Main Site Nav
Topics Topics Edit Profile Profile Help/Instructions Help    
Search Last 1|3|7 Days Search Search Tree View Tree View  

Cant get system to fire up, tried eve...

Trish's Escape from Hardware Hell Help Board » Hardware » Dead, Dying or Booting Problems » Cant get system to fire up, tried everything I know??? « Previous Next »

Author Message
Guido Zecckine
Posted on Tuesday, February 5, 2002 - 6:45 pm:   

Asus P3B-F, PII-300, Fujitsu 1.3, ATI RageXL, 128MB PC100. When you unplug the ribbon cable, the drive will spin up, but not while connected? The keyboard lights blink off and on constantly? I have this board set up to auto configure/detect.
Any ideas???
Matt Weston (Matt12330)
Posted on Tuesday, February 5, 2002 - 9:36 pm:   

Maybe your BIOS is trying to tell you something. Check to make sure that your PC speaker is connected correctly. Is the machine giving any beep codes? I can't think of a reason that the keyboard lights would flash - unless something has gone wrong at initialization.
If the computer is beeping at boot, check the codes below.

Just a silly question - why did you power up your system without the IDE cable connected ? It is interesting that the HD spun up, but... it was getting power - just no instructions.

Post back to let me know what happens.

Matt
-------------------------------------------------

Taken from PeteSchiffer (on this forum - thanks Pete)
Sunday, February 3, 2002 - 04:22 pm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


"This is my litte reference on Award BIOS beeps.

Award and Phoenix BIOS:

1 short beep: Normal
2 short beeps: CMOS error
1 long and 1 short beep: DRAM error
1 long and 2 short beeps: Video card error
1 long and 3 short beeps: Keyboard error
1 long and 9 short beeps: ROM error
Long continuous beeps: DRAM not installed correctly
Short continuous beeps: Bad power supply

Does seem like something is up with the power supply, but more than this I can't offer!

Pete "
V (Vera)
Posted on Wednesday, February 6, 2002 - 10:25 am:   

hi

just wondering

was this system working previously?
is the ribbon connected properly to the harddrive AND the motherboard? red edge to pin 1

have you tried another ribbon?

vera
Guido Zecckine
Posted on Wednesday, February 6, 2002 - 11:24 am:   

Thanks folks, I did a hard drive check with Fujitsu's stuff and it's ok, so now I am going to try again with a different video card (plain PCI), and different ram.
I will try to get it to boot from floppy too.

I tried to isolate the problem so I took the cable off. It spun up? It gets power!

If it wont fire up after this I think I might take it back to the store I bought it at and watch them fire it up.

Things I know:
hard drive good
board set up right
video card good
memory good
ribbon cable good
PII CPU good
Power supply good

Not sure about:
ram type
if it will boot from floppy
BIOS/CMOS
if it will boot with AGP video card

I'll try again and post the results.
Thanks again.
GZecckine
Posted on Thursday, February 7, 2002 - 8:41 pm:   

I wanted to thank everyone for the help, and let you know that you were "all over" the problem. Yes...BIOS! That Asus P3B-F mainboard had something wrong with it BIOS wise. It would not even post. Either the BIOS was corrupt or the board had a problem with the IDE circuitry, because as I said when I unplugged the ribbon cable it would spin up but not when connected. I think $35 is a really good price to pay for that particular Asus board if it would have worked, but the store checked it out and said they couldn't get it to fire up either, and refunded my money. I was SO hoping it was me... I wanted that board to work. I could have tried to give the bios chip a labotomy but I guess the store owner wanted a "happy" customer. With all said and done, I learned a little more! From now on I will breadboard any used components BEFORE I buy them! Anyway, thanks alot for the help!

Guido Zecckine

Add Your Message Here
Post:
Username: Posting Information:
This is a public posting area. Enter your username and password if you have an account. Otherwise, enter your full name as your username and leave the password blank. Your e-mail address is optional.
Password:
E-mail:
Options: Enable HTML code in message
Automatically activate URLs in message
Action:

Administration Administration Log Out Log Out   Previous Page Previous Page Next Page Next Page