That board is terminal from everything you are describing. I would say junk
it and replace. What you are describing to me suggests a failure of the
chipset, the northbridge in particular, and that the failure is
heat-related. The northbridge chip works together with the southbridge chip
to route data on the pathways between the other major components like the
CPU, the RAM, and the expansion slots. The northbridge usually doubles as
the GPU for onboard video, and the southbridge sometimes will augment
onboard sound or other functions. When either chip goes bad, the entire
mainboard is good for scrap. I think the northbridge is at fault because the
ps/2 keyboard and mouse controllers tie into it and because the GPU embedded
in the northbridge might be conflicting with whatever video card you have
clipped into the expansion slot. The only question mark in my mind is that
you closed the CMOS reset pins with a jumper. Did you leave that jumper in
place when booting the system, or did you remove it prior to starting up?
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Alan E. Davis" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2008 7:27 AM
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [PCBUILD] key input garbled and bios display unreadable
> 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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> web based bulletinboard for questions and answers:
> Visit our sister website at http://nospin.com
PCBUILD's List Owners:
Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
Mark Rode<[log in to unmask]>
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