I blew my home system ...

[Maggi]

Hi Guys.

Saturday I wanted to exchange one fan on my CPU and after reconnecting everything, I fired it up ... HDs & CD-ROMs spinned up, but no beeping sound and no picture came up.

Closer examinations revealed that I had a loose contact on my ATX plug
that is supposed to be stuck into the MoBo's connector.



Of yourse I tried to put it back into place, but to no avail ...

Now I'm pretty scared that I might have damaged something seriously, but I have
no clue what exactly it could be.
I replaced the Celemine by my former Mendocino to check whether it was 'only' the CPU ... same thing, no POST.

Does anybody of you know what that powerline is used for and hence what it could have damaged when not giving proper contact ?

I'm desperate ...

Bye,
Maggi

[Brian R.]

Might have done something bad to your power supply. Maybe try another PS. You may still not be making good contact or a circuit in the PS may have been trashed (permanently or temporarily).

[Pertti]

I was just about to make the same suggestion as Brian, try another PSU first.

Too bad if the board has been damaged, as it eventually grew up to one of the best I've seen.

Good luck Maggi

[Raptor^]

According to the ATX specs that is just a 3.3v line. That means its up to the manufacturer to choose what they do with it

Sorry thats not very helpful, on Intel boards it seems to be used for the PCI bus, but thats no guarantee for your board.

It doesn't sound likely that it will have done any permanent damage.

I'm sure you checked this, but it seems far more likely that you dislodged something important, most likely some RAM.

I think the PSU is ok, if the all your disk drives are spinning up, but swapping it out to check is probably a good idea.

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P3-700E, Abit BF6, G400 MAX, 8.6 gig Seagate, 8.6 gig WD, SBLive 1024, 256Mb PC100... Mouse, Keyb, Stuff

[Maggi]

Thanx for feedback, Guys !!!

That's exactly what I wanted to check first ...

I admit that my PS was already sort of overloaded, because it's only a 235W one, but
setting my SCSI HD to spin up upon controller initialization instead of system power up made me feel safe for several months.

Hopefully I can also borrow another stick of RAM and see if mine are damaged.

Cheers,
Maggi

[Brian R.]

It's kind of hard for me to understand how anything could be permanently damaged by a total lack of power. Too much or different power maybe...

[Guyver]

Kinky Maggi, Kinky... (Was not expecting a hardware issue - maybe a hard?@?? issue, but not hardware) from that title...

Anyway - PS is a first as already stated.

Guyv

[DuRaNgO]

I had the same thing happen on a be6 mobo

It turned out that the winmodem had fried and it would not boot with it in the slot

If I pulled the card, no prob, try pulling a card or two
jim

[Admiral]

Try booting with only the video card, memory, CPU and HD, the basics.
When you power it up look if the CPU fan is spining, if not, ither it's not geting power or the CPU isn't inserted right.
If you didn't insert your memory right your system speaker should start beeping.
If the CPU fan is spining and your memory is inserted right and it still won't post see if your video card is inserted right (try refiting it).

The surest thing is to test each component in another system (including mobo). You might try another PS, but if you think something is fried I'd go for testing each component.



[This message has been edited by Admiral (edited 07 August 2000).]

[Liquid Snake]

Some things that use the 3.3V line:
Video cards
Some PCI cards
RAM
CPU

As Raptor said, it's up to the manufacturer to choose what to do with the 3.3V.

[Maggi]

Thanx for participation !!!



Brian:

I fear it wasn't 100% disconnected, but probably gave some itchy quick contacts which probably caused some little sparks ...

Guyver:
In that case I should have written about blowing my SoftFSB ...

DuRaNgO, & Admiral,
I'll try to test it as a barebone as you suggested.
Plugged in cards are G400 & SB Live! 1024, so I guess unplugging the SB is one option and replacing the G400 by my former Mystique G200 would be next step.

Liquid Snake:
Thanx ... didn't know about PCI cards also requiring 3.3 volts.


Unfortunately I won't be home before Saturday, because I'm hosting a friend's home while he's on vacation, but I'll grab a new PS, a new RAM stick and should be set for tracking my problem down. (Still have my Mendocino & G200 at home)

Thanx for your help,
Maggi

[Scytale]

PCI and AGP cards can make use of that 3.3V all right, but I think it's up to the MB designer which lead they take for that purpose and how they do it.

Almost on topic: http://www.insanehardware.com/#elsa

[Maggi]

Thanx, Scytale !

I noticed that one of the BIOS updates I did for my ASUS P2B-S did increase the 3.3V up to 3.5 (!) and I think the GF1 was causing that, because it is know that those draw more power from your PS and ASUS builds GF based gfx cards, thus they might have covered their own asses by upping the voltage.

Could be the same deal with GF2 ...

Cheers,
Maggi

[Maggi]

Good Morning !!!



It's alive again !!!

It turned out to be not only one problem:

- the ATX connector on my MoBo had a bend pin
- my PS had a loose contact in its casing, i.e. moving the cable
tree revealed that one of my CD-ROMs lost contact every now and then
- and one of my RAM sticks has died

So now I 'only' run 128MB, exchanged the former 235W PS to a 300W one
and it's up and running again ...

Now I hopefully can install all those UT updates and rejoin Clan-MU on MGI
over the weekend !

Cheerio & thanx for participation,
Maggi

[Raptor^]

Ok, so instead of just one prob, you had 'all of the above'

Well, congrats on getting it working again

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P3-700E, Abit BF6, G400 MAX, 8.6 gig Seagate, 8.6 gig WD, SBLive 1024, 256Mb PC100... Mouse, Keyb, Stuff