A friend's machine has an Epox 9NPA+Ultra motherboard.  A suite of
capricious problems is presenting itself.

1.  keyboard input during bootup AND in text consoles is garbled.
(USB keyboard will not work until the machine has booted).  The key
codes are substituted in a systematic manner as follows, both for
keyboard input and for display of bios messages:

  A => C
  a -> c
  b -> b
  B -> B
  C -> C
  c -> c
  d -> f
  D -> F
  E -> G
  e -> g
  f -> f
  F -> F
  g -> g
  G -> G

This systematic corruption continues through the digits, and seems to
suggest somehow that a single bit has been corrupted somewhere.  The
question is, WHERE?

Would listmembers suggest flashing the bios?  I am reluctant to do
anything because I cannot read the bios messages.  We did short the
CMOS resest jumper.

A second graphical problem is a series of vertical stripes on the
screen, narrow blue lines (when the background is black) or lines of
aotehr colors.  Approximately 40 narrow vertical lines across the
screen.  This also suggests a systematic corruption of one or a few
bits.

Our hypotheses:
   - BIOS.  However, the BIOS seems to be a surface mount device and I
do not know whether it can be removed and reseated.
   - Video card.  Perhaps there is a lookup table for text on the
video card, a video BIOS?
   - Memory


Clues:

   - After we shorted out the CMOS jumper pins, a graphical display is
seen immediately upon bootin.  Some vertical stripes were seen.
   - There is apparently no corruption (striping or garbled
characters) when using the GUI, even in terminal emulators like xterm.


We have reseated the video card and RAM, and reversed RAM in the two
sockets.  After we got the system to boot, let the system stay on
overnight, the system was unable to boot.  We performed a number of
seating/unseating actions, and were able to boot, but seemingly random
problems have been occuring:
   -  USB keyboard does not work.  Then it did.  Now it doesn't.
   - blank screen when restarting X11 on Linux.  (POST code F6, not in
the motherboard manual)

I cannot read the BIOS, because of the text corruption.  Therefore, is
it possible to flash the BIOS?

The manufacturer does not have the three most recent BIOS updates on
their site.  Does a BIOS flash seem adviseable?  Can it be done
without seeing the bios display?

Thank you for any suggestions.


Alan


-- 
Alan Davis

"It's never a matter of liking or disliking ..."
 ---Santa Ynez Chumash Medicine Man

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