Motherboard acting 'really' weird

[Enverex]

I'm building an Emulation/Bedside PC (music, videos, emulation of all your old favorite games etc) but I'm having a few issues.

The motherboard is a BIOSTAR K8NHA Pro which with the latest BIOS claims to support up to the Sempron 3100+. I had everything other than some decent speakers, a processor and a hard-drive, so I picked all those up (can't beat a Sempron 3000+ for £30) and plugged it all in...

Well the processor comes up as an "AMD Hammer Family - Unknown processor" which isn't supprising, but one thing that bothered me was that the 512MB RAM in the machine is showing up as 256. First thought was "****, one of the RAM sticks are bad... or worse, one of the 2 slots" but anyway, I flashed the BIOS first incase it was related to the processor not being supported properly (after spending ages trying to find a floppy drive and a disk to use in it). So I flash it and restart... but it's still showing up as "AMD Hammer Family - Unknown processor" and 256MB RAM. I boot anyway and everything seems fine, processor works well etc so maybe it's just the name that's screwy? Odd thing was was that it worked before the flash the same though...

Url for the Mobo compatability chart - http://www.biostar.com.tw/support/cpu/socket_754.php3

Anyway, I try one stick of RAM in the one slot.. "256MB" so I try the other stick in the other slot "265MB" ... right, so that means the RAM works and the slots work... so I put them both back in and... "256MB" ... what the hell?! It makes no sense. It's also a matched pair incase you were worried about compatability (Kingston HyperX 400Mhz).

So, anyone have any ideas firstly why the motherboard isn't IDing the processor properly and second (not a massive issue) and why only half of my RAM is showing up (kinda a big issue). Very sucky.

[Whiternoise]

Have you tried a diagnostic like memtest? It might not be Id'ing the processor because it is too old.

I would recommend either running a tool in DOS (eg) and/or borrowing a couple of sticks from someone else to determine whether it's the mobo or the ram.

[sTrAnGeFrUiT!]

id be supprised if the mobo supported 400Mhz RAM

[Enverex]

Have you tried a diagnostic like memtest? It might not be Id'ing the processor because it is too old.

I would recommend either running a tool in DOS (eg) and/or borrowing a couple of sticks from someone else to determine whether it's the mobo or the ram.

No because the motherboard only reports 256MB like it's disabling one of them for some reason. I'm going to swap the RAM with this PC later and see what happens, I "think" this machine is using 2 sets of 512MB matched pairs and the RAM in the dodgy machine is using a matched pair of HyperX.

id be supprised if the mobo supported 400Mhz RAM

Shouldn't matter, higher speed RAM just gets clocked down to what the board supports max, but it does support 100/133/166/200 (thus 200/266/333/400). I tried setting it to 166 / 333 but no change.

[Blitzen]

Run CPU-Z and see what it says.
Are you sure all the bios settings are correct and the mem timings are correct for the board>?

[Enverex]

I can't run CPUz as I'm not running Windows.
The mem timings seem to have no effect and I can't see any other BIOS setting relevant. I have found out though that apparently this motherboard is incredibly finicky about the memory modules it will take, so I think the RAM not working is down to that. It worked fine with a stick from this PC (shame I can't swap them though due to layout issues). Doesn't explain why the processor doesn't show up properly, you'd have thought when they claim to support something that would include the name.

[BlindMelon7]

I wouldn't worry about the ram thing. My brothers does it too (he has a gig stick of xms2 and and an asus M2N-E). It shows up as a gig in windows. I would have thought the processor is fine if it will run the bios.

[Enverex]

I wouldn't worry about the ram thing. My brothers does it too (he has a gig stick of xms2 and and an asus M2N-E). It shows up as a gig in windows. I would have thought the processor is fine if it will run the bios.

Erm, yes but in Linux the RAM STILL only shows up as 256MB not 512MB so I can't just "not worry about it" and the machine seems to only boot every other try (stops just after the BIOS or on the SATA detection screen).

The processor is only showing up inside Linux as 1784Mhz aswell (it should be 2000).

[scrandman]

The problem could be the CPU itself - hence the "unknown CPU" and also the failure to recognise all of the RAM (memory controller is on the CPU itself).

To clarify some of the above comments, the CPU is a Sempron S754. The board should recognise it (even if it means using the latest BIOS), and the board will most definately support DDR400 RAM (S754 technology is specced towards PC3200 / DDR400 after all).

[Enverex]

It's not that it doesn't recognize it because it's 400Mhz, it doesn't like more than 1 stick of it. I've been looking up this board and apparently it's notoriously bad due to it being REALLY picky about what RAM will work in it.