"Beryl" <terrapin@coolbits.net> wrote in message
news:13g02vrmj4c621b@corp.supernews.com...
> SumGuy wrote:
>
>> I have an NF7-s but mine is a dud, (sort of).
>> ...
>> It however had problems with the SIL SATA controller on it.
>> ...
>> discovered if I try to run with both SATA channels in use I get data
>> corruption.
>>
>> I'm still using it as a basic workhorse, only using the IDE channels.
>
> Change bios setting "EXT P2P DISCARD TIME" from the default 30us to 1ms.
LOL, too late for that now.
I shouldn't have to tweak anything for it to run normally in the first
place.
I also don't want to run it only to find the tweak doesn't work after a
couple of weeks.
SumGuy wrote:
> "Beryl" <terrapin@coolbits.net> wrote in message
> news:13g02vrmj4c621b@corp.supernews.com...
>
>>SumGuy wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I have an NF7-s but mine is a dud, (sort of).
>>>...
>>>It however had problems with the SIL SATA controller on it.
>>>...
>>>discovered if I try to run with both SATA channels in use I get data
>>>corruption.
>>>
>>>I'm still using it as a basic workhorse, only using the IDE channels.
>>
>>Change bios setting "EXT P2P DISCARD TIME" from the default 30us to 1ms.
>
>
> LOL, too late for that now.
>
> I shouldn't have to tweak anything for it to run normally in the first
> place.
But tweaking's why ABIT gave the NF7's bios all those options, and why
they steadily put out bios updates. Does yours still have the same bios
it had when you bought it?
I tried to swap my sister's eMachine Celeron 500 processor to a Celeron
700 out of another dead eMachine, but the stupid thing won't recognize
it. I looked at the bios setting screen, and there's almost *nothing*
there. What crap.
> I also don't want to run it only to find the tweak doesn't work after a
> couple of weeks.
>
> Thanks anyway.
Yup, too late for that now. Too bad you didn't get it sorted out years ago.
> But tweaking's why ABIT gave the NF7's bios all those options, and why
> they steadily put out bios updates. Does yours still have the same bios
> it had when you bought it?
Mine came with the last BIOS that was put out for it (Version 27, NF7-S
v2). And that's three years old now. They don't do BIOS upgrades for old
boards, I'm sorry to say. (Mine was a replacement for a KT7 that died due
to the capacitor issue and I got it from Abit about a year ago.)
"Beryl" <terrapin@coolbits.net> wrote in message
news:13g2kjkeos57u44@corp.supernews.com...
> SumGuy wrote:
>> "Beryl" <terrapin@coolbits.net> wrote in message
>> news:13g02vrmj4c621b@corp.supernews.com...
>>
>>>SumGuy wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>I have an NF7-s but mine is a dud, (sort of).
>>>>...
>>>>It however had problems with the SIL SATA controller on it.
>>>>...
>>>>discovered if I try to run with both SATA channels in use I get data
>>>>corruption.
>>>>
>>>>I'm still using it as a basic workhorse, only using the IDE channels.
>>>
>>>Change bios setting "EXT P2P DISCARD TIME" from the default 30us to 1ms.
>>
>>
>> LOL, too late for that now.
>>
>> I shouldn't have to tweak anything for it to run normally in the first
>> place.
>
> But tweaking's why ABIT gave the NF7's bios all those options, and why
> they steadily put out bios updates. Does yours still have the same bios it
> had when you bought it?
>
The earliest BIOS I have on my HDD is 23, (NF7-S v2.0). I think it came with
18 or 20 (currently using 27).
IIRC I was using an IDE drive at first, then purchased, another identical
drive and one of those IDE>SATA adapters that Abit included with the
motherboard. It was probably cheaper for me to do this as at the time I
would have had enough space and perhaps couldn't have justified buying a new
SATA drive.
I used these to make a RAID array. Eventually after some problems, and at
least 2 or 3 installs. I re-installed Windows on single drives and
determined one of them had bad sectors. Though chkdsk /r didn't show this on
a fresh format, I had to format with FAT32 and run scandisk which found bad
sectors, (which I'm told is pretty rare).
Swapped that drive, built a striped set again, it began booting slowly and
errors began happening. Made me suspicious of the drives, cables, IDE>SATA
adaptors - pretty much everything ;-).
Running chkdsk /r over a period of time showed an increasing number of bad
sectors.
Broke the array and worked on single disks, but this time could find no
problems.
Got fed up with RAID 0, (which is over-rated on your average machine
anyway...), tossed the IDE>SATA adapters in a box and forgot about it.
Eventually I did get a single SATA HDD, connected it and generaly no
problems, not with the drives anyway.
One day it just shut down or wouldn't reboot for no apparent reason. The red
LED on the board was very weak and another PSU didn't help. After some hours
it came back to life, but of course by this time I had lost all faith in the
board. I can't recall If I had a second SATA HDD attached at this time.
I soldiered on, with a few odd occurences where I did the whole "check
connections and change cabes" thing, (because I still though it had
something to do with the drives), but then after a reboot I was getting
graphical corruption - The VGA card was worth more than the mobo, so I know
what I hoped was dying! ;-)
At this point it wasn't responding again and didn't come back up at all
after a couple of days, so I went out and bought a cheapish Asus board as a
temp measure. Every thing that was in the NF7 went into the Asus board and
worked fine, (used the same case also).
