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Post by tankslappa on Mar 19, 2010 1:19:37 GMT 7
Hi all,
Okay, I took a screw driver to my N5200Pro.
First the other day I swapped the memory for a new 400Mhz 1G stick from Crucial. This booted and ran fine for several days with the stock CPU and clock.
Today I removed the stock CPU and replaced it with a 2.0GHz P4M SL7SM, which is listed as a good swap, I changed the clock link on the board by the CMOS and turned the machine on.
I get... Self Test...
Self Testing...
*beep*
N5200 Booting...
And that's it... No scan of the drives, no lights on except the lan one. Doesn't appear on LAN, won't ping.
If I move the link back to 100Mhz it does boot up, but obviously the CPU is being underclocked to the speed of the original!
Benchmarks show the P4M is a bit better than the Celeron, getting about 10% improvement on the stock (when it had the 1G RAM), but obviously I'd like the rest too!
Any ideas, I'm using BIOS 2.00.11.2 (a beta).
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Post by tankslappa on Mar 22, 2010 23:01:46 GMT 7
Well I've tried 2.00.16, still running it as it seems happy with both my old 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1 and my new 2TB Samsung drives.
Guess the only things to try are either a 2Ghz CPU with 400Mhz FSB, or soldering a VGA header onto the board.
I'll have to see how brave I'm feeling. Right now the box seems quite happy with it's underclocked 2Ghz P4M, and it was a little more responsive than stock. I was hoping to have a real 2Ghz of processing power before I performed my drive upgrade.
Right now it's building a 5x2TB RAID 5 array with the normal Thecus "stick finger in the wind, think of a number, put a zero on the end" completion time estimate accuracy... At the time it estimated completion it was only 65% complete... Still going... Maybe tomorrow morning I can restore my data and have my NAS back!
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Post by rookie on Mar 23, 2010 3:00:31 GMT 7
I wouldn't risk the unit for that under-clocked FSB, it's already better than it was and (re)building a RAID-set you don't do daily :-) Just keep it this way and be happy with it for a few years probably. On the other hand ... curiousity to get it running on max. speed can finally win
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Post by tankslappa on Mar 23, 2010 4:59:55 GMT 7
Wise words Mr Rookie... I will try to resist, or maybe find myself a P4M that uses the 100Mhz clock.
Must resist...
Must resist...
Well it's safe for at least 384 minutes TST (Thecus standard time - Bares no relation to any other time scale known to man!).
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Post by inerlogic on Mar 23, 2010 5:52:42 GMT 7
sometimes mucking around in the bios for voltage settings/timings can ease things a bit.... i just soldered VGA connectors on the N5200 motherboard in my storage drawer (trial run) and then soldered one on the mobo of my N5200PRO... it is a glorious sight (pictures and a thread to follow after dinner) now i just need to hook a keyboard up to it and see what bios bits can be mucked about with!
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Post by tankslappa on Mar 23, 2010 12:14:13 GMT 7
Oh that's a point... keyboard lol! Hard to "Press DEL for setup" without a DEL to press!
Does the bios support USB keyboards connected to the rear USB ports?
If not I'm going to have to find a PS2 keyboard socket to "borrow"
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Post by inerlogic on Mar 23, 2010 20:41:16 GMT 7
i'll let you know tonight when i buy a USB keyboard and try it *edit* good news: a USB Keyboard will work when plugged in the front or back! other good news: so will a Belkin style USB -> PS/2 converter i plugged the two PS/2 connections from my KVM into the converter and plugged the USB side into the N5200 and that worked as well.. bad news: there are no voltage settings in the BIOS
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