Award BIOS, 1 long beep

Bovon · September 3rd, 2003, 11:24 PM

Hey..new one on me. I was given a Shuttle AK31 version 1.3A from a guy who said he had tried to flash the BIOS and its dead..so, I thought I might get lucky and fix it.

I had to buy a stick of DDR (PC2100, 128 mb Crucial) for the project because all I use (so far) is SDRAM.

RAM came in today, and I fired the board up..bare, ram, cpu and video card + PSU. No video, and one long beep..a pause and a long beep..this will continue. I tried all 4 DIMM sockets..1 long beep. I removed the module altogether...1 long beep.

One long beep on an Award BIOS is RAM related, according the general beep codes

To me, this doesn't sound like a bad BIOS flash..but maybe it is?...boot block kicking in?..

I have several other older boards, so I tried the Award ROM chip from other boards...no beep..no video..no nothing.

Any thoughts or opinions from anybody?...especially..has anybody ever heard of a board beeping when the bios is dead?..

ale_x13 · September 5th, 2003, 02:02 PM

try this thread, i had a similar problem. award have stated that any beeps are now video related, maybe this will help maybe it wont, but give it a go

http://www.techimo.com/forum/t79151.html

Bovon · September 5th, 2003, 08:33 PM

Hi, well.. I gave a PCI video a shot..no luck. One long beep about 4 seconds, then its off 4 seconds..repeating this over and over. I can pull the ram and still get the 4 sec. beeps..same with the video card.

I sent the mainboard help tech dept an email and received a reply this afternoon.. he said one long beep is ram problems..if the bios was dead I should get several short beeps.

There is a possibility I guess that there is a broken trace for the DIMMs or a defective DIMM socket.. I have tried all 4 sockets.

Glad you lucked out however..

Thanks for the input and stopping by.

y3k · September 8th, 2003, 11:18 AM

try 2 change the ram

WingWizard · September 8th, 2003, 02:20 PM

1 long beep after another is a memory problem in the award bios.

it's in the manual somewhere, and i speak from experience

Bovon · September 8th, 2003, 08:40 PM

I have a friend who has an extra stick of DDR and is mailing it to me for a test. If the board still fails to boot after that..into the ole trash can it goes. I knew that the long beep was ram related on an Award BIOS'd board..and of course, the stick I bought may be defective..if the board boots when this other stick gets here, and continues to not boot with this first stick I bought...Crucial.. I will send that module to Crucial for a confirmation test...then get it back, ship it back to the guy I got it from...who by the way went out of his way to tell me it was good..absolutely...good, working great when replaced with some PC 2700 etc. etc., so if it turns out to be bad afterall, I will send it back with explicit instructions on where it should be placed...after the sharp edges and corners have been rounded off so it doesn't hurt too much.

Thanks for stopping by.

Nighthawk · September 8th, 2003, 10:14 PM

I had a beep like that on my BP6 and my POST card pointed toward RAM.. I removed some and it worked fine.

If you know the memory's good, your friend was right about the BIOS dying.

If you like the board enough, there are places you can buy a new BIOS chip from for 15-20.

Bovon · September 8th, 2003, 11:00 PM

Howdy Nighthawk. Thanks for the interest. Initially, I thought I would be dealing with a bad flash attempt..but now, I don't know what to think. This is just a project.. I enjoy trying to make things work again..most I don't however.

Yep, I know I can get a new chip..and there are a few members here (?) that have the necessary to reflash a chip..but, this is beginning to look like a bad ROM chip may not be all of the problems.

The ram module I have onhand, I got off of eBay..the guy swears it was a good module, Crucial PC2100..we'll see. I have no way to test that module, all of my boards take SDRAM.

Thanks for stopping by.