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Lightning Dual P-6 Motherboard

J

John

Member
Joined
Mar 17, 2004
Messages
32
Would anyone out there have any desire to help me in puting this back together. I have tried alone and failed. My first problem is finding information on this motherboard. It may even be dead. What I have is:
Micron MBD001073-00 motherboard
2 matched pentium pro 200 cpus with fans and heat sinks and voltage reg
256 k edo buffered 3.3 volt ram
230 watt power supply
2 small hard drives (about 2 or 3 gig each)
1.5 inch floppy
cd rom drive
trident video card
problem I have is nothing happens except the floppy light comes on and stays on. If any one has any specs or special knolege on this motherboard I would be very happy if you would share it. By the way keep the replys simple. The novice level here is 10;) Your reward will be my sincere thanks.
 
Sounds like someone installed the floppy ribbon backwards.
Make sure the red wire is facing the correct way.
 

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Start simple. When troubleshooting remove as many variables as you can.

Test your video card and memory in another machine if possible.

If not,

Disconnect the hard drives and floppys and all other expansion cards except for your video card. Use the minimum amount of RAM and see if you can get the machine to POST.

If the Machine boots up, start adding things back in until it fails. Then you have ID'd the culprit.

If the machine doesn't boot, try a different vidcard.

Try swapping memory in and out.

If all else fails, jumper the board for single processer operation and swap the processors.

It's really just trial and error and trying to eliminate as many variables as possible.


Apparently Micron spun its PC business off and now concentrates on memory. You might be able to look up your serial number

at http://support.mpccorp.com/index.html which is the succesor company.
 
Thanks everyone. I'll give it a try. Adding back one piece at a time sounds like the simplest idea to find to problem. Will the bois boot with no ram installed on a mother board?
 
Not without RAM. The bare minimum should be RAM (one stick if your board supports it), CPU (with heatsink and fan) and video card. Probably even a keyboard isn't necessary. No drives necessary.

Kent
 
If you own a small loudspeaker of the kind normally found in (old?) computers, connect it to the board. It is a great debugging aid, since it will beep in different ways depending on what the fault is. For example, if you boot the board without RAM, it probably would give a long, continuous beep.
 
alexkerhead said:
why take the system apart for a floppy ribbon?
Click to expand...


Judging from his post, the machine isn't booting at all.

The only activity that he is getting is the constant-on FDD light.

More wrong than just a flipped floppy failure.

Flipped floppy failure. Heh. That sounds funny and it alliterates. :p

carlsson said:
If you own a small loudspeaker of the kind normally found in (old?) computers, connect it to the board. It is a great debugging aid, since it will beep in different ways depending on what the fault is. For example, if you boot the board without RAM, it probably would give a long, continuous beep.
Click to expand...


Another good idea. Look up your BIOS manufacturer's "beep codes" They'll tell you pretty closely what the problem is.
 
Still trying

Still trying

Ok, the wire is conected in correct orientation. Video card works in another system. I have left 2 ram dimms in place (64 meg each) banks 0 and 1. I have not as yet tried to switch all the jumper over to single cpu but I will. I also have the cpu fans conected to the board. They do not power up. If the fans don't power-up when the system is switched on that sound like trouble. No body out there has a manual for one of the things?? Thanks for posts with advice.:)
 
Hmm...since the fans usually run on the 12v line, I would hazard a guess that something is drawing too much current causing an overcurrent shutdown. However, I thought that a fault on any of the power lines would make the PSU shutdown.

I've seen a dual cpu board exactly once, when the computer store I worked at built one for the local public library. Lots of techs gathered around grunting like Tim Allen. This was in the early days of the dual pentium boards when they were horrendously expensive.

If you have a multimeter (or voltmeter), try unplugging the power leads from everything and see if you get +12v and +5v. Plug in just the MB and try again. If the +12v is missing, then there is a fault on the board. Bad cpu, cpu inserted into socket wrong, jumper setting wrong etc. Look carefully at the electrolytic capacitors on the MB. Are any of the bulging at the top or leaning over at an odd angle? Bad caps can cause a heavy load on the power supply.

Kent
 
Last week when I casually looked at the auctions on Tradera (Swedish auction site who grabbed all the market shares when eBay chickened out for too long), I saw three auctions for dual Pentium Pro 200 MHz at the same time, different sellers too. Was there just recently a clearance, or are they becoming so outdated that everyone who still have them need to get rid of them before the summer? For comparison, there were very few Pentium 1 boards, only a handful 386/486 boards.
 
Yes, the pentium boards are plentiful on the auction sites. I can only only guess that there status as usable hardware has been moved to the status of "JUNK" thats how I get all my stuff. I just grabed an intel dual board off an auction site brand new in the origanial wrapper for less than $10. After reading the quick start guide it makes me wonder how anyone could put one of these back together without a manual. The jumper settings are different for the cpu (ie. 200, 180, 160) and there are even different jumper settings for the speed of the ram (50ns or 60ns). I really wish I had a manual for this lightning mb.
 
It almosts sounds like a power supply issue.

Have another power supply laying around? If you're lucky, your board will support an ATX psu. I have 2 socket 8 gateway server boards (identical) that use ATX PSUs. FYI- my boards are single cpu.
 
sfcspanky said:
It almosts sounds like a power supply issue.

Have another power supply laying around? If you're lucky, your board will support an ATX psu. I have 2 socket 8 gateway server boards (identical) that use ATX PSUs. FYI- my boards are single cpu.
Click to expand...

+1

Try swapping in a bigger or simply a different power supply. Is this an AT or an ATX board? Do you have your power switch properly wired? AT uses a standard ON/OFF switch. ATX uses a momentary switch. You can use a RESET switch from an AT case if you don't have a standard ATX switch floating around.
 
carlsson said:
Last week when I casually looked at the auctions on Tradera (Swedish auction site who grabbed all the market shares when eBay chickened out for too long), I saw three auctions for dual Pentium Pro 200 MHz at the same time, different sellers too. Was there just recently a clearance, or are they becoming so outdated that everyone who still have them need to get rid of them before the summer? For comparison, there were very few Pentium 1 boards, only a handful 386/486 boards.
Click to expand...

In the past year I bought a PIII Dual CPU ATX 1U server board for US $20 Loaded it with 2 800 Mhz PIIIs and 1GB of ram for an additional $30 and stuck it in the case that formerly held my wife's overclocked Chubberon 300a. It's smokingly fast with win2k.

Two years ago I got a dual PPRO AT board with 2 256K 200 mhz cpus for $10. All that it needed was a new battery soldered on and it was good to go. It's sitting in a vintage AT case now waiting to be turned into a fileserver.

SO yes, these are getting ridiculously inexpensive
 
Thanks, I did try a different power supply, a 500 watt unit. Still nothing happened. AT or ATX I don't know I will try a different switch to see if that works. Please keep the ideas coming. I have almost $15 invested in this now. I would hate for it to be in vain. I'm also still trying to get a manual so I can check the jumper settings.
 
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