Pepse Posted May 24, 2004 Report Share Posted May 24, 2004 I just bought a new tower for my system. It is a P4 tower with a 450 watt P4 (Pentium 4?) power supply. It has caused my Mandrake 9.1 system to act very strange. It has a tendency to take me to user log in screen; in otherwords "reboot or log in". When I get back to my desktop it gives me an error about my sound card. To wit: Sound server Informational Message Error while initializing the Sound Driver device, /dev/dsp can't be opened (Device or Resource busy) The sound server will continue, using the null output device. Also, I think this new power supply killed my nVidia GeForce 2 64 meg PCI card, so I put in an old nVidia TNT2 32 meg AGP card and after setting up XFdrake (I could only do that in a console; otherwise it would take me back to the log in screen when trying to do it in Mandrake Control Center) I tried to do the test and it wouldn't but gave me this info: Sutting down X Font Server: [OK] Starting X Font Server [OK] . xfs is not running at /usr/lib/libDrakeX/Xconfig/test.pm line 47 . Is it possible that I can't use this tower/power supply on a AMD Athlon chipped board?? "Cause there are 2 connectors that I don't have no place to connect. 1 looks like 1/2 of an AT power connector and the other is squarish with 4 connectors. Or is it possible that the AGP card is causing me problems?? When I had a chance to get farther into MCC I checked the hardware section and it lists the video card as Riva TNT2 Model 64 Bus: PCI Location on Bus 1:0:0 . I hope it ain't the case/power supply as I mainly got it for the 450 watt supply so I can get a 128 meg or 256 meg nVidia chipped AGP card for my mobo. My mobo is a Tyan Trinity KT-A with a 1.3 gig CPU, 512 megs of SDram. Oh, when in a console and after logging in as root I get this message: using diffrent removable device [/dev/hdb] for "Installation CD1 (x86) (cdrom1) , and basically the same message but diffrent CDrom disc numbers for all 7 CD's; as I have the MDK 9.1 PowerPack. Actually I am surprised the computer lasted this long without taking me back to re-log in. I am not going to spell check or review my post so as to not cause it to reboot. Pepse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted May 24, 2004 Report Share Posted May 24, 2004 When you do a rebuild like that I have ALWAYS found the most reliable way to ensure a stable system is to do a complete fresh reinstall. Yes I know it is a pain. There is no explainable reason why simply transferring everything into a new case should make a difference even though you make certain that all PCI cards are in EXACTLY their original slots AND ALL external USB cables are in the exact original sockets. The different power cannot make a difference to how the system works unless it has a subtle fault. This can easily be checked by substituting the original Power Supply. I have found through my experience that a reinstall cleans up any potential nasties and give you a great start with your improved assembly and I know that is what you desire or you wouldn't be trying the improvements you are doing. I am a bit of a modder myself so welcome to this part of the computer world but most of all have fun and enjoy it. Cheers John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted May 24, 2004 Report Share Posted May 24, 2004 Like John says , the case is just a hunk of metal and the PSU a supply of electricity.... The problem you are explaining is attributable with the Xserver crashing and restarting .. when did it 'kill' the PCI card ??? Riva TNT2 Model 64 Bus: PCI Location on Bus 1:0:0 sounds fine but running harddrake probably overwrote your good nvidia driver. What happens if you close X completely ??? as root type /etc/init.d/dm stop this should drop you to a console.... log in as root and you can check the same stuff as MCC lspci -v (should show all your cards) etc. however try running it here for a while and see if anything strange happens... If your using a duron 1.3 they are VERY POWER HUNGRY... an upgrade to an Athalon 2Ghz will use 1/2 the power !!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarissi Posted May 24, 2004 Report Share Posted May 24, 2004 Hmmm.... I thought Athlon was spelled the same everywhere. :D Reworking things can always be 'fun'. It took me 2 days to get win98se and W2K Pro to play nice with each other. That is after I swapped 2 HDDs and I needed to move my root partition to the big hdd. