BIOS Updates forum

I have 2 Giga-Byte Ga-7zm motherboards. They are both dead. All I get is the Orange led on the board and the fan spins. I have tried 2 different video cards that both work in other systems. Same with memory and cpu. I have 2 bios chips which both have been flashed and passed and tested in other systems. I get no error beeps. The video card flickers my monitor for a split second when I hit the power button. I have tried them both in the case and out of the case. Tried different monitors. The video cards warm up properly like they do in the other systems, but none of the chips on the board do on either one and neither does either cpu. Brand new power supply, tried 3 of those. I checked the boards over with a maginifying class. I found nothing burnt. Everything looks fine on both boards. Cleared cmos on both several times. Is there a common problem with these boards that I am unaware of?. Its odd that both are doing hte same thing. Any help is GREATLY appreciated.

Oh, btw, checked clock speeds several times and all the jumpers too.

While clearing CMOs was power completely off ?
-> Remove power cord from PSU and press power button to unload PSU capcitors then clear CMOS

Do you hear beeps or does the floppy show activity ?

Tried to reflash the Flashrom using Uniflash with flash including bootblock ?
Tried to use different Biosversions ?

I had the cmos battery out for 2 says with the power disconnected to try to clear cmos. The floppy drive shows no other activity other than the inital power up as well as the hard drive . I get no beeps, error beeps or otherwise. I have used 3 different version of the bios for these motherboards.

What is the history of these boards ? i.e. how did they die ?
Have you checked the CMOS batteries ?
(I have a dead Gigabyte mobo which the owner said was giving trouble then just never booted one day - maybe static damage, maybe a bad chip eventually died. I have had this as well with a clock generator chip just dying.)

Ya I dunno man.... Checked CMOS batteries and they are fine..... I just dunno.............

Time to get out the meter and see if the voltages are being generated for the CPU

Where do I check that at?

Get the data sheets from AMD and check on the underside of the CPU/motherboard

Another possibility would be to check if the PWRGOOD signal is high (at least this is what I do after I have verified that the BIOS is OK (the flash chip itself and the contents of it) and made a visual examination of the board (to see if there are any bad capacitors etc)).

Know anywhere I can get that info for Gigabyte motherboards? I cant find it anywhere on the net.

On an ATX PSU connector, the PWRGOOD signal is probably known as PS-OK. A search for ATX PSU Pin-out on Google found a page with a link to it. The AMD processor pin-out can be found in the Athlon datasheet
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content ... /24309.pdf
BTW, you do have the processor fan connected to the processor fan connector, do you ?

My processor fan is hoooked into the same power as one of the hard drive power supplys. I tried another processor fan I had that went off the board itself. It made no difference. I know the cpus are good cause I have 3 adn they all work in other computers.

You have the fan connected to the HDD power connector and it runs continuously (i.e. the power is not soft-controlled off) ?

The working CPU doesn't necessarily mean anything; I have a working K6/III-450 and when I drop it into a Vision Top VT586TX I get nothing. The VT586TX works fine with a K6-233. So sometimes it has to be a CPU that the motherboard recognises - I assume you have that covered.

About the fan, yes it is powered by an extra hdd power cable. I tried one that goes off the board itself and it didnt change anything