Any thoughts or words of wisdom here?

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My "spare" true original hydro PC I rebuilt that I tried to test in my cabinet today. Sounds like I wants to boot but just keeps looping back and the post beeps come on. I even hear the intial game boot but then just goes back to POST beep codes. Sounds just like my good working hydro PC at first. For reference I put my good PC back in and it boots right up. Video attached. Original mobo was dead replaced that with an exact match, brand new ram and a different but matched processor.
 
Does it do that exact thing every time (beep long, short-short, short, chirp, then reset to long, short-short... etc), or does it sometimes get further or not as far? From the video you posted, it seemed to reboot around the Diego check. If you unplug the serial cable to the Diego, does it halt and give the 6 beep error forever, or does it still reboot?

When you replaced the motherboard, did you confirm the BIOS settings are identical? You could also try turning Diego DIP S1 switch 8 off, which disables the Diego watchdog, to see if that makes a difference. I've never traced where that goes back, but if that drives the motherboard reset pin, you could also try unplugging the reset header from the motherboard.

Just a few thoughts...

DogP
 
Does it do that exact thing every time (beep long, short-short, short, chirp, then reset to long, short-short... etc), or does it sometimes get further or not as far? From the video you posted, it seemed to reboot around the Diego check. If you unplug the serial cable to the Diego, does it halt and give the 6 beep error forever, or does it still reboot?

When you replaced the motherboard, did you confirm the BIOS settings are identical? You could also try turning Diego DIP S1 switch 8 off, which disables the Diego watchdog, to see if that makes a difference. I've never traced where that goes back, but if that drives the motherboard reset pin, you could also try unplugging the reset header from the motherboard.

Just a few thoughts...

DogP
It does the same cycle everytime never changes, when bench testing with a regular graphics card I got to the glide error and 6 beeps forever I will have to put it back in the cabinet and try unplugging the serial cable and see what happens.
I did not confirm the bios to be exact no, anyway of knowing what the original bios settings of the Hydro mobo was? I will try google as well. I did look through them briefly and nothing seemed to be set to crazy.
 
Shouldn't be any risk of harming your good PC by looking at the settings... just be sure to select "exit discarding changes" (or something like that). Since you get to the first chirp, it seems like the hardware itself is mostly working, but rebooting at or near the Hydro Thunder specific POST.

Since you got 6 beeps on the bench, I'd expect that you'd also get 6 beeps in the cabinet with the Diego serial cable unplugged... but the Diego watchdog could also be rebooting the PC.

DogP
 
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Like @DogP said, almost seems like the Diego board is resetting the machine (maybe), you can disconnected that by following the 2 white/black wire pair from the power interface board in the PC (that feeds the power to the board outside of the PC), see if that does anything.

Does seem like it's possible the HDD is corrupted, where the program starts but due to corruption, invalid instructions execute, crashing the PC. May want to reimage and try a new drive as well.
 
If anyone here was curious I finally got around to messing with my spare pc on my staycation this week. All came down to a dead CMOS battery which I thought I replaced but apparently didn't. Replaced and set the date and time and it booted right up. Also verified all the BIOS settings with the working PC and they were all the same. Slightly off must be slight different firmware revs some options appeared on 1 and not the other.
 
I don't think those games were really intended for you to need to change BIOS settings. because they don't have 2D video card capability 'out of the box'. that's wild if it requires setting the time/date to run though lol

I'm intrigued so many of these are still working. they were designed to be virtually indestructible. LOL
 
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