OMG I shoulda found you folks at least a month ago. My own brain is now officially useless to solve my own problems.[p]

This will be impossible to be brief; I apologize.[p]

It all started after reformatting hard drive, and trying to tweak OS, win98se. I (only coincidentally, I believe)was messing around with the dos commands available on the boot disk. I was only 'looking' (I think)by typing in the various commands listed and seeing what would pop up. Upon re-boot, nothing; no 'post', nothing on monitor, just deadness aside from case/mobo fans working. Since then I have done many process of elimination type procedures with no luck, and I have spent a lot of money on new hard ware too, silly me, now I am litterally broke with nothing but a few potatoes to microwave, some coffee to brew, and some loose tobacco to roll and smoke like a fiend.[p]

At first I thought I screwed something up with those DOS commands, but learned system should at least POST; it will not. To complicate matters, i bought many new components, and now have virtually an entire 'new' system. I will list what I had, and what I now have:[p]

Tyan Trinity 1598 mobo[p]
AMD K-6 III cpu[p]
IBM 13.5 gig hd @ata 66[p]
two 256mb sticks Micron memory (too much for mobo DIMM slots I realize now, but worked fine for months; have tried swapping with working 64mb sticks)[p]
Sceptre Dragon's Eye monitor and old but working 14" monitor[p]
Creative Labs Blaster Banshee 16mb PCI video card and Diamond Monster Fusion 16mb Banshee AGP card[p]
Ricoh CD-RW, Toshiba 50x CD-rom[p]
irrelevant sound card and modem[p]

Here is what I have since purchased after swapping out various parts believed or known to be functional:[p]
Asus A7V133 w/Raid mobo[p]
AMD Athlon 1200mhz cpu w/appropriate fan/sink[p]

the result was the same, so I incorrectly assumed I had a dead power supply (even though all fans did come on), and purchased a new generic case with a 400 watt power supply. As this got 'destroyed' by UPS and I a: got tired of waiting for it and b: learned the importance of a quality power supply, I purchased an Antec 350watt fancy unit. This I tried first with no better result. In my buying frenzy, i bid on a mobo/cpu combo on Ebay and won an Epox mobo with onboard video and audio, with a 500mhz AMD K-6 II, so when the new case finally arrived, I built this board into it, moving over the IBM hard drive and Toshiba 50x, with NO floppy swapping (yet). Unbelieveably to me (well, almost so)the only improvement so far seemed to be some HD sounds for a few seconds (can't recall now if I heard HD sounds when I tried to fire the ASUS/Athlon system, but neither system is providing BIOS beep messages either; and freaking out, this morning i swapped out a third working monitor in use right now on this computer with no different result) Upon studying some forums here today listing bootup problems, I tried to boot with CD and HD power cables disconnected, and swapped out a working keyboard (this one of course), and tried various memory sticks, (again).[p]

I did consider I may have bad CPU's/MOBO's, but THREE of each!!!. . . I'm thinking like, 'ok, maybe my original problem was a fried AMD K-6 III CPU, and maybe I crushed my new Athlon core when i attached the heatsink (which I dread checking because it is a scary proceedure without a safety shim, but, I heard no crushing noise when I did put those two things together, and believe I ruined nothing), and maybe the Epox/K-6 II 500 i got used off Ebay (from an overclocker admitted to me in email after i 'won' the auction)is likewise fried.[p]

With all the extra working components I have, and have tried swapping and/or disconnecting trying to isolate the problem, I am just glad I did not have any funds left over for that $69 BIOS replacement salesman, who advised it probably was a ruined BIOS, as "the bios is like a soldier in a fox hole; when a 'stupid' grenade comes rolling in, the bois dives on it to save the rest of the system from damage" or something like that. Again, could I have THREE ruined BIOS chips? I think not.[p]

But I must warn you, my limits of suggestability are becoming frail. Should you suggest I simply hose down everything inside my boxe(s) with WD-40, like my genius father does to all the electrical components inside his engine compartment, and everywhere else for that matter, I might just do it![p]

Thx, Scott




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Bill Gates, I might have more love for ya if I were a long time stock holder!

Welcome OC
One thing is the question is to long could you brake it up a little bit.

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Murph's Law: 1.Everything takes longer than you think
2.If anything can go wrong it will
3.Nothing is as easy as it looks

very wordy, I realize; dunno how to 'break it up' though. Just, I have tried alot of things, and the system will not even POST; it is like there is a ghost in BOTH machines.

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Bill Gates, I might have more love for ya if I were a long time stock holder!

Ok let's try some simple elimination here, start with the antec case, take which ever board and CPU you belive to be the most likely to be good and hook them up (but don't attach the motherboard to the case yet), add a video card (if this board does not have on-board video) and try to power on, if you have athe speaker hooked up it should beep like crazy...no memory. If you get that far then add in the memory....then if it will post after that add in the hard drive, and other drives one by one repeating the test after each one.

Once you have tested the components make attach the board and make sure that you sue the plastic stand offs/washers and the proper screws in the designated wholes (should have something in the manual about what goes where), and repeat the process or checking.

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

Fist, do you have blank screen?
Remove your CMOS battery for about 5 minutes, to reset your CMOS, it should be round and silver.
Unhook your hard drive, cable and power.
Take out all cards except vidio.
Reseat your memory and CPU.
Double check every thing.
Try and reboot.
If the above does not work post back.
Sorry mjc, you posted as I was typing. The old man is a little slow. Do all that mjc said.

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One day I will be a pro, Thanks Andy

[This message has been edited by andyswork@beci.net (edited 02-04-2002).]

thanx for the responses. can't try it again where I am right now, but I am quite sure I tried booting with the memory out as well, no beeps. I do have to mention that, on the older case, the speaker wire is two seperate wires with a black wire and a red wire, so i had to guess which two of the four terminals to attach them to; think I have tried two different combinations on that case; the newer case has the standard two wires from the speaker with a four way connector; when i try it again i will try it twice with the memory out, reversing the speaker connector to make sure i have it on the right way at least once, see if i can't get me some beeps.

have already tried zeroing the cmos/bios; on the original board, the Tyan (not installed currently), I checked the tyan website, which says did not need to actually remove the battery on that mobo model. the other boards, I dunno; looked and found nothing in the manuals, so battery removal prior to this test may be in order. The asus board is brand new, so didn't think that would help, but zeroed it anyway; will try to remove the battery first.

have reseated the memery many times, but havent tried reseating the cpu's. and havent tried removing both power and cable to the hd.

It just freaks me out, specially because same thing happening on two different systems; I have a pretty decent surge protector too.

Oh, and yes, I get no action on the monitor at all; blank screen(s).

i will post back when i can after trying these steps more carefully; thanx again.

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Bill Gates, I might have more love for ya if I were a long time stock holder!

Geez, sounds like you've got a lot of stuff not working. Have you considered getting another set of eyes to see maybe what you're not seeing? Who knows, maybe you're shorting everything out or something. Are you grounded when working on this stuff? Where I live in Virginia, I recently have been getting a lot of shocks everywhere I go. I wouldn't think of going into my box without being well grounded. In any case, it might help to get another on-site perspective. Good luck.