function Selection of pin 31, if bit4 of index 2A is 1.
0: Smart Card Reset (SCRRST)
1: General Purpose I/O 14 (GP14)
3 Function Selection of pin 32, if bit3 of index 2A is 1.
0: Smart Card Power FET Control Output #
1: General Purpose I/O 13 (GP13)
2 Function Selection of pin 33, if bit2 of index 2A is 1.
0: Smart Card Serial Data I/O (SCRIO)
1: General Purpose I/O 12 (GP12)
1 Function Selection of pin 34, if bit1 of index 2A is 1.
0: Smart Card Clock (SCRCLK)
1: General Purpose I/O 11 (GP11)
0 Function Selection of pin 84, if bit0 of index 2A is 1.
0: Smart Card Present Detect# (SCRPSNT#)
1: General Purpose I/O 10 (GP10)
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