Megatouch ION troubles

SouthCityHooiser

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Good afternoon all! First post to your great community!
I have a Megatouch ION with an asus motherboard that is refusing to start up.

I bought the unit about 8 months ago and it gets used about once a week for an hour or two, just at home...nothing too serious.
So we switched it on over the weekend and the DBA fired up but nothing else, no fans, no monitor. I'm fairly experienced with electronics and computers in general (at least I like to think so, ha), my first thought was the power supply, since the DBA was getting power but the PC portion didn't seem to start.

Its clean on the inside and I can't see any disconnected or mis-seated cables, buldging caps or anything obvious like that.
So I disconnected the power supply from the unit and jumped pins 14 (/PS_ON) and 15 (GND) together and was a bit surprised when the fans spun up (on the power supply, its a normal 20-pin ATX style).
The power supply actually looks really good, considering some I've seen in the past. I wouldn't doubt it if was previously replaced. Tested all the pins and they all seem to have good voltage, according to this pinout

Okay, so after a bit of research on this site and others, it sounded like what the problem might be is the CMOS battery on the motherboard.
Pulled that and its dead. Way dead..like 0.1v dead.
Following this thread, when the battery dies you lose your BIOS settings. Including the auto-power-on setting when the motherboard starts after power is applied. All makes sense thusfar (user aginc in that thread had a ECS mobo, and i have an asus, but thats pretty standard behavior, i think).

So replace the battery, switch the unit on and nothing starts, as expected.
In order to get to the BIOS when I fire it up, I connect a PS/2 keyboard.
I jump the two pins together again and everything seems to start correctly. The motherboard's status light is green, all the fans are spinning, the display comes on.
Of course I'm not out of the woods yet...
The monitor is showing the 'Cable Disconnected dsub analog' error on the screen...basically what a normal monitor would call 'check signal cable'.

I connected an external monitor as opposed to the internal touchpanel to verify something else hadn't gone wrong, but alas, the same, no output to the external monitor.
After that, just for grins, I reseated the ram in case I bumped it or similar during my messing about. Same result.

I've seen some threads saying that on an ECS motherboard its is advisable to reset the CMOS via a jumper after replacing the battery, but I can't find anyone recommending that on a Asus board. But I figured that was pretty well standard behavior and did it according to the motherboard manual here, page 1-16.

I still can't seem to get any video output from the mobo on an external monitor or the internal touchscreen...sort of running out of ideas!

In the thread previously mentioned, user Nixs was saying that a jumper had to be added to the board, however I think this was for the ECS board and not sure if it applies to the asus board.

If anyone has any experience with these ION units, any advice or ideas are much appreciated! Thanks!!
 
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I have the Intel motherboard in my ION EVO that I used to swap out my old Asus board. I never played around the the Asus very much. I can, however, confirm that with the Intel board, I had to jump the power pins on the power supply AND set the clear cmos jumper in order to get a display and into the BIOS. If I didn't have the CMOS jumper set to clear/reset, I'd simply get the "cable disconnected" message on the screen. Once the BIOS were set correctly, I was able to put the jumper back and remove the power jumper.
 
I suppose its possible that you have some bad capacitors and over time they caused your cmos battery to drain and finally put the last nail in the coffin. I suggest taking some close up pictures of the motherboards capacitors to do a visual inspection.
 
I may be wrong, but I have had a few PC motherboards that the Cmos battery had died and I also wanted them to Auto boot from power on, Those did not like to have the power supply pins jumpered. they refused to post until I actually found the power ON pins on the motherboard and touched those momentarily. It is worth a shot. If it is a fairly standard PC board (if it is) then there has to be a simple way of making it turn on.
 
Thanks a bunch for the replies, guys!!

I have the Intel motherboard in my ION EVO that I used to swap out my old Asus board. I never played around the the Asus very much. I can, however, confirm that with the Intel board, I had to jump the power pins on the power supply AND set the clear cmos jumper in order to get a display and into the BIOS. If I didn't have the CMOS jumper set to clear/reset, I'd simply get the "cable disconnected" message on the screen. Once the BIOS were set correctly, I was able to put the jumper back and remove the power jumper.

So you booted into POST with the jumper in the clear/reset position? I know its a different board but the asus manual says that that will cause a boot failure, but we've all seen crazier things. I'll have to give that a shot.
Did you replace the mobo because the original asus one was bad?
I was under the impression that these are quite customized machines, and wouldn't think you could just replace a mobo without an exact match. What model intel did you use?


Mahkeymike, I looked at them pretty closely...I mean they look like new. But you never know.

I may be wrong, but I have had a few PC motherboards that the Cmos battery had died and I also wanted them to Auto boot from power on, Those did not like to have the power supply pins jumpered. they refused to post until I actually found the power ON pins on the motherboard and touched those momentarily. It is worth a shot. If it is a fairly standard PC board (if it is) then there has to be a simple way of making it turn on.

Huh, I didn't think about that but it makes sense. I'll try this also this evening and report back.
 
Also if you boot to post with the clear CMOS jumpered many times it will adversely effect things. Most older boards will not post like that, Some of the newer ones with Bios restore or something like that doing that will force a bios "recover mode" in the case of a failed bios Flash or Upgrade. So follow the manual do not just follow what may have worked for someone with a different board.
 
Well, I'm not exactly sure what did it, but she's back up and running! Whoohoo!!

First, I shorted the 'switch' pins on the mobo system panel connector, as was recommended to not short the power supply leads by DarrenA. It successfully started the system, but still no video.

I figured I'd try to clear the cmos again, and then attempt to start it via the pins on the motherboard. Took the battery out, and this time, left the cmos jumper on reset for about 10 minutes as opposed to previously about 1 minute (the mobo manual says 5 - 10sec should be sufficient).

I previously did this procedure with the unit's switch in the OFF position, as the mobo manual states to disconnect the power cord.
I got to thinking, when you're going to work on a PC, its good practice to hold the power button to discharge all the caps before sticking your paws inside the box. So I went to put my jumper on the power pins to emulate this behavior, in an attempt to 'fully' discharge the CMOS and quickly realized I had the power switch in the ON position as the unit fired up (CMOS jumper still in the reset position).

Whoops...well, I accidentally did that!
At this point, no video still. I guess lets put the jumper back in the normal position and reinstall the battery and see how she goes.

At that point it fired back up, and went right into the bios (as I was holding the DEL key on the connected keyboard).

The weird part is, when I got into the BIOS, the system time was reset, but the Power ON option at AC power restoration was set to ON. Odd I thought, but its the only setting of that nature that I could find.

Set the time, restarted and away it went, booted straight up with the power switch!

I can't tell you guys how much I appreciate the help.
I'll donate a few more bucks to the forum to show my gratitude.

That being said, jimbodeanny and Mahkeymike, you guys are right...that asus board is LOUD!!

Is there anything involved with switching it besides just a direct swap? It is quite annoying as I can hear the unit running at the top of the stairs when its on in the basement.

Thanks so much gents!
 
Its loud because the asus mobo came with a high powered blower style heatsink/fan. Mainly because of how bad these evo's overheat and because they are low profile.

Your best bet is to replace it with the Intel board if you want something more reliable and quiet. I do sell the official Intel mobo with the AMI logo (if it doesn't have it, its not official) I also sell a EVO mount adapter that is of my own design, otherwise you will have trouble mounting the Intel board to the mounts on the EVO. If interested PM me. We can probably work out a trade for your ASUS mobo to cut the cost down.
 
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