Hardware Analysis - ECS K7S5A

Re: ECS K7S5A

Rich Reifsnyder — 2003-07-04T18:01:17-05:00

Have the same problem. Found quite a few others as well online. Are you running Win XP. there is a floopy conflict with this platform and mb. causes ide's to hang and "click", Try flashing bios with newest version. That is the only solution i've found online.
haven't tried myself yet so don't know if it fixes the problem. hope this helps

Re: ECS K7S5A

Rob Gianni — 2003-05-14T00:13:08-05:00

Hi. I'm hoping someone here can help. I am using the ECS K7S5A board also with the AMD XP 1900+ and 1 gig PC2100 DDR, and have had no trouble until recently.About 2 months ago my hard drive ( Maxtor 80 Gig 7200 RPM) started to make a double clicking noise...by that i mean it would click once, then click again then be fine for a while. It almost sounds as if its shutting off and then back on. I was under the impression that my HD must be dying so I bought a new Western Dig 60 Gig 8 mb vache 7200 rpm. Immediately it began doing the same thing. i tried unhooking cdrom and burner and others to make sure power drainage wasnt a problem (Turbolink 320 watt ATX 12V ) but that didnt help. Ive tried switching the ram, switching the hd to IDE2, switching the IDE cable. the only thing left to try I think is to get a 3rd HD and put it in in case by some chance I am unlucky enough to have 2 HD's from dif manufacturers having the same problem. Has anyone had this problem or know if it has anything to do with the IDE controller on the board or something? I've also flashed the BIOS and tried updating the IDE drives with both the ECS version, and 1 directly from SiS. Sorry for the long-winded post...i've been scouring the net for weeks to find those with the same problem but mostly all i find is the suggestion that the HD's are dying.

Re: ECS K7S5A

Dustin Ellis — 2003-05-08T03:31:25-05:00

Well i have had my ups and my downs with this board.

There is one thing i hate about this board. When i use my mic. what i say feedsback into the speakers even when in the bio's. so i had to mute my mic. volume. but with it muted i still can use it.

The best thing about the board is i got mine for $40 so heck some bad things i dont mind.

Re: ECS K7S5A

ninja peculia — 2003-04-15T21:27:14-05:00

yo yo serius problem well a few

i built up a new pc other day a new usb port and converters k7s5a motherboard and a athlon 1800 XP processor with two 256mb sd ram

NOW HERES PROBLEM 1

when i set the bios to 133/133 for the full speed and restart and go into windows, just before the sound and icon starts it freezes i left running 30 mins to see if it would load and it didnt can anyone help

NOW HERES PROBLEM 2

as you know ive got a 1800 XP i downloaded a programme called motherboard monitor with gives tha stat on your board when went to check out the cpu speed it was only displaying 1500 or a bit more
is that s**t normal or have i slowly murdered my chip please help

NOW HERES PROBLEM 3 (most important for me)

couple of months ago ibought two usb joypad converters from lik-sang online shopping which allowed my to play my mame roms with a psx2 joypad everything worked fine it loaded up when plugged in no probs untill, i bought two more converters and a usb port that fit into the front of my 3 bay tsunami case. ok i plugged these usb port on there own in at the 2nd usb pins at the bottom of the board, when started my P.C i had a boot error a bad one so i had to reformat tha hard drive. when i gotthe pc back up running and tried setting up the usb converter, NOTHING at all
i tried allsorts except flashing the bios that sounds like some risky s**t.
i went on the net to find some answers and i found a page that says if you connect the usb ports wrond you could currupt the usb top header whatever the hell that is im not to deep in computers if theres anyone out there who can help me, please do , not just for me but for all those people who are running into the same s**t that i am.

my e-mail is NINJA_PECULIA@HOTMAIL.COM

Problems with my ECS K7S5A board

Norbert Schneider — 2003-01-01T01:15:11-05:00

HI you ,
i'm runing my system with an ECS K7S5A board with ami bios
512 sdram 133 amd duron 1ghz
everything works well ....well i just bought a new amd xp 2000+ and tried to build it in .....after 10-20 min my computer crashed and i had to turn it off by using the power button...after restart all works fine and the temperature was about 41-46 �C .....(cpu at 133/133) after that i build in my duron again wihtout returning the fsb and nothing worked...i tried to clear the cmos by the jp4 but i does not work...i get no post ...but the hd led works as the cdrom floppy....but i get no screen...after an restart i got 8 beeps ...then i took out all the hardware i had build in and tried to run it only with hd and graphic....nothing...after that i tried the 2000+ again and i got 2short beeps 8 beeps long break short beep short beep....can anyone of you help me ??
thanks in advance
nob