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted May 24, 2004 Report Share Posted May 24, 2004 Changing mobo or something major you should do an upgrade. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepse Posted May 28, 2004 Author Report Share Posted May 28, 2004 First of all I am sorry for not responding to this post of mine but, as usual I rarely if ever am notified of replies to my posts. Yes, I have that box checked. Anyway, just to bring everybody up to speed; the whole system was basically coming apart. I changed to an old 1 meg S3 Virge card and that acted up. Then it got to the point where I restarted the system and it wanted me to log into a console. So, I figured I would just re-do Linux and it would start with CD-1 and after I check US English it would not recognize my CDrom/DVD. Re-tried several times, no luck. So, I decided to plug in my emergency MDK 9.0 hdd, nothing better. It would not recognize hardware and/or various errors would show up (tried it 3 times). Then, I have a hdd with Fedora Core on it, so I hooked it up and it wouldn't get past the booting part either because it couldn't find X or floppy or DVD/CDrom. So, then I decided it might be either the power supply or the one and only brass screw that grounds the mobo to the chassis. Put in my old 100 watt ATX supply and it is working flawlessly. Also, I put in my 64 meg nVidia card and it is OK, too. Called the computer shop where I bought the tower and he had me drop off the power supply and when I stopped by Thurs. he said it checked out OK, but he gave me a new power supply to see if it works. Well shortly after I finish this post I will switch power supplies and see what gives, or doesn't. I will hopefully post back in an hour or so. Later. Pepse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepse Posted May 28, 2004 Author Report Share Posted May 28, 2004 Well, it's been an-hour-and-a-half with the new power supply and I am having no problems. For starters I played LBeakout2 as I tried playing that with the original PSU and this time it didn't mess up. With the other PSU the system couldn't handle the fast action of LBreakout2. So, for what John said about a "subtle fault", I believe that was true. That could easily hide from what was probably a simple quick check. Gowater, no loss on my nVidia drive as it was about 6 or 7 months old. I need to upgrade but I plan on waiting until I get a new vid card. My CPU is an AMD Athlon T-Bird 1.33. I have always loved upgrading one way or another. Heck if I had a store-bought like my wife's HP I probably wouldn't use it that much. I'd be bored stiff B) Now all I gotta do is get the pinouts for the front USB and sound card jacks from their respected companies. Thanx for your opinions. There always helpful if for anything the future. Or until I screw something up and try to remember what was said. Later. Pepse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted May 28, 2004 Report Share Posted May 28, 2004 Pepse, If you go to the AMD site they have the power rating on ALL their chips. I recently had a problem (hence why I know this) when ripping MP3's... seriously, just that .... I suspected the PSU but then looked at the power ratings of the Tbird (which was a 1250) and lo it was double a cheap newer one.... Here are some ratings from the product sheets Athlon TB Mod 4 1300 = 39Ax1.85v = 72W athlon TB Mod 4 1400 = 41.2Ax1.85V = 76.2W Mod 10 (later = XP3000+ (=2100mhz) = 32A x 1.65v = 52.8A Duron mod 8 1400 = 30.3A x 1.5v = 45W So the actual model of the chip makes huge differences in power consumption. Remember this DOUBLES mpore or less becuase of the need for increased cooling. Every watt generated needs cooling so that draws even more from the PSU. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland Posted May 28, 2004 Report Share Posted May 28, 2004 (edited) Intel P4 takes its power from the 12V, AMD Athlon takes its power from the 5V Edit: more exactly, of course, that's the Mobo that convert the 5V or 12V to 1.8 V or so. (see the capacitors and self just near the CPU). I've read in a magazine yesterday that the P4 voltage comes from the 12V and the Athlon voltage comes from the 5V. Thinking of it, if its true, I don't know why Mobo manufacturers decided to make the cpu voltage from 12 or 5V depending one the CPU type. 1.8V is 1.8V, whatever from witch voltage its made. Edited May 28, 2004 by roland Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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