Any suggestions, please? -UPDATE - BUT JOY

[Christopher Chan]

On Monday, September 13, 2010 12:17 AM, Li Li wrote:
> 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).

!!!

I thought you were supposed to douse the chip with a bit of alcohol and 
then set fire to it to resolder the contacts!

/me prepares to open dead netbook to push bios chip back in.

>
> 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.

+1

Always check how much current is being pushed on the different power 
rails and make sure you have plenty of headroom on each power rail when 
you buy a power supply.

>
> 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!
>
>

Well, there must be a reason for motherboard manufacturers to start 
sticking two or even three bios chips on their boards. Uber hot discrete 
graphics + uber space heating cpu (okay, okay, that was years ago but 
still) + enclosed space where the case is placed are probably factors...