Fate of Io: The Mighty Aetrus Returns...

The Mighty Aetrus Returns...

2003/02/14 21:39:41 PST by Aetrus [0/15]

Yes I finally resolved my mobo issues. And I am finally typing this on my own system! Its nice to be back in the saddle. I'll get to the music section and other items shortly.

It turned out that my CPU was bad. I'll get after googlegear.com shortly. I swapped the 1st gen Athlon 1200mhz from my old system and sure enough it started right up. (figures...) Now It is tentatively working. I had to install winME though. So far it seems to be ok and I actually like some of the changes so we'll see how temporary this change is. (eventually I'll switch to win2k, but I need to get my hardware sorted out first) My one issue so far...and its a major one is the sound. I CAN'T GET THE DAMN nFORCE2 SOUND DRIVERS TO WORK!!!!!!! I'm in the process of d/l the all-in-one ASUS drivers off the site now so we'll see. It doesn't like it if I try to install my old SBLIVE! too much either. I tried that and ended up with it booting SOOO slowly that I just formatted C: and started over. Good thing I partitioned off 10gigs for the C: off my new 60gig. (haven't installed my old 40 gigger yet. I'll wait till this is all good to go first.) So I am without a voice at the moment. Its worse than not having the system working at all! NO MUSIC! That's TERRIBLE! So ya...

Temp? other computer geeks...er...geniuses? Any ideas on how to get the nForce2 driver set working right? It installs fine, but then nothing. It leaves out the nForce2 control panel too. The icon is there but it says that the sound drivers are not installed. It does that for every sound app. I know I got the deluxe A7N8X board because it has all the extras and its all there right on the mobo. The mcp2-t is very easy to spot. (southbridge) THIS IS A PAIN IN THE ASS!

Ok I'll stop complaining. Its nice to be back if not completely running at 100%. The older chip doesn't help either since its prone to overheating. (ASUS has some nice apps to monitor that though) This mobo is an overclockers dream. If you have an unlocked processor you can control a ton of stuff from the multiplier to the RAM voltage. (AGP voltage too) Got dual Ethernet 6 USB and 2 firewire ports. (1 2 pin and 1 4 pin. Good for sampler hook up)

Anyway thats the skinny on where I am right now. I'll be around more now. I may end up taking a few more days off to figure out all the SHIZA that's going on with my system though. (NVIDIA drivers are useless since ASUS tweaked some things. The Nvidia drivers cause problems. good thing ASUS has been good at updating...)

2003/02/15 03:34:13 PST by Temporal [manager]
Edited at 2003/02/15 03:34:36 PST

Without actually sitting at your computer and screwing with it, I really have no way of knowing what your problem might be. The only thing I can recommend is that you download the nForce2 drivers from nvidia.com (not ASUS) and see if they work better.

Anyway, welcome back!

2003/02/15 10:37:27 PST by Aetrus [0/15]

I'll see what I can do. This is temporary for sure. Even if I have to build a frikkin sound module myself! :)

2003/02/15 12:59:37 PST by mystik3eb [0/43]

I have a quick technical question. If a motherboard gets fried, do all the cards and hdd's attached get destroyed with it?

2003/02/15 13:03:24 PST by Temporal [manager]

Depends on what you mean by "fried", and how it happened. If the motherboard overheated and melted, the cards are probably still fine. If you sent a 10,000 volt static shock through the circuits, it's probably all quite dead.

2003/02/16 14:28:41 PST by mystik3eb [0/43]

...put it this way: I turned it on and smoke came out of it. From then on it wouldn't even turn on. Ask xifer, he was there.

2003/02/16 18:17:48 PST by Temporal [manager]

I would guess that your CPU heat sink failed, and that was your CPU burning up, but I couldn't say for sure. You'll probably want to take your cards out and test them individually in another comp.

2003/02/16 22:07:03 PST by Aetrus [0/15]

oooh....fire within huh? Crispy CPUs suck you can't even serve then for lunch! sorry...that really blows man. I've only ever had a powersupply unit fail on me. That wasn't spectatular it was just a little !click! and then everything died. It didn't do anything to the hardware. (haven't checked my old hdd yet but it should be fine)

Still no idea what the deuce is up with the sound on this b---h. It bloody feels like I'm a raging mute! Its too damn quiet in my room! the sound of cooling fans (I have 3 not counting the cpu and psu fans) is driving me nuts!

BTW anyone have anything good to say about the liquid cooling systems I see advertized? That would kill fan noise, and it would give me a quiet recording environment. you'd be surprised just how much fan noise leaks in from the mics.

Well good luck finding out what fried, and I did find quite a few good sites for replacement parts if you need to buy them. (spent days shopping and comparing prices. I got some good deals too)

2003/02/21 21:39:19 PST by Black Squall [0/5]

For your driver problem just use the Driver CD that came with the mobo and never update the sound drivers. That can cuase excruciating problems.

As for water cooling it's great. But you don't want to go and set one up by yourself if you have no idea how to do it. Also, always set up the system outside of the case and run it for awhile like an hour or 2 just to make sure that you don't have any leaks. This also wont completely eliminate fan noise, as you still need to have air flowing through the case to cool off other heat generating components like RAM and HDD and CD/DVD media drives. For good water cooling kits check out Inovatec, ThermalTake and the Maze3 (can't remember who makes that one).

Mystik, chances are you only burned the processor. The heatsink probably wasn't mounted correctly. If it was the board that fried you can plan on almost everything being dead with the exception of HDD, FDD and CD/DVD drives. The PSU may have cuased this too resulting in a completely FUBAR system. PSU's normally don't go with out taking something else out with them and the part that is most likely to survive is the mobo.

Good luck to both of you with getting these things worked out.

2003/02/21 23:05:18 PST by Aetrus [0/15]

UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah. I got sound! Though not from the onboard soundset. I reinstalled my SBLIVE!. Sucks to have that biotch in again, but it works well enough. I'm back and as the Phoenix rises from the ashes so have I, Deep Electric risen again! Phoenix is the name of my new song. I got the majority of it done in 2-3 hours. I just have to mix and master it better, and maybe add some more elements. This one's a bit different than normal in that its a breakbeat/Drum and bass-ish track. I used mainly Sonic Foundry loops for this one with a few bass lines off my own. (hence the short uptime) I still have to make and intro and outro for it, but mainly it's done. Its a more mellow almost sad song, but it is 'reborn' later as a happier peice with very little changed. (read: minor notes that use notes in A major so it resolves to major in the second half.) Not a whole lot of variance here, but I think its good. I'll try to find a place to put it for you all at some point. (anyone want to volunteer some space? I tried making pages, but its just not my thing. "Dammit Jim! I'm a [musician] not a miracle worker!") Right so I'm pretty damn happy!

Also I got my second hdd up and running as a samples drive. (40gb...wonder how long it'll take me to fill that with samples?) So now I have 2 drives and 3 partitions. 1 called OS for my ...OS! and one called Deep (samples) and Electric (games and other stuff). WHEEE!!!!