[mythtv-users] EPIA mobo won't boot

Mike Perkins mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk
Tue Feb 3 15:44:47 UTC 2009


I have suddenly had a strange problem with my minimyth front-end that I thought 
I would describe here, in case anyone out there has come across it and can offer 
a solution.

I built a minimyth front end last summer, after a box shuffle round meant that 
the existing front end got reassigned. It uses this motherboard:
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=2#epialn
- except that mine is marked LN10000EG, not LN10000G. I don't necessarily think 
that the model # is particularly relevant to the problem, I might be wrong.

When I built this box, I installed a PVR-250 card, intending to connect it to my 
cable box at some later date. The whole shebang ran under minimyth (thanks, Paul 
Bender :) perfectly for some 6 months with no issues at all.

Last month I had to upgrade minimyth, can't remember why, and discovered that it 
has backend functionality in it now. So I dug out the S-video cable and got the 
backend going with Paul's help. I've got some NFS issues, so I turned off the 
backend and took the PVR-250 out for experimentation elsewhere[1].

Now the box won't boot properly. It lasts about 10 seconds from button-push and 
then quits. My initial investigations show a possible earth loop, 3mV from end 
of S-video cable to minimyth chassis, but I don't think that's enough to cause 
problems. I swapped the power supply, same result. I've done the usual close 
inspection of the motherboard, no blown caps, no obvious brown areas, etc. I can 
get the thing to boot, if I keep powering it up and letting it keep trying. 
Eventually it lasts long enough to network boot and it's usually ok after that.

That lead me to believe that it's not booting because it thinks it's /not warm 
enough/. If I hit the delete button to get into the BIOS, which works ok, then 
leave it sitting there for 5 minutes to warm up, it will (usually) boot ok. Once 
up, it will last for many hours with no problems. Have I managed to screw some 
temperature sensor on the motherboard? Or is it a related wayward BIOS setting I 
can fix? Has anyone seen anything like this before?

And no, the answer isn't to get (another|a decent) motherboard. Funds don't 
permit that at the moment. I'm stuck with this one, I want to fix it.

[1] PVR-250 board seems to function OK in a standard slave back end.

-- 

Mike Perkins



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