The machine has been back up and running for a week or so.<br>
I wish I had a warm fuzzy, educational, inspirational story to <br>
go along with it, but in fact, after replacing the battery, and <br>
removing a number of peripherals, the BIOS started functioning<br>
again. I loaded up the default setting, saved them, and then<br>
let the machine boot a ways a few times to make sure things were<br>
still functioning that far. I then went for broke and replaced all the <br>
cables to the peripherals again. <br>
<br>
<br>
Up it all came, and has been doing so since. I'll entertain the <br>
notion that one of the cables had a corroded pin or two, but really<br>
can offer no useful insights. Magic? Good as anything.<br>
<br>
<br>
Anyway, thanks to Tim for a nice list of shakedown items. In 10<br>
years I've never had a problem like this. Going forward I'll be in a <br>
better position to proceed if something similar happens again.<br>
<br>
<br>
I still don't know what a "BIOS ROM checksum error" points to,<br>
but will be just as happy if I don't ever see it again.<br>
<br>
<br>
-Bob<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br><br><p><DEFANGED_div><DEFANGED_span class="gmail_quote">On 2/10/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Tim Schmidt</b> <<a href="mailto:timschmidt@gmail.com">timschmidt@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</DEFANGED_span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" DEFANGED_style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Well, I've had a little time to think about it, and here are some more<br>thoughts...<br><br>Without more information, I cannot say what caused the board to stop<br>working. I can say that (short of bad capacitors:<br><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague">
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague</a> and dirty power)<br>motherboards generally do not stop working when left alone.<br><br>I suspect that after you removed the battery for some time, the BIOS<br>was reset, and the board is now trying to post from a PCI graphics
<br>card (often the default). However, here's a blow-by-blow of common<br>issues.<br><br>RAM can stop a machine from posting if the timing values in the BIOS<br>are too agressive or, more rarely, if the RAM is of a configuration
<br>incompatible with the motherboard chipset (think 256Mb high-density<br>dimm in an i440 BX motherboard).<br><br>CPUs can keep a machine from posting if they are not supported by the<br>current BIOS of the motherboard (reguardless of the board's
<br>theoretical ability to support such a CPU).<br><br>PCI, AGP, ISA cards can keep a machine from posting with buggy BIOSs,<br>interrupt conflicts, poor seating, dusty contacts, excess power draw<br>(especially in the case of newer graphics cards), slightly out-of-spec
<br>clock timings (especially in the case of overclocked machines -- some<br>motherboards slightly overclock automatically), or cards and<br>motherboards explicitly not supporting each other (as in a PCI 2.1<br>card in a PCI
1.0 board or an AGP 8x card in an AGP 2x board (this<br>generally works, as most cards are capable of backing down, but not<br>always -- and further BIOS interactions can complicate things)).<br><br>External peripherals like keyboards, mice, monitors, printers, USB
<br>gadgets etc. can keep a machine from posting. Circumstances are<br>generally odd, unfortunate, and rare, however.<br><br>Drives can easily keep a machine from posting, by being configured<br>improperly, cabled improperly, or paired with other drives that don't
<br>like them. If you'd like more detail on this I can flesh it out<br>sometime soon... PATA drives are a dying breed however.<br><br>And the whole damn lot is subject to grounding problems, possible<br>shorts, power supply issues, etc.
<br><br>--tim<br>_______________________________________________<br>grlug mailing list<br><a href="mailto:grlug@grandrapids-lug.org">grlug@grandrapids-lug.org</a><br><a href="http://grlug.org/mailman/listinfo/grlug">http://grlug.org/mailman/listinfo/grlug
</a><br></blockquote></p><DEFANGED_div><br>