lano wrote:

I moved the bios chip from the original main board to the new non B&O one. It seems to work fine so far. Software updated and B&O logo present when booting.

I have no idea if this will cause any other problems down the road, anyone with experience from similar operations?

That's really good news. I don't envisage you having any issues - my only concern was whether the B&O specific BIOS had support for processor speeds other than the 2GHz originally fitted in the BM5. I felt it was unlikely that the BIOS would have been modified significantly from the stock version but until someone was able to try this it was always an unknown so it is great to have confirmation that this works.

Do you have a BS5 connected to your BM5? Please let us know once you had more time to use the newly repaired unit whether the reduction in processor speed has a noticeable impact on performance and usability.

badgersurf wrote:

Just ordered a new board, lets hope it can get my BM5 back to life.

Thanks

Toby

It would be worth ordering a PLCC extraction tool (search on ebay) if you don't already have one as they are very low cost. As lano mentioned, you can prise the BIOS chip out with a small screwdriver but there is much less risk of damaging the chip using the correct tool.

On a separate note - if either of you intend to dispose of you original broken motherboards and/or the unused BIOS chip removed from the replacement please let me know as I would be interested in whether the original processor can be reballed or even transferred to a stock EPIA motherboard and in taking a dump of the stock BIOS to compare with the B&O one.

Kind Regards,

Martin.

 

lano wrote:

Next I gently pull up the optical S/PDIF connector and cut of the three pins in the back as high up as possible (a connector from the ML bord should be filter on these three pins).

 

Hi,

do you mean you need to solder a special connector for the masterlink socket to the 3 pins? In this case did you buy the connector or did you take it from the old board?

 

Thanks

lechatsurletoit wrote:

Hi,

do you mean you need to solder a special connector for the masterlink socket to the 3 pins? In this case did you buy the connector or did you take it from the old board?

Thanks

The only thing I did was pulled the black case of the optical s/pdif of (it takes some force). Then there is some transparent plastic with metal inside that I cut away so I had three pins left (cut as high as possible). On these pins the connector from the ML board fitted.

On the original board there is only three pins (no special connector, just three straight pins). I guess you could move these to the new board if you know how to solder, but that was not needed for me.

After some days of use I am not totally happy with how the system works with the new stock main board. N.music and N.radio works fine but Spotify is a bit sluggish some times. Also the system has rebooted 3-4 times when I start Spotify from a link room via the Beolink app and Masterlink Gatway.

I'm thinking of changing the hard drive to a SSD to see if that might increase the performance for Spotify or could it be something else that is not correct?

Has anyone experienced that Spotify is slower to navigate on the BS5 than N.music?

Hi,

I haven't really experienced any major performance issues with my BM5/BS5 although some have reportedly improved responsiveness with an SSD (assuming you can find a large enough one that will boot reliably in the BM5 - see the BS5 SSD discussion for details of the issues people were having when attempting this swap).

Obviously with the replacement motherboard, the raw CPU speed will now be around 75% of what it was originally and that may cause be the cause of any sluggishness you are experiencing. Not sure if you reinstalled or just swapped the motherboards over, if you reinstalled then may be that the BM5 is busy re-analysing your audio files for MOTS and that can make the system feel slow.

Either way, the reduction in processor speed should not be causing crashes / reboots. I would start by trying to rule out a fault with the replacement motherboard. MemTest86 is excellent software for testing your RAM and will often reveal any general stability issues with the motherboard / CPU at the same time, so trying this would be a good place to start. I would also check the event log to see if there are any clues there as to what might be causing the instability.

Please do keep us updated on how you get on.

Kind Regards,

Martin.

I changed the hard drive to a SSD that I had since before. Spotify no works perfect, no lagging at all. Have been using it for two days and no reboots either. Works perfect controlling via MLGW from link rooms. I wounded if there was something wrong with the old hard drive or can it make this big improvement? I can't tell that much difference browsing N.Music, but for Spotify it is a big difference.

Very happy for now, let's see how long it works!

Hi,

By the way, how did you know the motherboard was broken, and that it was not coming from something else.

 

cheers,

 

Ik heb een BM5 die is gestopt. Het moederbord werk niet meer. Ik krijg geen enkel beeld, ook niet op een extra monitor.

Voedingspanningen zijn OK.  Volgens mij is hij te warm geweest en daardoor defect.

Nu zie ik dergelijke boorden op Ebay. die kan ik bestellen. 

Dan heb ik ook wel een servicetool die ik op een Stick kan zetten.

Mijn vraag is gaat dit werken. Het afhalen van enkele extra aansluitingen is geen probleem. 

 

 

Ik heb een BM5 die is gestopt. Het moederbord werk niet meer. Ik krijg geen enkel beeld, ook niet op een extra monitor.

Voedingspanningen zijn OK.  Volgens mij is hij te warm geweest en daardoor defect.

Nu zie ik dergelijke boorden op Ebay. die kan ik bestellen. 

Dan heb ik ook wel een servicetool die ik op een Stick kan zetten.

Mijn vraag is gaat dit werken. Het afhalen van enkele extra aansluitingen is geen probleem.