I finally got my extra 512 MB Ram and 500w PSU today, so I was kinda stoked at *finally* being able to hook up all of my USB devices without the system rebooting each time I played a Shader game, not to mention finally being able to use my 6800.
It was awesome, was finally playing Half-Life 2 as it was intended not how my FX 5200 was showing it. The extra ram (making 1GB total) allowed me to finally run it in DirectX9 mode instead of DirectX8 mode... all was sweet while I had my controllers, mouse, camera, IR etc.. all hooked up for useage.
5minutes into the game, the system locked up. Stuttered and kinda keeld over to die. I've been trying to acess just what the hell happened, but so far I'm turning up a blank.
Problem is the system now refuses to boot. Instead I hear the BIOS Bleep System... which obviously indicates an error. Thing is I've never heard this bleep error before in my life, and trying to find sites that know what it is seems to be a lost cause.
Normally a bleep error are simplified, number of bleep to indicate and error. If the system can assertain just what the error exactly is you get a morse code style bleep group.
This is kinda what I get..
3-3
What is baffling me is a)these bleep are all 2x longer than normal bleeps for that system. Further more there is only 2 groups of bleeps when there should be 3!
I suspect that this is a memory error, as 3 bleeps generally indicate towards this.. it could also be a video error, but as I've put my 6800 in this machine and am using it quite fine not to mention I tried my 5200 & 4800 in my other machine without success, does seems to lead towards once again this machine has a Ram error.
As such I then took out the new Ram, still no joy. Then I tried a variety of Ram positions (3 DRR Slots), but all of them caused the same bleep result. Video doesn't start, Drives don't boot simply power-up, which suggests things aren't going through as they should.
Something peculiar to note is that using the 250w PSU, the Hard Disk and Power Lights activate.. using the 500w PSU, they don't. Not sure if this means there is something slightly more wrong than shorted Ram, but would like some opinions from others on what could possibly be caused so I don't waste my time tommorrow complaining at RL Systems once again about dodgy Ram.
Really am begining to wish I'd stuck buying from Kingston directly rather than cutting corners on cost.