Re: ECS K7S5A

jamie e — 2002-12-30T08:05:45-05:00

okay here it is. for you people that cant get any power on the board and think your battery is dead do this. dont look at manual when hooking up pins to board. 1,3 hdd/ 2,4 pwr led ( heres the trick, there are three holes for this connector but two pins, either you move one of the pins to the middle and leave the dead pin hanging in front of pin 2 or just have no led and still leave the third hole hanging in front of pin 2, only connect the last two holes to pin 2 and 4, also dont hook up on the group of pins the manual shows, it is for sound i believe hook them up on the first set of 10 pins) 5,7 reset/ 6/8 power. do this and will work, also check the clear cmos jumper to make sure it is correct. now for my problem with this board i can not get the usb ports to work on the rear of the board. device manager in windows 98 showing yellow exclamation point on my device which is a webcam hooked up to usb and webcam not working. also driver disc has no file on it for win98 usb. has one for xp and me/2000 but not for 98. any comments???????????

Re: ECS K7S5A

Du Roc — 2002-12-30T02:50:41-05:00

I didnt read enough of your post to know what you have done and not done. However it is known a very small percentage of AMD processors boot with no video. So you may want to move the processor if you havent done already to a new system.

I never had this problem myself.

Re: ECS K7S5A

joe tavola — 2002-12-30T01:48:40-05:00

today i took out my video card (without uninstalling the drivers), just basically popped the card out of the motherboard and put it in a new system. then i took the card out of the new system and put it back in mine and now there is no video whatsoever on screen !!! computer boots up, the fans are running (cpu and video card). i then put the video card back into the other system and it works fine ... I also tried the hardrive into the other system, works fine.

the video card and all cables, etc.. are ALL firmly in place.

i have also cleared the CMOS on the motherboard to no avail.

i have also tried an ati pci video card and same thing, no video at all.. computer does boot though

i have also tried removing all components including taking the board out of the case and re-assemble the whole thing. also installed the board onto a new case, same thing happens.

the hardrive works on another system btw. i have also tried new cables for hardrive etc..

system specs :

ECS K7S5A mobo, AMD Athlon 1800 XP,512 MB SDRAM, 17 GB Fugitsu, GEFORCE 2 GTS 32 SDRAM, 32x10x40 LG CDRW, SoundBlaster Live 5.1, WINDOWS XP PRO

Re: ECS K7S5A NO START PROBLEM

Du Roc — 2002-12-29T21:00:11-05:00

I purchased this board from Frys. I too had a problem, but I quit too soon in attempting to find out what was wrong, usually I have more patience. There was no power, and changing the SoYo case power supply to a compusa didnt help either. I just assumed both were bad.

Anyway the problem is in the documentation and it was quickly found by a frys tech. The frys return lines were the best I had ever seen as far as organization, a far cry from the black Friday malaise several weeks ago where there was a three hour wait to checkout. I am running an xp 1700 with settings at 133 and voltage 1.5.

The pins on the front panel are mislabled, you must look at the silk screen on the mb. It will start immediately, the tech just shorted the pins out with an oversize screwdiver, and no problem. From start to finish I was out in less than 20 minutes, a record when you consider what it usually takes! I run across this same problem with other MB mfg too. It will cost you time. My only problem so far has been sometimes when I insert a new card in the MB, it gives me MB error beeps. And when I get it working, I dont know what I did to fix it. At first I thought I had put too much pressure on an LAN connector with too short a cord and the computer c**keyed while I worked on it.

Anyway hope that helps. Dont trust the documentation.

Oh, and by the way I benchmarked this vs. my fatherinlaws Dell 2ghz and my other xp 1700, a shuttle ak31a. The ECS kicks tail, easily outdistancing in certain areas in the math/floating point megaflop benchmarks using the Norton Systemworks performance test. For the money build it urself if you can stand the aggravation. My whole system cost about $150 after all the rebates. Courtesy of Frys, office depot, compusa and max,Free Soyuz case, $15 40 meg Maxtor 7200 Hd, $20 256 K ddr 2100, free winmodem, $20 burnmax 40 cdrw, used floppy, lots and lots of rebated software, $79 eCs mb, fan and 1700 cpu, and bayone front card reader USB 2.0 the only way to do better is to get it free from someone you love, and since I am an ex amder out of work 11 months (and incidentally I helped design and build Fab 30 in Dresden), money has to really stretch. Of course you have to fill out all the rebates and followup on them

Re: ECS K7S5A

Alan Schoen — 2002-12-29T01:19:16-05:00

iv tried putting those wires in a number of ways, the most important way being the one that is suggested in the instruction guide(assuming white is negative and colored or black is positive) and still havnt seen anything.

