We received a shipment of Aopen P4 motherboards (AX45-V with the SiS645
chipset) which are causing us problems. Randomly the on-board serial ports
seem to be failing to initialize. The symptom is that the application
software hangs at startup while trying to write out the port, as if the
interrupt isn’t enabled.
The UART is part of a Winbond Super I/O chip which does about 39 other
things as well.
Does anyone have any knowledge of similar problems and possible solutions
(other than disable and use a PCI-based serial IO card)? Or can someone
recommend a quality P4 DDR motherboard that doesn’t have any similar
problems?
–
William A. (Bill) Flowers
Insight Control Systems
Safety Harbor, FL
On Tue, 30 Jul 2002 15:29:36 -0400, “William A. Flowers”
<wflowers_NOSPAM@insightcontrol.com> wrote:
We received a shipment of Aopen P4 motherboards (AX45-V with the SiS645
chipset) which are causing us problems. Randomly the on-board serial ports
seem to be failing to initialize. The symptom is that the application
software hangs at startup while trying to write out the port, as if the
interrupt isn’t enabled.
The UART is part of a Winbond Super I/O chip which does about 39 other
things as well.
Does anyone have any knowledge of similar problems and possible solutions
(other than disable and use a PCI-based serial IO card)? Or can someone
recommend a quality P4 DDR motherboard that doesn’t have any similar
problems?
I would try disabling the “auto” setting in the BIOS, assign
the IO&IRQ explicitly.
“Alex Cellarius” <acellarius@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1103_1028057353@inn.qnx.com…
I would try disabling the “auto” setting in the BIOS, assign
the IO&IRQ explicitly.
That is one of the first things we tried last week when the problem was
first noticed.
One frustrating thing is that in the batch of motherboards we purchased (all
at one time) we have 3 different revisions of the BIOS, spread over a
3-month period.
The problem sure smells like the BIOS isn’t always properly initializing the
comm ports, but this is almost impossible to prove with the super-integrated
IO chips used now.
–
Bill Flowers
Insight Control Systems
Safety Harbor, FL
Are any of the BIOSs working?
Maybe you could copy the working BIOS to the non-working motherboards.
We all know that when they screw up, if they can fix it in a driver or
startup module they’ll do that before they go back and fix the BIOS. So I’m
guessing that if any BIOS works it will be the newest one.
Are the rest of the motherboard components the same?
“William A. Flowers” <wflowers_NOSPAM@insightcontrol.com> wrote in message
news:ai6r46$j04$1@inn.qnx.com…
“Alex Cellarius” <> acellarius@yahoo.com> > wrote in message
news:> 1103_1028057353@inn.qnx.com> …
I would try disabling the “auto” setting in the BIOS, assign
the IO&IRQ explicitly.
That is one of the first things we tried last week when the problem was
first noticed. <sigh
One frustrating thing is that in the batch of motherboards we purchased
(all
at one time) we have 3 different revisions of the BIOS, spread over a
3-month period.
The problem sure smells like the BIOS isn’t always properly initializing
the
comm ports, but this is almost impossible to prove with the
super-integrated
IO chips used now.
–
Bill Flowers
Insight Control Systems
Safety Harbor, FL
With the older chips, the -w option for Dev.ser had fixed problems
like this.
Richard
“William A. Flowers” wrote:
“Alex Cellarius” <> acellarius@yahoo.com> > wrote in message
news:> 1103_1028057353@inn.qnx.com> …
I would try disabling the “auto” setting in the BIOS, assign
the IO&IRQ explicitly.
That is one of the first things we tried last week when the problem was
first noticed. <sigh
One frustrating thing is that in the batch of motherboards we purchased (all
at one time) we have 3 different revisions of the BIOS, spread over a
3-month period.
The problem sure smells like the BIOS isn’t always properly initializing the
comm ports, but this is almost impossible to prove with the super-integrated
IO chips used now.
–
Bill Flowers
Insight Control Systems
Safety Harbor, FL
“William A. Flowers” <wflowers_NOSPAM@insightcontrol.com> wrote in message
news:ai6osl$hll$1@inn.qnx.com…
We received a shipment of Aopen P4 motherboards (AX45-V with the SiS645
chipset) which are causing us problems. Randomly the on-board serial
ports
seem to be failing to initialize. The symptom is that the application
software hangs at startup while trying to write out the port, as if the
interrupt isn’t enabled.
Usually the IRQ is used on a read not a write to the data port. What does
‘stty’ return?
I have been seeing more and more ports initialized with hardware handshaking
on and all kinds of other things (just an idea).
Augie
The UART is part of a Winbond Super I/O chip which does about 39 other
things as well.
Does anyone have any knowledge of similar problems and possible solutions
(other than disable and use a PCI-based serial IO card)? Or can someone
recommend a quality P4 DDR motherboard that doesn’t have any similar
problems?
–
William A. (Bill) Flowers
Insight Control Systems
Safety Harbor, FL
“Bill Caroselli (Q-TPS)” <QTPS@EarthLink.net> wrote in message
news:ai6rk9$jpq$1@inn.qnx.com…
Are any of the BIOSs working?
Some, the newest BIOS revisions, fail less often than the others.
Maybe you could copy the working BIOS to the non-working motherboards.
We thought of that. But since all revs exhibit failures …
We all know that when they screw up, if they can fix it in a driver or
startup module they’ll do that before they go back and fix the BIOS. So
I’m
guessing that if any BIOS works it will be the newest one.
Yep. I’m told that the manufacturer has a version 2 revs beyond the newest
we have, but hasn’t made it available yet.
Are the rest of the motherboard components the same?
As far as we can tell.
–
Bill Flowers
Insight Control Systems
Safety Harbor, FL
“Richard Kramer” <rrkramer@kramer-smilko.com> wrote in message
news:3D4712F3.6D461344@kramer-smilko.com…
With the older chips, the -w option for Dev.ser had fixed problems
like this.
Thanks Richard. I’ll give it a try, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
It feels strange to be asking for help and advice instead of giving it!
–
William A. (Bill) Flowers
Insight Control Systems
Safety Harbor, FL