help upgrading RAM (older Core 2 Quad) (solved)

[No_Use]

Whoa, this turned into quite an odyssey !

So here's the story:
- BIOS update to 0085. Worked fine, this time I saw the "flashing firmware" message which wasn't there when I tried updating straight to 0088. So seems indeed that "update went ok" message comes up even if nothing got actually updated.

- Now update to 0088. Stuck while "flashing firmware". Power cycling - rebooting - nothing, doesn't get to BIOS.

- Hm...what now ? BIOS reset. (Of course at some point I lost the BIOS jumper haha. Glad I got a spare one)
Back to 0085. Ok.
Why does 0085 work but not 0088 ? Incompatible hardware ?
Removed everything except graphics card. Update to 0088 worked.

Turned out in the end (after a good bit of headscratching), my beloved soundcard (Audiophile 24/96) is not compatible with 0088 for whatever reason. 100% reproduceable. Put it out, PC boots, put it back in, stuck booting.

But on the other hand - tada - I see now 8 GB RAM with 0088 !!!
Won RAM, lost soundcard, can't have it all sometimes.

Whatever, thanks so much for pointing me to that thread and for help again ending a rather long quest.

[starflakeprj]

Great to hear you have the 8 GB RAM working!

But of course sorry to hear about the Audiophile 24/96 not working anymore. I remember this soundcard, it was one of the really "talked about" semi professional audio interfaces I was scouting years ago. I ended up buying another interface though (I can't remember which one, but it had a 1U 19" break-out box for rack mounting).

Anyway, you don't seem to be the average user to me, as you insinuated in you first post. Some really good work there with the troubleshooting!

One last thing you can try (if you haven't tried this already) is to place the soundcard in any of the other three PCI slots. Surely a long shot, but maybe worth trying if you haven't already assembled the chassis.

[No_Use]

Yeah, in general I'm relatively computer savy (built a few systems myself), should have probably mentioned that in the opening post.
Placing the soundcard in another slot was also the first idea I had, tried in every slot, didn't help.

Thanks for the suggestion though.