Could this be a hardware problem?

From: Emeric Maschino (emeric.maschino_at_jouy.inra.fr)
Date: 12/09/03 

Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 08:40:49 +0000 (UTC)

Hi,

I'm setting up a small workstation based on an AlphaPC 164LX motherboard
with a 533MHz CPU. Currently, the graphics adapter is a Diamond Stealth
64 (waiting for my Permedia 2-based card) and the HDD is an IDE one on
the onboard primary controller (master). I need to install Windows NT on
this workstation (because!).

I'm starting with AlphaBIOS 5.66-1 and an IDE CD-ROM drive on the
onboard primary controller (slave). Once the HDD is successfully
partitioned with Quick Setup, I choose the option to install Windows NT.
The CD-ROM LED blinks a few milliseconds, then the screen goes black and
nothing more happens. I first thought my Windows NT CD-ROM was
corrupted. Trying an other one gives the same result. Furthermore, the
Windows NT CD-ROM is correctly recognized: if I insert something else,
I'm asked to install the Windows NT CD-ROM. So the problem is not here.
Switching to AlphaBIOS 5.70 doesn't solve my problem. I even tried to
install from a SCSI Pioneer 303S DVD-ROM drive hooked to an Adaptec 2940
SCSI adapter (recognized by AlphaBIOS) without success.

For information, this motherboard is fitted with four 256MB sticks of
Samsung registered ECC PC100 (M377S3320 CT3-C1H) coming from an Itanium
workstation. I know that the AlphaPC 164LX Technical Reference Manual
says the memory is expandable up to 512MB only, but there's a Memory
Testing item in the AlphaBIOS's Advanced CMOS Setup that can be set to
Full to test up to 1GB RAM. So 1GB should be supported on this
motherboard and I found many posts of people with such a configuration.
The bad thing is during the memory test, the system locks at 246MB
although there's no problem on the Itanium system. Is it due to the fact
that these memory modules are registered and not unbuffered as stated in
the AlphaPC Technical Reference Manual? Can this memory problem prevents
the installation of Windows NT (I haven't try to install Linux yet)?

Where should I go now?

Thanks. 

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