MSI 5184 ver 1

Hot-swapping and Boot-Block flash & Boot block flash and floppy support
Post Reply
nicolae788
Chip off the ol' block
Posts: 105
Joined: Thu Mar 11, 2004 8:24 pm
Location: Bucharest,Romania
Contact:

Hello.
I bought at second hand for a very low price this type of MB(MSI 5184 ver 1).I installed a Intel pentium Proc. at 233 and MMX.All work was done acording to the manual which i downloaded from the internet!
When i am powering it upall i see it's a blank screen and nothing in rest .I can hear the HDD as it 's initialized the CD-ROM the keyboard ,etc.The PCI conn. are powered and it also has an agp slot,i tried with an agp VGA and also with an PCI VGA board and both of them displayed nothing.The bios it's an award on a winbond W29c020-12 Chip flashable at 5 V as i know.I already hot flashed it in a working board with the latest release from the MSI web server.Put it back in his MB and still the same no boot.I checked the voltage on the VPP pin on the MSI board and i measured 12V and this chip it's flashable at 5V and maybe this 12V on the VPP pin erase it and as a result ,no boot!!!!CAN THIS BE POSSIBLE?or could the board be damaged?If there shouldn 't be 12V then which part it's at fault or how can i drop the voltage to 5V????????
I repeat the keyboard it liting up the cd-rom the hdd it's initializing and then hangs up with that blank screen!The floppy it's not been accessed by the boot block as award does and also the proc it's receiving current.
I tryied with diferent procs but same result(Cyryx 6x86 MX Pr 200,intel pentium 150 )I used a 32 dimm and two 16M simm's..
What could halt this board from booting ?
Please ,any advise appreciated/
Thank you very very much
Alex.
nicolae788
Chip off the ol' block
Posts: 105
Joined: Thu Mar 11, 2004 8:24 pm
Location: Bucharest,Romania
Contact:

Hello
why ,on the MS5184 board , i have 12V on the VPP pin and the chip suports only 5V flashing.WHY? Could something be out of order on the board like a current limiter or chip or enything else??????\
Thank you !!!
Alex.
Ritchie
BIOS Guru
Posts: 761
Joined: Wed Oct 30, 2002 5:17 am

I had a problem recently where I was trying to establish what was working - I did the following.

1) Connected the PC speaker and established that it was working.
2) Disconnected all from board except power.
3) Powered on and established board had power.
4) Connected CPU and determined from speaker beeps that it was looking for RAM.
5) Connected RAM and determined from speaker beeps that it was looking for VGA.
6) Connected VGA and determined from speaker beeps that it was not recognising VGA.
7) Determined also from speaker beeps that bootblock BIOS was coming up but with no display.
8) Connected floppy drive and determined that floppy drive was attempting to boot.
9) Made up a boot floppy disk to flash the BIOS and after it was flashed the board worked normally with usual BIOS and VGA display.

I am not sure where you are up to Alex but if your board is not faulty then the above process may help you determine where the point of failure is, if you have not already established that. I will be interested to hear how you progress. Note that your drives may just be doing some initialisation with the power signal and perhaps not communicating with the board.
nicolae788
Chip off the ol' block
Posts: 105
Joined: Thu Mar 11, 2004 8:24 pm
Location: Bucharest,Romania
Contact:

hi
thank you for your reply,but i already found out that the board has a faulty component somwhere since it doesn't beep or do anything.I folowed the same procedure as you but no luck and also no beep!!!!
I will have it serviced to a friend of mine and if i will repair it i will post here what it was!!.
And yes the drives are initializing but i do not hink that they are comunicating with the board...
Thank you again.
Alex.
Ritchie
BIOS Guru
Posts: 761
Joined: Wed Oct 30, 2002 5:17 am

Don't spend a lot of money on it - if this is a Socket 7 board you may pick up a working replacement, although second hand, but maybe still in good condition, at low cost. I wouldn't think they would sell for a lot now and the repair cost is probably still easily more.

Only other things are:

* Your power supply is OK?
* Next time you try it make sure the power supply connectors to the board are correct and not in the wrong order. This can cause an AT board to appear to be dead.
* If the above two check out but the system does not power on, then with everything else you have checked it would seem that the board is indeed faulty. The only other thing that may do it is incorrect configuration jumper settings but I do not really come across these to be the cause of such problems, as most boards I have looked at have jumpers pretty much left where they should be.

Good luck!
nicolae788
Chip off the ol' block
Posts: 105
Joined: Thu Mar 11, 2004 8:24 pm
Location: Bucharest,Romania
Contact:

Hi
OH no i will not spend any money on this as i bought it with 2$ and here in my country the labour for a MB repair it's 10$/hour so figure it out....
That friend of mine can look at it and tell me if he can do it or not,that's all.The power source was good and i even replaced with another one and another one but still the same results....
Anyway thank you for your replys :)
Alex.
Post Reply