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Home / I-Opener Areas / I-Opener Technical Stuff When is it time to give up?

When is it time to give up? (modified 0 times) gramster Profile These iOpeners have driven me nuts. I'm about to throw in the towel. I'm amazed that anyone has actually got them to do anything useful at speeds higher than 200MHz (I had one runing a P200MMX successfully; that's the best I've achieved). I've got two v5's. They lock up, give kernel panics or freeze on Midori, give me "drive not ready for command" or similar on HDD accesses, sometimes don't even POST, sometimes just do weird video things. I have much better luck with Windows, if I can get as far as actually booting it, but it'll BSD eventually, and I don't blame the software. Here are all the things I've done/tried: - Midori 2.2 and 2.3. Bios 5.40a - assorted SODIMMs, from the stock 32Mb to 128Mb PC100/133 to a Centon 256Mb with the requisite 16 chips - assorted CPUs; toggling between 400MHz K6-3+'s and 450MHz K6-2+'s - the original hacks, including the fat cooling resistor on Q10 - removing Q10 and the cooling resistor, and installing Powertrends PT6702 DC-DC convertors - Lasagna fans, Socket 7 Cyber Coolers, AAVID Thermallow fans Many $$$, many tears, no happiness. Switch to 2.8v, 2.5 x 66, and slap in the P200MMX and they're quite happy, but I could have done that without all the work, and in any case 200MHz machines aren't very interesting; I've got my Zaurus for that. Is there anything left to try to make these work? BTW Lasagna fans seem to be flaky; I bought two new and they have both become very noisy within the space of a few weeks. One came from Tennmax directly, and they are at least replacing it. 04-12-2003 15:45:25

RE:When is it time to give up? (modified 0 times) oldman Profile | Email gramster: that is called 'adventures in i-o hacking'. if you get it to work, fine. if you don't, it was a learning experience. have fun, oldman 04-13-2003 18:34:11

RE:When is it time to give up? (modified 0 times) Unit_1 Profile Gramster, I can certainly sympathize with your frustration. I've definitely had my share when it comes to doing I-Opener hacks. But so far I've managed to build 2 for myself and at least 4 others for friends and family. Currently, all of the machines I've built are running very reliably with a K62+ at 450Mhz (4.5 * 100Mhz FSB) or similar. In fact, I use one of them in my car as a navigation computer with a USB GPS device. After reading your previous message, I'd say I have a few recommendation that I did not see in your list of mods. In my experience the biggest contributor to getting an I-O to run reliablely is installing a fan (or 2) over the opening to the memory door. Without question, every I-O that I've worked on that was previously crashing many times a day is now stable because of this. Heat was killing them. Please... throw some fans at it before the towel. Also, to take advantage of widely available 12v fans, I use a 6v zener diode to tap off of the main 19v supply. However, I feed this through a 5v reed relay that is triggered off of the 5v line of the serial port. This allows the fans to turn off when the power is turned. If you need more info on this let me know. The next critical mod is the widely mentioned, extra current boost from adding the .012 ohm SMT resistor on top of R302. Also, put a .13 ohm 10 watt cooling resistor at the OUTPUT of Q16. This too can be cooled nicely by the fan/s on the memory door. ------------------------------------------------------------------ My next challenge. I have installed Windows XP on my car navigation I-O so I can take advantage of "Hibernation". It works very well now, and reliably, however it took several days for me to get it installed because it was crashing quite consistently at first. I finally found that the 100Mhz FSB was the problem - even though this exact same I-O had been running PERFECTLY for months under Win98se. It seems Win XP would only install and run with 66Mhz FSB!!! That plus a 6x multiplier gives me 400Mhz CPU speed. I'd still like to bump it back up to 450Mhz if possible. If anyone else has the answer to this could you please post it?? Good luck Gramster. Regards, Unit_1 04-13-2003 20:10:21

RE:When is it time to give up? (modified 0 times) redwood Profile gramster, I had Tons of problems with memory upgrades.. of 5 IO's, 2 mem upgrades would only work in a couple of the machines.. the others, just lockup... so, perhaps, use the stock memory, while modifying the other things.. see if you can get it working... good luck! 04-16-2003 16:40:39

RE:When is it time to give up? (modified 0 times) gramster Profile Firstly, sorry for the slow response; I was at the RSA conf this week. unit_1, thanks for the suggestions, but I should reiterate I've done all of these. I piggybacked the resistor to get max juice, I had a cooling resistor on Q10 until I replaced both Q10 and the resistor with a Powertrends DC-DC convertor. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the issue is with the IDE interface on v5's. I had FreeBSD 4.7 and RedHat 8.1 (vannilla install of the distro CDs) both booting and running fine on a v1 and v3b; when I put the same hard drives in v5's I get ATAPI errors followed by a panic with FreeBSD, and RedHat just reboots the machine almost instantaneously after choosing Linux from the GRUB menu. Put those same hard drives back in a v3b; they boot fine. Unfortunately I sold both the v1 and the v3b I had and bought these v5's thinking that they would be less of a hassle when it comes to making the core voltage mods. But the v5's suck. I've just reinstalled a minimal Win98 boot and the contents of the WinXP CD to one of the hard drives, to try an install for the umpteenth time (with the new Lasagna fan). I get about a tenth of the way through the initial Windows "Setup is copying files to your hard disk" screen, and then a popup, "ATTENTION: A serious disk error has occurred while writing to drive !. Retry (r)?" And so it goes.... I do believe the one stick of RAM I have is bad (it wasn't, but now seems to be), so that accounted for some problems (freezing up at the start or prior to POST). The other problems almost all seem to be related to IDE issues. 04-18-2003 22:23:48

