Resolution of my OP back at the beginning of September titled, "Any suggestions, please?"

[Basil Chupin]

That thread concerned me losing my system by it suddenly losing the 
video after a system upgrade, and then on re-boot the POST did not even 
"beep" to indicate that it was booting.

Many people here gave me advice about what the problem could be: the 
psu, the CMOS battery, and so on.

Of all the advise I received from you all which stands out in my mind 
(without any favouritism, believe me) is: from Dotan Cohen and from Li 
Li. There was another person who swore black and blue that I should 
invest in a gadget which would confirm if my psu was "up to the task". I 
think that it was Cybe R who progerred the idea that the problem lay in 
the CMOS battery. Except for the CMOS battery, I didn't follow the 
advice to the letter at that time because, in the first place, the psu 
showed that it was putting out the voltages as per specifications.

After having my system "go down" I bought a replacement , a pre-loved 
ASUS mobo which was supposed to equal what I had with the Gigabyte mobo 
I was using when the whole thing went "poof". At that time trying to use 
that ASUS mobo failed. If you read that thread started in early 
September you would know what occurred and I won't repeat it here.

To cut the long story short, I've spent the past few days to:

* find a replacement psu for my 'original' system (the psu one can buy 
now doesn't do what it did some 5 years ago :-( - which means that the 
2x 5" fans in the Antec case are now sounding like a vacuum cleaner :'( 
) [the psu controlled the speed of the fans depending on the temp. of 
the cpu/mobo; but no longer :-( ) ;

* installing the whole sheebang because the cabling out of the psu does 
no longer cater for a configuration of a system put together some 5 
years ago; and

* going out of my tiny mind worrying whether the whole thing will end up 
working because spending all this time on taking out bits and replacing 
them will work otherwise I will have to undo the whole bloody thing and 
go back to my fall-back system (an Athlon XP 2100+ cpu with 512Mb of 
memory).

Fortunately, in the final analysis everything worked. (I now have my 
Athlon XP 3200+ with 1.5GB RAM back :-) .)

The bottom line of all this is that back in early September there was a 
simultaneous failure of 2 components of the system: the psu (an Antec 
550W True Power) and the BIOS on the Gigabyte mobo which I was using. 
Which caused the failure of the other I do not know (if it did of 
course) - but I do know that both are "kapoot" (certainly the Gigabyte 
mobo is and so is one the 12v rails of the Antec).

(As a follow-up to the above, if I haven't responded to some posts - 
HURRAH! I can hear some people shout! - 'tis because of what I just 
wrote above. But I'll be back with a vengeance when I get over the 
hangover :-D .)

BC

-- 
A man kept complaining about not having shoes to wear - until he saw a man with no legs.