Re: ECS K7S5A

Wyatt Hatfield — 2002-12-29T01:14:10-05:00

If I were you I would check the power switch pins. where the front pannel stuff connects to the motherboard. you probably have them backwards or something... Actually they are really simple... Look in the Mobo book for a Diagram....

Re: ECS K7S5A

Alan Schoen — 2002-12-29T01:04:22-05:00

i would like to say that i am happy with my k7s5a but it simply doesnt turn on. someone else here seemed to have the same problem as me, and michael scott responded to it but i think he misunderstood what the other person meant by "no BIOS". in my case "no BIOS" means that absolutely nothing- not even the motherboard- turned on or showed any signs of life, not that the BIOS settings were lost. If the problem were in any part of the computer but the motherboard or power supply the BIOS would probably boot up. In my case I have tried the same setup with two power supplies and saw no signs of life with either one. I thus suspect that the problem is with the motherboard. If anyone can think of any explanation other than a faulty motherboard please tell me, I'd hate to exchange the motherboard for a new one only to find that it worked all along.(this is the second computer I'v built)

Re: ECS K7S5A

Michael Scott — 2002-12-29T00:09:59-05:00

Dear mike daas,

Yes no problem for Athlon 1800+ to 2600+ upgrade , however you need the 266mhz fsb (front bus) not the 333mhz. AMD make them in two 'flavours' you need 266fsb for this board. Im actually sending this on a 14 th machine my 12 yr old son built. you migt wat to flash the bios but no need too. ECS do supplya BIOS flash download web page http://www.ecs.tw/download. I advise you to use better than standard Fan on chip (Volcano 7 or 9 or simarlar). You picked a good fast stable board , meanwhile too busy as have to fix ASUS and ABIT top enders. The ASUS do need some configuring but for the money the ECS is easy , faster, providing you run it cool. You will be caught out on most boards if you use cheap ram The DRR from SDRAM at 512 provides 6.076 % increase in speed (Si Sandrosoft bench). Regarding AC97 sound , if you no like put in pci card of yrt choice; alternative XP plus has sound enhancement for speakers!, all my customers happy with this quality ( try it). Except for dead BIOS battery we none 13 computers returned with this ECS mobo. WE fitted two extra case fans to each. Chaintech Ge Force 440 vid. 64 meg . Pinnacle TV tuner, Diamond Data 48xx40x12 burners, Samsung DVD 14 spin , generic 250 zip and floppy. All fitted out with dial up swann11 modes and cable modem and extra set of 4X usbs at rear, 2 X Seagate 7500 80 gig Master and Slave HDD. Generic power supplies 300watt , made in China, like the board; they all work fine which keeps my customers happy . All mobos work less damaged or wrongly configured. Cash flow is important in business which is why we build so called "top -end" computers /boards (actually much hype here) as particular projects for customers.
You wont be able to above AMD Athlon 2600 to the 2800 as at 2800 they only do 333fsb bus speed not 266, , but then 2600 on this board moves along very swiftly mike.
Best wishes mick

Tacylm

Matthew Robinson — 2002-12-28T21:48:50-05:00

Hello Tacylm,

To answer a few of your questions. 1. I am 29 years old. 2. I am by no means a great psychologist, but I do have a degree in social work. I know enough about psychology to tell you that your response was Freudian. I will let you figure that one out. 3. I never told you to stop working with computers but rather stop trying to build them. 4. I am not some dumb ass kid running off my mouth in a internet forum trying to get a rise out of people. Believe it or not I try to help. 5. Having a engineering degree with an emphasis in computer science does not mean you know anything about computer hardware. I work with people who have doctorate's in computer science who have never seen the inside of a computer. Now you might wont to know how some one with a degree social work gets enough gumption to go head to head with some one like yourself on the issue of computer hardware. I have been repairing and building computers full time for the last 8 years and have worked in the field since I was 18 years old. I think that gives me enough experience to way in from time to time. Feel free to write back and try to rip me apart that is your choice but I am done responding to you. Sorry to everyone else who sees this. If any one needs help or has questions that are not belligerent please feel free asking! Tacylm good luck in the future and I hope that your time from hear on out is not wasted!

Re: ECS K7S5A

Tacylm Tapsi — 2002-12-28T20:05:37-05:00

Gee, you're smart.. great advice, must be a prominent psicologist huh?

I'd like to know how old you are..

First of all, building a computer with components that come defective is NOT part of the "experience". And you are so very right, my time IS precious, how sorry I feel for you if yours isn't. About me not working with computers anymore, that will be kind of difficult considering I have an engineering degree with an emphasis in computer science.