PCChips M577 Motherboard help..are "keylock" or "turbo" connectors needed to boo

John Prophet · July 21st, 2002, 12:30 AM

Ok, Ill try to keep this short. Elpina motherboard. turns out to be PC Chips M577 , also known as Amptron PM9900. Moved perfectly working motherboard, hard drive, cards etc from one AT case to another. Tidied up all the cables etc..powered up..fans spin, hard drive spins no video. OK, trust me here, I went thru the whole routine, changed vid card, changed cpu, changed ram, changed deoderant, changed back to old working power supply etc etc. Totally disconnected everything from board except for RAM, cpu, vid card, took mobo out of case to make sure it wasnt shorting out. Still no video.

I didnt have a manual (I found it now though) so I wasnt sure of the connections for the case connectors..ie..reset, hdd led, turbo etc. Probably didnt have speaker plugged up correctly since I never heard any beep codes at all. I believe I did have the reset switch hooked up correctly.

So basically now I want to know this..do I HAVE to have the keylock or turbo switches hooked up to boot. I do remember the old case had turbo light lit when running. If keylock isnt hooked up will it think its locked?? What about "sus sw"..if that is for suspend, what will happen if its not hooked up?

Any suggestions of any sort will be appreciated.

Link to manual, page 9 shows connections Im speaking of http://www.amptron.com/manuals/PM-9900/m577v30w.pdf

Thanks, JP

fyxxer32 · July 21st, 2002, 12:40 AM

I am not for sure but I don't think you HAVE to have those hooked up.

MRCOMPUTER · July 21st, 2002, 01:27 AM

You do not have to have keylock, turbo, or suspend connected in order to boot. In an AT case, none of the front panel wires have to be connected in order to boot...

July 21st, 2002, 08:06 PM

Always hated that board...

Quirky to get working, but it works well when it does.

Pull out everything except vid card, cpu, ram, and HDD. The board has some IRQ problems sometimes...

k8vol · July 22nd, 2002, 12:32 AM

try resetting cmos if it don't boot. here is one way to see if it's going to work again. 1)remove battery and short battery terminals together for over two minutes. 2) use a old vga video card and have only cpu and fan ,ram and hdd,cdrom,hdd. in the system this will let you see if your BIOS got messed-up and you my be able to fix it. You will be useing the boot block part of the BIOS witch will still be in tac so you could flash the system then. good luck .k8vol.

MRCOMPUTER · July 22nd, 2002, 01:20 AM

Thats a hard board to kill. I have previously built 30+ systems with it - Without problems. Quirky and irq problems? Naw. lack of understanding maybe.

Remove the battery and short the terminals? Why bother?
Just use the clear cmos jumper (JP3), located next to the battery.

Most probable cause of this no post - The move from one case to another probably unseated the sdram. I would pull the board, reseat the sdram firmly, and set it up outside the case as a basic system. Cpu w/cooler, ram, vid card, power supply, keyboard and mouse. Clear the cmos jumper and see if it will post. Make sure when you plug in the AT power connectors, the black wires end up in the center...

Peter M · July 22nd, 2002, 07:09 PM

Thanks MRC. Less parrotwork for me ... Now what did I want to say ... ah. IIRC, there's no Turbo Switch connector, just a Turbo LED connector. So if you fancy a yellow light being lit, connect it

MRCOMPUTER · July 24th, 2002, 01:44 PM

John.
Did you figure out what happened yet?...

John Prophet · July 24th, 2002, 05:43 PM

Yes, what happened was that I methodically and painstakingly..threw the board in the trash can. A shame because the board was working fine and I had the bright idea to switch cases from the dingy faded case it was in to a nice shiny newer looking case.
Only thing I can surmise is that the newer case has some "spacers" adhesived under where one end of the motherboard would sit..the end where there are no motherboard screwholes in the case. I put a couple of plastic standoffs in the mobo to make sure it didnt flex downward or short on the case...when I screwed the board down..the plastic standoffs hit the plastic "spacers" and flexed the board slightly upwards (concave from top view). All I can assume at this point is that I somehow damaged the board in this way or perhaps just old fashoined static.
I am going in on my off day in a few minutes to flash the BIOS on 3 of my personal abit mobos so you can bet I will be a little more careful.

(Naturally the boss just happened to wander into the tech area while I was trying to revive the blown board..lol. He (making conversation) says "what computer is this"..lol. Also naturally I hadnt asked him if he wanted me to transfer the board although he did agree that the new case looked better)

Live and learn. JP