HP with Asus Mew-Am mobo

[Karnevil9]

I found a HP Pavillion 8655C that someone was trashing. It has an Asus Mew-Am mobo and an Intel 533mhz processor. All the other parts from the PC were taken out before it was dumped except part of the case, the CPU and Mobo. I decided to try and use it for a Linux system to play around with. When I turn it on I get a single POST beep. The fans turn and the diagnostic screen starts. I can get into the bios to change things, but the bios leaves a lot to be desired for options on what you can do. Problem is, that's where it stops. After it goes through the dianostic screen, it goes to a blank screen with a blinking curser and won't go any further. I tried to load windows XP, windows 98, and linux Morphix and Knoppix and it is a no go. The XP does nothing but goes to the blinking curser screen, the 98 loads from a floppy and goes to the blinking curser and stops. Knoppix and Morphix start to load, gets two lines written and stops. I tried three different hard drives thinking that was the problem and tried different configurations of ram and still nothing.

Then I noticed that it was still listing as an HP computer on the diagnostic screen and thought maybe HP had a very proprietory system and that is why it won't load anything else.

Anyone know anything about these HP Pavillions or the Asus mobo? Is there something else I may be doing wrong? Is there a workaround solution to get this working? I don't see how it can be propietory since I am not trying to load an HP only OS.

[fftaz336]

What type of BIOS does it have on it? Go into the BIOS and see what type it is.

[Karnevil9]

It is a PhoenixBios 4.0 release 6.0.G. Funny thing is I can't find anything on the mobo that looks like a Bios chip.

[glc]

The MEW-AM is a reasonably generic i810 board with a HP custom bios.

Disconnect *everything* from the motherboard except for the CPU, ram, power cable, keyboard, and floppy drive - and then see if it will boot to a floppy.

[Karnevil9]

Thanks all, but I think I found the problem. It was the old stand-by, bad ram. It was showing as ok on the diagnostic screen and registering as installed in the bios, but some problems just got worse and one reboot finaly said bad ram error. I pulled the one that I was suspicious off, and now it seems to be working. If the problem comes back I'll be back. Thanks again.