Motherboard information?

[Crewman47]

I've got a Packard Bel iXtreme with an Acer G43T-AM v2.0 motherboard and I've been trying to find information and specs on the motherboard for ages, checking Acer's website, Google, and even Packard Bell Support and I've never been able to find anything specific. Any ideas where I could try that I might not have tried myself to get this information?

Thanks in advance.

 

[John O.]

Jesus, dude, that was a trial. I'm usually good at gofering this info but Acer/ECS/Packard Bell? Ugh.

It's a Socket 775 Intel board right?

It looks like ECS manufactures the board, Acer sticks their label on it and changes the model # around, sells it to Packard Bell, Dell, Gateway, etc...

I'm not 100% sure but I think your motherboard is one of these, you should be able to tell based on the features which one.

http://www.ecsusa.com/ECSWebSite/Pr...x?DetailID=965&CategoryID=1&MenuID=16&LanID=9

http://www.ecsusa.com/ECSWebSite/Pr...x?DetailID=913&CategoryID=1&MenuID=16&LanID=9

I'm going to take a shot in the dark and guess that it's the 2nd one - because the second one has a revision number "1.0A", and since it doesn't appear as though ECS actually makes a board they designate "v2.0" the way your Acer board is designated, it stands to reason (assuming that this Socket 775, Intel G43 chipset is the correct place to start) that Acer went and decided to call it "2.0" instead of "1.0A" when they got it from ECS.

EDIT: Physically you should be able to tell. I just noticed that the 1.0A has 4 DIMM slots and the 1.0 only has 2. So that should tell you which you have.

 

[Crewman47]

Thanks for that. It does look like the one I've got but with a different model letter on it. They don't make it easy to find anything if you don't know much about PC hardware. I'll have a look at the manual and see if I can learn anything from it now.

 

[Marc]

Thanks for that. It does look like the one I've got but with a different model letter on it. They don't make it easy to find anything if you don't know much about PC hardware. I'll have a look at the manual and see if I can learn anything from it now.

dig up a program called CPUz - it will identify the board, BIOS revision etc etc.

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

 

[Crewman47]

I've already got that and it identified the mainboard as a Socket 775 LGA (which I now what that means) and Packard Bell EG43M, which I guess now could be just PB's internal (?) system of identifying this specific motherboard in their machine?

 

[Amaris]

[notes that the problem has been addressed, so...]

Packard Bell!? Kill it! Kill it with fire!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So...many...needless rivets and crossbars.... *twitch* so many....

 

[John O.]

Good call on the CPU-Z, didn't even occur to me.

I wonder what the hell that EG43M number is. It's probably "E" for ECS, G for the original part number 43 for the chipset, and M for part of the original part number as well. I wonder what the Intel chipset difference between P and G is though. Probably just some basic features of the onboard that either are better in yours, or reduced in yours.

You might take a better look around that ECS website - use that search tool again and type in "P43" instead of "G43" and see what comes up. I went off G43 because some Yahoo Answers page answer claimed it's what your board was.

 

[little_chris]

G denotes a built in graphics chip (Intel onboard for the fail)

P denotes it requires a dedicated graphics card and in general is a much better chipset.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

[notes that the problem has been addressed, so...]

Packard Bell!? Kill it! Kill it with fire!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So...many...needless rivets and crossbars.... *twitch* so many....

I remember the early '90s and how awful Packard Bell computers were back then, too. Poor specs, abysmal reliability, shitty support, nonstandard parts. Argh!!!!

 

[Amaris]

[notes that the problem has been addressed, so...]

Packard Bell!? Kill it! Kill it with fire!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So...many...needless rivets and crossbars.... *twitch* so many....

I remember the early '90s and how awful Packard Bell computers were back then, too. Poor specs, abysmal reliability, shitty support, nonstandard parts. Argh!!!!

I remember working on all of my friends' computers, and they were all Packard Bells, and they ALL had those damnable crossbars that made it impossible to get to the power supply, mainboard, hard drive...anything. Oh, and the non-standard parts. I remember removing a 6Gb Bigfoot drive. It looked like someone stepped on it, except it came that way. Yeek.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

[notes that the problem has been addressed, so...]

