Thanks to all for the pointers to the beep codes. Alas, it didn't help; it's an Award bios and a no-name motherboard. And none of the descriptions of beep codes mention continual, regular beeping; they all describe groups of beeps or sequences of up to 11 single beeps. This guy beeps until I shut him off. The motherboard has slots for both DIMMs and SIMMs. I've tried using a 128MB DIMM from another computer but couldn't seem to get it to seat properly. (The original 32MB DIMM I was trying is probably bad, since the other [working] computer didn't recognize it.) I'm thinking of trying to pick up a pair of SIMMs (which is what was there when I last used the board), but I don't want to waste my money on SIMMs for a board that wouldn't run anyway. So perhaps I should turn the question around: if you start up a motherboard with no memory, is it likely to emit continual regular beeps? Paul