Any suggestions, please? -UPDATE - BUT JOY

[Li Li]

On Sun, 2010-09-12 at 10:57 +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 10:39, Christopher Chan
> <christopher.chan at bradbury.edu.hk> wrote:
> >
> >> All you peoples who do refurbishments and such, what is your gut
> >> feeling, based on experience, as to what could be wrong? :-) .
> >>
> >
> > Sounds like a fried BIOS maybe? Does this Gigabyte board of yours come
> > with dual BIOS chips or something?
> >
Basil: have you tried pushing (quite hard) on any socketed ICs?
Sometimes they creep out of their sockets due to alternate warming and
cooling.  I've fixed many supposedly dead devices in my time by just
pushing things back in place or by removing and re-inserting chips and
modules (thus cleaning the contacts).

At this point I would remove the motherboard and power supply entirely
from the case.  Taking proper static precautions (important in your dry
climate -- best to do this barefoot in room with no carpet on a clean
wood table), remove all the memory and re-insert it after cleaning the
contacts carefully with the rubber end of a pencil.  Hook up the speaker
and PSU and briefly short the two pins where the power switch connects
with your pocket knife.  Any beeps? Now try it with the video card and a
monitor.  This simplifies things and eliminates the chance that
something has worked itself under the motherboard and is shorting things
out.  You're working with low voltages here, so this isn't in the least
dangerous.

Readings of voltage levels with consumer-grade meters don't really tell
you much.  In this case it is the available current you really care
about; if not enough the power-hungry CPU isn't going to start ticking.

I don't recall ever seeing a failed BIOS chip since the very early days
when they came on EPROMS.  Always a first time though.  Good luck!


-- 
Lilly
godbless --everyone --no-exceptions
Linux 2.6.35-20-generic Ubuntu maverick (development branch), Gnome
2.31.90