Packard Bell!? Kill it! Kill it with fire!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So...many...needless rivets and crossbars.... *twitch* so many....

I remember the early '90s and how awful Packard Bell computers were back then, too. Poor specs, abysmal reliability, shitty support, nonstandard parts. Argh!!!!

I remember working on all of my friends' computers, and they were all Packard Bells, and they ALL had those damnable crossbars that made it impossible to get to the power supply, mainboard, hard drive...anything. Oh, and the non-standard parts. I remember removing a 6Gb Bigfoot drive. It looked like someone stepped on it, except it came that way. Yeek.

PC World ran a list of the 10 worst PCs of all time. Top of the list? All Packard Bell PCs from 1986-1996. No contest.

 

[Amaris]

I remember the early '90s and how awful Packard Bell computers were back then, too. Poor specs, abysmal reliability, shitty support, nonstandard parts. Argh!!!!

I remember working on all of my friends' computers, and they were all Packard Bells, and they ALL had those damnable crossbars that made it impossible to get to the power supply, mainboard, hard drive...anything. Oh, and the non-standard parts. I remember removing a 6Gb Bigfoot drive. It looked like someone stepped on it, except it came that way. Yeek.

PC World ran a list of the 10 worst PCs of all time. Top of the list? All Packard Bell PCs from 1986-1996. No contest.

And I have the scars to prove it. God, what a horrid PC.

 

[Santaman]

[notes that the problem has been addressed, so...]

Packard Bell!? Kill it! Kill it with fire!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So...many...needless rivets and crossbars.... *twitch* so many....

Oh yes... Plastic Hell computers, I had to help and repair one in 2005 or so, it was an old machine from the late '90's and it took us 45 minutes to find out how to open the $!@$$#!@#@!! thing without using a sledge hammer after opening it we discovered a 2" layer of dust covering every component including the CPU cooler's fan (Celeron 333A) harddrive was totally busted so after cleaning the thing and replacing what was left of the cooler fan we've had to put in a new HDD and re-install it.. Win98SE okay, mainboard.. ew something PC-Chips-ish.. with a Via chipset, 64Mb RAM, SiS PCI graphics card despite the thing having a AGP slot..

One usable IDE connector, the other one was located underneath the 5.25" drive cage, only fairy fingers might have been able to actually put a cable there but no fear it had a ISA soundcard something I can't remember BUT it had three IDE controllers which was used to power a 6x CD-ROM, cables.. can you say spaghetti? dreadfull dreadfull aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand dreadfull.. ah and last but not least... trying to close up the machine again.. GNGHH!!

I feel your pain..

 

[Crewman47]

My last PC before this one was a Pacakard Bell and I never had a lot of problems with it, but with this one, I've had the same constant problem since I bought it, which I have previously discussed on here.

I know I should've returned it and got it replaced after I bought it but I'm persevering with it. The problem is that on a fresh startup the computer will sometimes start to run sluggish and then if I don't do a restart it'll bluescreen. I've tried removing RAM chips, Graphics card and even changed the data cable but I'm still not getting it to work smoothly. I've even upgraded the PSU from a 250 to a 500w. I might think about getting another PC anyway if I don't get this one fixed properly as I've had it for over a year and could be due for replacement.

 

[Jadzia]

The problem is that on a fresh startup the computer will sometimes start to run sluggish and then if I don't do a restart it'll bluescreen.

Probable cause is that it's too cold.

Some computer parts are sensitive to cold temperatures. One of my past hard disks (Western Digital) is sensitive to the cold. It makes a slightly different noise when it's below 15'C, and if it starts at that temperature, it will often cause the computer to crash as the disk heats up past 18'C.

 

[Crewman47]

I've never heard of the problem before, is there anything that can be done to check if it could be that and how to go about avoiding it?

 

[John O.]

My last PC before this one was a Pacakard Bell and I never had a lot of problems with it, but with this one, I've had the same constant problem since I bought it, which I have previously discussed on here.

