Thread: Carputer POSTing Problem

If I had any more money, time-or let alone sanity for that matter, I would go back and buy one of those boards, but for now I'm trying to rig up a timer relay circuit that will keep all the connections to my display powered, but the actual data connectivity disabled until after the BIOS as posted. A simple 1 or 2-second timer circuit should do the trick.

Originally Posted by MZ3Alex

Okay so here's the problem. Intel, the very people responsible for the birth of universal serial bus communication, cannot get the software responsible for enumerating the ports properly on their own motherboard during boot sequence to work properly. Having done some in depth research, the dreaded "EB" post code seems to be a common problem amongst more than just Intel's Mini-ITX motherboards, but rather effects a lot of other boards as well, and the code seems to get stuck and be most finicky with the removal and insertion of certain USB peripherals as others seem to figure out.

It's interesting to note that this year Intel has ALREADY released yet another BIOS update for the DN2800MT motherboard. In fact, as long as I have been working with computers, I have never seen so many BIOS updates for one brand of motherboard well after a year since it came out. The Intel website currently lists 13 since the first on November 30th, 2011.

Bottom line, don't buy an Intel motherboard unless you plan on using minimal USB devices with it, or it will annoying the heck out of you. It's a great board, but wow, not what I expected from Intel.

Can you go into depth with this a little bit more? I am getting a similar problem (board not POSTing quickly) and hadn't had time to diagnose the issue. For me, most of the time it works great, but maybe 20% of the time something gets hung up... I also have an Intel MiniITX board, though it's not an Atom board - I'm using a Core i5.

I might also be able to lend a hand with the relay setup - are you going to put all of your USB devices behind a relay, and then switch them back on with a timer on the 12v/5v rail of the PC? Is the root problem a specific device? I also have a Joycon EXR... it might be a good idea to compare hardware and see what the common threads are to assist in debugging.

My other USB devices: Cheap bluetooth adapter, Ubiquiti WiFi adapter, Diamond 7.1 sound card, IOGEAR wireless mini-keyboard & trackball, an arduino leonardo, Joycon EXR, M4-ATX, a cheap TV-Tuner, S4 GPS receiver, and a cheap USB hub.

CyberBill,

I apologize on the late reply as I have been extremely busy lately. I'm interested that you are also experiencing this issue as well since you also have a USB hub. As far as going more in depth about the BIOS, I don't know a lot about BIOS POST sequences, but I do know that the Intel boards are flawed somehow with respect to their BIOS. My idea that it is related to USB enumeration or possibly initialization is just a theory because of how I have found that unplugging my 4-port USB hub seems to make the issue go away about 95% of the time. Other people have also found that the insertion/removal of certain USB devices and even some mini-PCIe devices also cause the 'EB' hang code. I really hate that I bought this board but the simple 12V input was what drew me to it. The fact you also experience problems with your board just confirms this is a widespread problem.

For the relay that would be exactly what I would be planning to do. If you had any ideas for a timer circuit schematic that would be awesome! I have done a little experimenting with the issue and I have found that if you try to plug in USB devices while the system is trying to resume from hibernation, the resume process actually freezes, so the timer would have to reconnect the USB hub right when Centrafuse pops back up. (Usually about ~10 seconds on my setup when the POST doesn't hang.) But yeah I would definitely appreciate any ideas!

As far as what is connected to my computer, I have a Lilliput USB touch screen hooked up via VGA and then a USB cable that is actually wired in the VGA cable so that's just one cable that reaches the computer from the screen. I am also using a cheap USB Bluetooth 4.0 adapter (Broadcom chipset), a USB-to-Serial GPS receiver from Mobile Computing Solutions, and then I usually have a iPod cable plugged into one of the other USB ports. The system is powered by a Carnetix p2140 power supply. The port that I have dedicated to my display storage and user input has a Belkin F5U404PBLK 4-port USB hub plugged into it. From there I have 2, Sandisk MicroMate USB SD card readers attached (which have been giving me some weird trouble lately with different SD cards), my front USB port that is just wired to a female Mini-B type usb connector on the front of the unit (Nothing is plugged into it the majority of the time anyways. I fabricated this so i could easily plug in a USB keyboard if I needed to.), and the last piece of hardware plugged into the hub is a JoyCon EXR receiver for steering wheel controls and the front buttons on the shell. I wouldn't suspect the EXR to be the problem as it simply functions as a HID keyboard input device. Also based on the 80h decoder codes for keyboard detection, the code '92' would be displayed if there was a problem as that's the code for "Detecting the presence of the keyboard". I'm not sure if your board follows the 80h chipset decoder or not but I do know the DN2800MT does, so I doubt the JoyCon is the problem. (Here's a list of the 80h POST codes: http://www.intel.com/support/motherb.../CS-025434.htm )



EDIT: Okay, WOW was I wrong. So doing a little research on JoyCon EXR boot problems just for kicks, I found this: http://forums.centrafuse.com/archive...hp?t-9605.html

Despite the mobo in question there is the Intel D525MW, it still follows the 80h POST sequence. Since the DN2800MT also follows the 80h POST sequence, my guess is that would explain why I am also experiencing problems, and if your board also uses the 80h decoder as well, then this would explain why you are experiencing problems too. So it seems that having the JoyCon EXR plugged into the 4-port hub is what causes the hang. I would honestly have never suspected that. My initial guess as to ruling out the EXR was based on when the EXR has a direct connection to the computer, I wouldn't encounter any issues. When I plugged in my 4-port hub which had everything plugged into it (including the EXR), I immediately experienced the POST hang. I wouldn't have expected the EXR to be causing any problems. Here it seemed to be the problem the whole time. Luckily there are fixes for it, including upgrading the firmware (which i was on an old version), and updating the software for the board too. The other alternatives would be to connect the EXR directly to the computer(which isn't really an option in my case) or using a USB 1.0 hub (which i wouldn't really want to do with my SD expandability because of video/music streaming from those ports). So once I get my new motherboard back I will experiment with that, and hopefully it will solve all the booting problems once and for all. (It also seems this issue effects more boards besides Intel ones.)



Unfortunately at this point I am unable to experiment with anything more as I have sent my board back to Intel now for the 2nd time now under warranty following some video display issues. I think the board somehow overheated and caused a few GPU transistors to fail and the display was lacking quite a few colors. If you have ever seen a GPU go bad, one of the first things it usually does is loose some of it's ability to display colors properly on the screen, and is then followed by lines or some kind of messed up pattern, which leads to further discoloration, then the lines start to flash and get all screwy before the whole thing eventually fails all together. My experience was in the primitive stages of that. Here's what it looked like as I had to send pictures to Intel for evidence of the problem:
What the background is supposed to look like:
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d1...ps7df1d707.jpg

What mine looked like:
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d1...psf4adb8be.jpg

The problem it was causing in Centrafuse:
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d1...ps8ded70f1.jpg

It was in the early stages if failure, but nonetheless something was wrong. The dimmer function within Centrafuse would really mess the colors up too.


So once I get my board back from Intel I can experiment a little more and see what else I can do. I think building the USB timer relay circuit would be the best idea.

That's pretty interesting - it's nice to have some better idea as to what was the problem. My Intel board suddenly failed just after my post, and I will be getting a new one as well. In the mean time, I decided to go ahead and purchase an ASUS P8H77-I board, and it does not suffer the same issues, so I think I'll probably stick with it for now. I also pulled the powered USB hub that I was using and replaced it with a 'octopus' hub.