RE:When is it time to give up? (modified 0 times) gramster Profile I should also mention I have the RF screens completely removed to help with heat disipation. 04-18-2003 22:26:03

RE:When is it time to give up? (modified 0 times) gramster Profile Something that I'd like to try, which is not a great solution, but if I get stability its something st least, is setting the FSB back to 66MHz and using a 6x multiplier, replacing the 450 K62+'s with 400 K63+s, that I happen to have. Does anyone know what DIP switch settings I need for a 6x multiplier? 04-18-2003 23:03:49

RE:When is it time to give up? (modified 0 times) gramster Profile I've answered my last question; the full set of SW1 values if anyone else needs them are: 123 Mult ---------- 000 - 3.5 001 - 4.5 010 - 3 011 - 2.5 100 - 6 101 - 4 110 - 2 111 - 4.5 04-19-2003 00:20:09

RE:When is it time to give up? (modified 0 times) gramster Profile So I've switched back to a 66MHz FSB, set my CPU multiplier to 6x, with a 400MHz K63+ proc installed, and it looks like the IO is happy with this. It's even using the 128Mb SODIMM that refused to boot at all at 100MHz FSB and that I thought was poked (it is PC133/100 memory, according to the specs). I'm 90% of the way through installing WinXP, and the machine has been up and running for 12 hours. So it seems it just can't handle 100MHz FSB. The second IO is much less flaky; it boots and will run for a while at 100MHz, but after about twenty minutes it goes pear-shaped, so I may have to drop it back to 66FSB too. Pity; that's quite a perf hit. But something is better than nothing, I guess. 04-19-2003 22:25:46

RE:When is it time to give up? (modified 0 times) dr_steve Profile Hmm -- I've noted a different multiplier table: 1-2-3 0 0 0 3.5x 0 0 1 5.5x 0 1 0 3.0x 0 1 1 5.0x 1 0 0 2.0x 1 0 1 4.0x 1 1 0 2.5x 1 1 1 4.5x which at least steps from 2.0 to 5.0 by .5 steps. This table was for ver 3's, did it change (sorry, I've been out of the loop for many months). -Steve 04-20-2003 16:22:59

RE:When is it time to give up? (modified 0 times) StrangeDog Profile Windows XP is ten times as picky about ram issues as Windows 98. Cranking the memory clock down to 66mhz adds much more stability to your ram. You could try different chips or a less agressive CAS setting, but it will come down to XP on what works and what does not. From experience, dodgy ram makes installing (and/or using) XP a nightmare of BSODs, spontanious reboots and other anomolies. Good luck. SD 04-20-2003 18:54:44

RE:When is it time to give up? (modified 0 times) *SF* Profile Another SW1 Multiplier table 04-20-2003 20:17:51

RE:When is it time to give up? (modified 0 times) Unit_1 Profile gramster, What about installing FANS on the ram door??? I didn't see in your message that you tried that. I've worked on 3 or more I-Openers now that were previously very unstable but now are rock solid after adding fans on the ram door. However, let me also add that they were running Win98se. I agree completely that Win XP seems extremely picky about FSB timing issues. As I said before, WinXP BSOD'd everytime at 100FSB but runs fine at 66FSB. YET... Win98se runs rock solid for days at 100FSB. I'd sure like to figure that one out. Regards, ~Unit_1 04-20-2003 22:09:53

RE:When is it time to give up? (modified 0 times) gramster Profile No, I haven't done fans on the RAM door. I'm not sure heat is the issue; things seem to run pretty cool now with the PT6702 DC-DC convertor in. No problems so far with WinXp at 66 FSB, other than USB networking problems. I'm using a Speedstream 10/100 USB adapter and it has BSODed once, and every other time the link just stops working after a few minutes. I had this problem before when running at 200MHz. At that stage I switched to a Netgear 802.11 USB which worked great, so I'll try that again. The next problem is figuring out how to get Linux or preferably FreeBSD to run on the second unit; vanilla installs off CD just cause reboots in both cases. 04-21-2003 23:46:26

RE:When is it time to give up? (modified 0 times) Unit_1 Profile gramster- Try this... the next time one of your I-O's has been on for a while and it Blue Screens.. very quickly pull off the ram door and feel the ram board. In my experience I was very surprised to see that they do get hot. Then, just as a test... leave the cover off and HotGlue a small fan to BLOW in the door and cover up any open area of the ram door. Now boot up the machine and see how long it lives without crashing. Regards, Unit_1 04-23-2003 00:26:47

RE:When is it time to give up? (modified 0 times) gramster Profile Just thought I would mention - I finally have FreeBSD 4.8 running on my v5. This always used to panic before when probing the hard disk. I recompiled the kernel and used the obsolete wd/wcd IDE drivers instead of the ad/acd ATAPI drivers, and it now boots. Right now I have one iO finally working with WinXP at 450MHz (4.5 x 100!), and the second working at 400 (6 x 66). 04-25-2003 22:19:08

RE:When is it time to give up? (modified 0 times) gramster Profile I finally have both my v5's running at 100MHz FSB (with 400MHz K63+'s running at 450MHz - time to start experimenting with overclocking). The solution seems to be to use PC133-capable SODIMMs. PC100 SODIMMs just don't do it. 04-27-2003 00:32:19

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