minimum parts to test K7S5A board boot-up

External Since: Nov 20, 2003 Posts: 5

I've moved on from My K7S5A to a 333fsb system. However I'm determined to
have a go at sorting my old mobo for use in a spare machine.

My K7S5A ate cmos batteries for breakfast and gradually declined into cold
boot errors & failing to save CMOS.

My brother has done the resistor/capacitor mod on it for me today , and I've
just found an old P90 heatsink & fan. I eased off the mobo heatsink tonight
and using a stanley blade ( boxcutter ) I scraped off the old adhesive.

For the next steps I need advice on the following :-

1. How should I go about testing the mobo without smoking its SDRam &
1700+XP proc ? I've got an old piece of 64mb PC66 SDram so I'll stick that
in, and a spare AGP & PCI VGA card to choose from, but I've never actually
booted a mobo without a cpu. Does the CPU have to on board to boot & access
the bios ? I'd rather avoid putting on the XP1700+ until I can see it post &
save cmos changes.

2. On the heatsink issue, I've got a little silicon grease , but no
adhesive. Could I use standard superglue ?

Thx

External Since: Aug 31, 2003 Posts: 46

On Thu, 20 Nov 2003 00:14:11 -0000, "Ebodski"
<jarvis@{spamless}fsmail.net> wrote:

>I've moved on from My K7S5A to a 333fsb system. However I'm determined to
>have a go at sorting my old mobo for use in a spare machine.
>
>My K7S5A ate cmos batteries for breakfast and gradually declined into cold
>boot errors & failing to save CMOS.
>
>My brother has done the resistor/capacitor mod on it for me today , and I've
>just found an old P90 heatsink & fan. I eased off the mobo heatsink tonight
>and using a stanley blade ( boxcutter ) I scraped off the old adhesive.
>
>For the next steps I need advice on the following :-
>
>1. How should I go about testing the mobo without smoking its SDRam &
>1700+XP proc ? I've got an old piece of 64mb PC66 SDram so I'll stick that
>in, and a spare AGP & PCI VGA card to choose from, but I've never actually
>booted a mobo without a cpu. Does the CPU have to on board to boot & access
>the bios ? I'd rather avoid putting on the XP1700+ until I can see it post &
>save cmos changes.
>
>2. On the heatsink issue, I've got a little silicon grease , but no
>adhesive. Could I use standard superglue ?
>
>Thx

Sorry, but without a working CPU, you won't get anything. Nada!

Forget the superglue. Go to radioshack and get some more heat sink
compound. And for $10 including shipping you can pick up a nice
powerful heatsink.