I know I should've returned it and got it replaced after I bought it but I'm persevering with it. The problem is that on a fresh startup the computer will sometimes start to run sluggish and then if I don't do a restart it'll bluescreen. I've tried removing RAM chips, Graphics card and even changed the data cable but I'm still not getting it to work smoothly. I've even upgraded the PSU from a 250 to a 500w. I might think about getting another PC anyway if I don't get this one fixed properly as I've had it for over a year and could be due for replacement.

Unless you're running this PC in an industrial freezer, it's not too cold. PC parts only get warmer as they run, especially hard drives. I ran a couple experimental cluster machines with a liquid N2 cooler on the CPU socket and had the motherboard and memory immersed in an electrically insulated colloidal suspension to test its thermal transport properties and that board sat at -15 C for DAYS. It won't die due to cold.

Heat-related failures are usually uncontrolled failures - i.e., not blue screens. BSOD crashes are the operating system's way of doing damage control when something pretty core level goes wrong - like a RAM can't hang onto data because the EEPROMs been depolarized or something.

There's sometimes an error code on a BSOD that you can google later (that may or may not be helpful), did you look for that? If you've tried swapping out memory, video card and any PCI peripherals and it still does it - it's probably the mobo or the CPU. They're just throwing a big fat error that the OS can't handle.

PS: If you have added any third party components to this recently (new sound card, LAN card, USB card, etc) make sure you have tried pulling that out before you try anything else. New hardware/mobo compatibility BS causes more BSOD headaches than anything else.

 

[Jadzia]

Unless you're running this PC in an industrial freezer, it's not too cold. PC parts only get warmer as they run, especially hard drives. I ran a couple experimental cluster machines with a liquid N2 cooler on the CPU socket and had the motherboard and memory immersed in an electrically insulated colloidal suspension to test its thermal transport properties and that board sat at -15 C for DAYS. It won't die due to cold.

That may be how they are supposed work, but is it not possible that a device develops a fault that makes it cold sensitive?

(a) A faulty connection can cause a bsod.

(b) A microscopic gap in a conductor (a micro-fracture) is a broken connection.

(c) Metals expand/contract with changes in temperature, that can close/open a micro-fracture.

(d) Conductors are made of metal

My WD drive is cold sensitive whether it's supposed to be or not. At least allow the possibility that some piece of Crewman47's hardware exhibits similar behaviour.

 

[Jadzia]

I've never heard of the problem before, is there anything that can be done to check if it could be that and how to go about avoiding it?

I started getting these bsods on startup in about November, a couple of years ago. They happened most days when the computer was starting from cold.

I suffered with that for a few months until the problem went away in the spring, and I thought nothing more of it. Then the following November it started happening again, and I suspected it was seasonal.

So I did some experiments: If I switched my computer off and then on again(already warm), then it wouldn't bsod. It was something that only affected the first boot up of the day. Temperature was the only variable.

Also, I noticed the sound of the hard disk was slightly different when cold ... it was a screechier and more metallic noise than the normal whirring. Don't exaggerate that in your imagination ~ it was a very subtle difference, but was something I became aware of.

Also I installed the HWMonitor software, and would run this as soon as the computer booted, so I could read the temperatures of things.

For my hard disk, seeing 14'C or less came to mean "Will almost certainly bsod in a couple of minutes". If it started at 18'C or higher, then it never did. Inbetween these figures was unpredictable.

The way I avoided having to boot twice was to set up a fan heater near to the computer and blast it with warm air for ten minutes before starting. Not terribly fun or convenient, but it worked, until I bought a new hard disk.

 

[John O.]

I mean it's a possibility, I'm not completely ruling it out. But if it is the case, then it's a statistical anomaly, it's not the intended behavior of the components.

Jadzia (amazing job getting that handle, btw ) I'm not claiming to your know hardware better than you, but it just occurred to me there's another possible reason your HD quits if the temp is low - it could be a different problem is causing both symptoms - low temp and failures. If the drive motor or some other related piece of hardware in there is failing intermittently and the RPM on the drive is consistently below nominal, or fluctuating significantly, but generally running slower than it's supposed to, it could both A. give you a lower operating temperature and B. cause a failure. Just a thought.

PS: Just noticed your comment about it sounding different when it was running cooler (prior to a BSOD). Could definitely mean lower RPMs, or lower operating voltages on the head/drive->lower operating temps.