I hadn't been OCing the board at all as I wanted to get it running normally
first before I did that, (hence my comment - it should run with generic
settings out of the box.)
Returned the board, (by post), but it had had a nice nap by then and was
refreshed enough to wake up for the service people who returned it to me,
saying nothing was wrong, (which was a ****er to say the least...).
It sat in the box for a few months, when I tried it again and began having
the issues with 2 non-RAID SATA drives attatched.
In retrospect all I can think is I didn't google the exact magic words to
get the right answer.
About the only reference I found was on the Sil support site saying this
issue could be fixed by a BIOS update and it was up to the mobo
manufacturers, but no more info than that.
Googling "EXT P2P DISCARD TIME" brings up people with the same issue using
RAID, though at the time I was using two single SATA disks, using one SATA
disk gave me no problems.
It's actually running most of the time now. Just the other day I turned it
off to connect another monitor, and upon startup it hung at the Sil BIOS
screen and instead of listing the SATA drive it wrote gobbledeygook and
paused. Tried to reboot a few times and ended up swapping the drive to the
other SATA header and it booted fine.
> I tried to swap my sister's eMachine Celeron 500 processor to a Celeron
> 700 out of another dead eMachine, but the stupid thing won't recognize it.
> I looked at the bios setting screen, and there's almost *nothing* there.
> What crap.
>
I can understand that. If it's too easy for curious fingers to change
settings you can bet they will.
Most monitors and PSUs now have auto sensing voltage converters, but before
they had a little red switch for 120v and 230v. A few people have let the
magik smoke out in Australia by wondering what that was for ;-)
Are you sure there aren't jumpers you can set, or a keyboard combination
that gives you access to extra settings?
>> I also don't want to run it only to find the tweak doesn't work after a
>> couple of weeks.
>>
>> Thanks anyway.
>
> Yup, too late for that now. Too bad you didn't get it sorted out years
> ago.
In all honesty I'm not willing to spend the money of time fiddling about
with overclocking anyway. I usually ended up in a situation where 9 out of
10 programs would run fine overclocked, and having to reboot to change
settings for one program is too much of a hassle. Every time a program
crashes, or something doesn't work right you wonder if it's the overclock
and spend hours trying to sort it out.
There is a point where I like to use the PC to *do* stuff, rather than run
endless benchmarks or driver comparisons and upload the results ;-)
> In all honesty I'm not willing to spend the money of time fiddling about
> with overclocking anyway. I usually ended up in a situation where 9 out of
> 10 programs would run fine overclocked, and having to reboot to change
> settings for one program is too much of a hassle. Every time a program
> crashes, or something doesn't work right you wonder if it's the overclock
> and spend hours trying to sort it out.
I don't even know what EXT P2P DISCARD TIME is, but I wasn't talking
about overclocking anything.
The weak red LED is suspicious. Maybe both your power supplies were
cheapos? I had a new ASUS A7V133 that worked great for a week, then it
would never start up any more unless I unplugged the cord, waited a
couple minutes, then plugged it back in and *quickly* pushed the power
button. Replacing the "PowerMan" that came with the case with an Antec
cured it.
"Beryl" <terrapin@coolbits.net> wrote in message
news:13g4482i97jc9e4@corp.supernews.com...
> SumGuy wrote:
>
> ...
>
>> In all honesty I'm not willing to spend the money of time fiddling about
>> with overclocking anyway. I usually ended up in a situation where 9 out
>> of 10 programs would run fine overclocked, and having to reboot to change
>> settings for one program is too much of a hassle. Every time a program
>> crashes, or something doesn't work right you wonder if it's the overclock
>> and spend hours trying to sort it out.
>
> I don't even know what EXT P2P DISCARD TIME is, but I wasn't talking about
> overclocking anything.
>
Well ocing is what all the tweaking option are for ;-)
EXT P2P DISCARD TIME is a Nvidia only option, it's like a timeout between
the SATA controller and the IDE controller. If the disk doesn't respond in
time it just drops the request and moves to the next one, (or something like
that - didn't read that closely since it's not relevant to me anymore). Too
bad it wasn't either given a more descriptive name, or the motherboad manual
actually described its function.
One of my pet annoyances is motherboard manuals that describe a function
like,
Function X "This option allows you to enable or disable Function X".
and your like "I can see that! WTF does Function X do!" lol. I'm not going
to change something if I don't know what it does.
> The weak red LED is suspicious. Maybe both your power supplies were
> cheapos? I had a new ASUS A7V133 that worked great for a week, then it
> would never start up any more unless I unplugged the cord, waited a couple
> minutes, then plugged it back in and *quickly* pushed the power button.
> Replacing the "PowerMan" that came with the case with an Antec cured it.
Possibly, but IIRC I would have tried 3 different PSUs in total with the
board, and as I said everything worked in the Asus board without problem,
same CPU same VGA card, same RAM, same original PSU.
Ironically the PSU I paid extra for as a replacement did die some time
later.
Re: NF7-S troubleshooting (no beeps) 
Linear Mode
