[opensuse] Old desktop that won't boot with cards in it
I have an approximately 12 year old Desktop from Pogo Linux. It has an Abit N7 mother board with an AMD Athlon CPU, an AGP graphics card, and PCI slots for peripheral cards. It has sat in storage long enough that the CMOS battery went dead. It will boot only with no PCI cards installed. I've tried each, two different models of Ethernet interfaces and a Creative sound card. If any are plugged in, it will not even show the BIOS splash screen. Does this ring any bells with anyone? TIA, Jeffrey -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 2013-07-08 18:50 (GMT-0500) Jeffrey L. Taylor composed:
I have an approximately 12 year old Desktop from Pogo Linux. It has an Abit N7 mother board with an AMD Athlon CPU, an AGP graphics card, and PCI slots for peripheral cards. It has sat in storage long enough that the CMOS battery went dead. It will boot only with no PCI cards installed. I've tried each, two different models of Ethernet interfaces and a Creative sound card. If any are plugged in, it will not even show the BIOS splash screen.
Does this ring any bells with anyone?
Quite common among old puters. You should try cleaning out any dust or dead roaches or spiders both where you can and cannot see, reseating RAM, only a single RAM stick at a time, new battery, clear CMOS according to manual, and if none of it works, another power supply. Sounds like power supply has gone out of spec. Before wasting any time on anything else, check for bad caps in PS and on motherboard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Felix Miata
I have an approximately 12 year old Desktop from Pogo Linux. It has an Abit N7 mother board with an AMD Athlon CPU, an AGP graphics card, and PCI slots for peripheral cards. It has sat in storage long enough that the CMOS battery went dead. It will boot only with no PCI cards installed. I've tried each, two different models of Ethernet interfaces and a Creative sound card. If any are plugged in, it will not even show the BIOS splash screen.
Does this ring any bells with anyone?
Quite common among old puters. You should try cleaning out any dust or dead roaches or spiders both where you can and cannot see, reseating RAM, only a single RAM stick at a time, new battery, clear CMOS according to manual, and if none of it works, another power supply. Sounds like power supply has gone out of spec. Before wasting any time on anything else, check for bad caps in PS and on motherboard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -----Original Message----- Well, if the system boots _without_ the cards, you can not blame the spiders or other relatives ;-) Did the mobo previously work with those plug-in boards? If so, do these boards work properly in another machine? If not, perhaps the PSU can not cope: try plugging only the ethernet board, and secondly only the sound card. If either of these cards are working elsewhere OK, bot not on this mobo, try to lessen the burden on the psu, by removing all mem, floppie, cd, hard disk. Might no seem useful in real life, but at least you should get the BIOS. If so, with either/both cards, blame & replace PSU If not, well, you *might* start looking for a new mobo..... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 07/10/2013 09:03 PM, James Knott wrote:
Hans Witvliet wrote:
You should try cleaning out any dust or dead roaches or spiders
Live ones too. ;-)
Yeah, that ones too, they love to hang around the World Wide Web :-) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 7/8/2013 5:08 PM, Felix Miata wrote:
Before wasting any time on anything else, check for bad caps in PS and on motherboard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
Plus 1 on that. These things will burst, or almost burst and continue to work. Then you power down for an extended period and the electrolyte will have all leaked out, and with any significant power draw they just crap out. (Worst culprits are a certain vintage circa 2000, across many different manufacturer lines. Those with horizontal mobos would tend to work even with blown caps because they sat vertically, and didn't leak so badly. But put them in storage on edge and all the oil runs out over time). Check the motherboard first. Look for bulging capacitors like shown in the picture on the linked page. (Note that the picture is kind of a worst case situation. You will often find just ONE bulging cap.) If the Mother board has bad caps, take your disk drives, and move on. Power supplies, on the other hand are cheap. -- _____________________________________ ---This space for rent--- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Quoting John Andersen
On 7/8/2013 5:08 PM, Felix Miata wrote:
Before wasting any time on anything else, check for bad caps in PS and on motherboard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
Plus 1 on that.
These things will burst, or almost burst and continue to work. Then you power down for an extended period and the electrolyte will have all leaked out, and with any significant power draw they just crap out.
(Worst culprits are a certain vintage circa 2000, across many different manufacturer lines. Those with horizontal mobos would tend to work even with blown caps because they sat vertically, and didn't leak so badly. But put them in storage on edge and all the oil runs out over time).
Check the motherboard first. Look for bulging capacitors like shown in the picture on the linked page. (Note that the picture is kind of a worst case situation. You will often find just ONE bulging cap.)
If the Mother board has bad caps, take your disk drives, and move on. Power supplies, on the other hand are cheap.
Pulling and re-inserting the PCI cards several times trying to debug the problem appears to wiped them clean enough. I'm wiping all the personal data and the Linux partitions, returning it to a vaguely Win2K installation before taking it to the local Goodwill. Any Linux geek can repartition and install the Linux of his/her choice. The non-Linux folk can use the Win2K for goodness know what. Any way, it's working. Thanks all. Jeffrey -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
participants (6)
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Cristian Rodríguez -
Felix Miata -
Hans Witvliet -
James Knott -
Jeffrey L. Taylor -
John Andersen