DEAD system. Bad mobo (2 of 'em?!)

Hello,

I built my niece a system 3 years ago. AMD 1600+ and all that. Nothing spectaular. For the last year, it has been with her friend. I don't know why.

They brought it home, turned it on, and nothing. Dead. So they called me, and I have it now.

Upon powering it on, I got nothing: no video, no POST beeps. Fans spun, drives turned on, but that was it. I suspected bad mobo. It had an ECS mobo, and oddly enough, last week, my father had the exact same problem with a similar ECS board.

Bought a new, cheap Biostar mobo. Swapped board, pressed power... Still dead with identical symptoms.

I have tried every Earthly tech trick I know of to no avail. I've pulled everything from the board to try to find a short to no avail. I've palmed it with nothing, and I mean nothing installed, not even the proc. No change. I've tried a different, known-good PS.

I'm completely out of ideas and could use your help to get this working.

Thoughts, please?

Thanks, folks!

Chris

 

Hi there

Sounds like it has to be one of the things you havent replaced yet, that is faulty. To power up and test a board you need mobo, RAM, video, power and a switch.

You say you tried a working PS so thats not it.

Check the switch is plugged into the right PS-ON header

Tried new RAM?

What about the CPU? AMD chips are not known to be reliable or particularly durable. I wont use them actually, i built 2 PCs out of the 500 or so i have built with AMDs, and they were both troublesome and unreliable. My dead CPU collection here has a ratio of 5 dead AMDs to 1 Intel.

And of course have you tried another VGA card? If the video is on board and you have no AGP slot you may be in trouble, unless you have a PCI video card handy.

 

Couldn't possibly be anything you suggested because I've tried both boards with absolutely NOTHING attached. I appreciate the thoughts, though.

Ok, found something...

After all that above, I realized that I still had an OLD dual 500MHz mobo, with procs & RAM still aboard. Hooked it up, and it worked fine. The new Biostar mobo I bought must be bad out of the box! *sigh*

All set, I think.

Chris

 

Could still be the CPU if you havent tried another compatible one on the board.

 

Have you been resetting the CMOS? Once they get stuck, they can stay that way until you reset.

Matt