I had the time tonight to dismantle and mess with my system. I just confirmed solution B listed below. I include the symptoms and cause again for any newbies or misinformed people.
I managed to finish up to step 5 of Kevin's mod. I probed the board. Then I test booted manually holding the wire. It boots everytime when I put the wire on the MOSFET. When I remove it, it won't POST. All I have left is to solder the baby.
The MOSFET you want is the one between the AGP slot and the memory slots. It's marked Q30 on the board. When I probed it after I turned the system on, the voltage I read was under 2V. No wonder it couldn't POST.
Some tips:
0) Use a barebones system. Motherboard, video card, monitor, keyboard, CPU fan, 1 stick of RAM, and floppy. This will minimize the damage should something go wrong. If you can, it helps to have the motherboard outside the case, but of course you're limited by cable length.
1) While probing with your multimeter, you can free a hand by jamming the negative probe into the ground outlet of a MOLEX connector.
2) When you're ready to test, use a large guage wire. Trim back the sheath. Double-over the end, and jam it into the P4 AUX connector's 3.3V line (orange). The friction will be enough to hold it in. If you don't have a P4 AUX connector, use the motherboard power connector instead, but it's harder to wedge IMO.
Looks like tomorrow I'll be going by Fry's to pick me up some parts to finish up this project.
***************
Symptoms:
After shutdown you turn on the power, but the system displays a blank screen, lights and fans are on, but the system fails to POST (Power-On Self Test).
Usually you can't power back on for at least 5-10 mins, sometimes up to an hour and in some rare cases even after a day. And even during those attempts you may need to press the reset button in order to get it to POST.
Swapping out to a PCI card or a different AGP card (not GeForce) usually gets rid of the problem.
All other hardware checks out and is properly seated/installed including memory, PCI cards, IDE connections, PSU.
Cause:
This discusses the GeForce2 incompatibilty issue. It stems from a PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) circuit on the motherboard being incompatible with the GeForce's power unit. The incompatibility applies to GF3s as well.
This problem is not isolated to just one brand/model of mobo or GF card. There are posts that say ABIT aknowledges the issue. (eg. http://www.btinternet.com/~p3v4x/texts.htm) You can RMA your board and they will replace some capacitors to fix the incompatibility.
If you are going to talk to IWILL tech support, you should go in armed with the aforementioned article.
Solution:
A) RMA as above, but if the manufacturer/reseller just swaps mobos, you have the luck of the draw whether or not the new mobo will exhibit the problem.
B) http://www.chewan.freeserve.co.uk/
For the adventurous... Here's a KT7 mod that by-passes the PWM circuit (and thereby circumventing the problem) by connecting the PSU's +3.3V line directly to the I/O power line on the mobo.
This mod would need to be modified for all the other mobos, including IWILL.
C) http://www.open.org/~cowanm/bp6/agpmod.htm
An easier mod, that doesn't involve probing for a MOSFET. This is a mod for the Abit BP6. You simply connect the +3.3V and Ground lines from the backside of the power connector to the corresponding AGP pins.
NOTE: The author points out that the picture shows the wrong connection for ground. It should be the third pin (A5) down on the second column from the left. The picture shows the ground connection on the second pin (A3).
I managed to finish up to step 5 of Kevin's mod. I probed the board. Then I test booted manually holding the wire. It boots everytime when I put the wire on the MOSFET. When I remove it, it won't POST. All I have left is to solder the baby.
The MOSFET you want is the one between the AGP slot and the memory slots. It's marked Q30 on the board. When I probed it after I turned the system on, the voltage I read was under 2V. No wonder it couldn't POST.
Some tips:
0) Use a barebones system. Motherboard, video card, monitor, keyboard, CPU fan, 1 stick of RAM, and floppy. This will minimize the damage should something go wrong. If you can, it helps to have the motherboard outside the case, but of course you're limited by cable length.
1) While probing with your multimeter, you can free a hand by jamming the negative probe into the ground outlet of a MOLEX connector.
2) When you're ready to test, use a large guage wire. Trim back the sheath. Double-over the end, and jam it into the P4 AUX connector's 3.3V line (orange). The friction will be enough to hold it in. If you don't have a P4 AUX connector, use the motherboard power connector instead, but it's harder to wedge IMO.
Looks like tomorrow I'll be going by Fry's to pick me up some parts to finish up this project.
***************
Symptoms:
After shutdown you turn on the power, but the system displays a blank screen, lights and fans are on, but the system fails to POST (Power-On Self Test).
Usually you can't power back on for at least 5-10 mins, sometimes up to an hour and in some rare cases even after a day. And even during those attempts you may need to press the reset button in order to get it to POST.
Swapping out to a PCI card or a different AGP card (not GeForce) usually gets rid of the problem.
All other hardware checks out and is properly seated/installed including memory, PCI cards, IDE connections, PSU.
Cause:
This discusses the GeForce2 incompatibilty issue. It stems from a PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) circuit on the motherboard being incompatible with the GeForce's power unit. The incompatibility applies to GF3s as well.
This problem is not isolated to just one brand/model of mobo or GF card. There are posts that say ABIT aknowledges the issue. (eg. http://www.btinternet.com/~p3v4x/texts.htm) You can RMA your board and they will replace some capacitors to fix the incompatibility.
If you are going to talk to IWILL tech support, you should go in armed with the aforementioned article.
Solution:
A) RMA as above, but if the manufacturer/reseller just swaps mobos, you have the luck of the draw whether or not the new mobo will exhibit the problem.
B) http://www.chewan.freeserve.co.uk/
For the adventurous... Here's a KT7 mod that by-passes the PWM circuit (and thereby circumventing the problem) by connecting the PSU's +3.3V line directly to the I/O power line on the mobo.
This mod would need to be modified for all the other mobos, including IWILL.
C) http://www.open.org/~cowanm/bp6/agpmod.htm
An easier mod, that doesn't involve probing for a MOSFET. This is a mod for the Abit BP6. You simply connect the +3.3V and Ground lines from the backside of the power connector to the corresponding AGP pins.
NOTE: The author points out that the picture shows the wrong connection for ground. It should be the third pin (A5) down on the second column from the left. The picture shows the ground connection on the second pin (A3).
