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Gremlins!

I figured it was loose connection, so I doused it with salt water to help make the connections better.

I've ordered a Sempron - that's a cheap way to rule out the CPU. And I'll have an emergency spare on hand when everything gets settled.

I suspect there's an issue with the motherboard itself, a hairline fracture that expanded as the board warmed up. When I use to fix macs for ComputerWare - these kind of issues were almost always PS or logic board. Since all the fans and drives and lights work, I don't think it's the PS.

Every geek should have one of these. Although, in all honestly, you can build your own with a couple resistors and a few LEDs.

If all the fans/drives/lights work, then the PSU is good:

1) Take the parts out of the case, lay them out on the desk, and see if they work. If the motherboard is shorting against the case, it'll refuse to POST. I had one motherboard that hated my case, so I ended up putting a sheet of wax paper underneath it.

2) Of course try different RAM, and uninstall/reinstall the chips you have; single, in pairs, you know the drill.

3) Reseat the video card, try a PCI video card if you have one (and, honestly, who doesn't have one in the bottom of their closet?)

4) See if it will post without any drives attached.

Yeah - I'm really thinking PS as well.
That's my next step after the Sempron arrives.
If the Sempron does not work, I order a power supply.

I want a Sempron anyway - I want to build a mythtv box - I'm thinking of using an AMD compatible shuttle w/ a hardware mpeg2 encoder/decoder in the pci slot and gigabit ethernet in the pci-express slot.

With hardware mpeg2 encoding/decoding - it would work with even a 700MHz PIII - so the sempron should be more than adequate.

I may be able to get PS replaced for free, there was a known defect in this model, I have to call Antec. The defect usually doesn't show up so fast though (it's new old stock).

From what I hear, they (Antec) were replacing them for free. Hopefully that is still going on.

I think it knew you wanted to put the *nix on it.

resedit wrote:

It should be grateful - the only non *nix option for this hardware Windoze.

-=-

Well - my Sempron is suppose to arrive on Wed. That will verify the CPU is not the problem, at which point Antec wants me to try a bench boot (outside of case) which if it fails, they will replace my power supply.

I already know a bench boot isn't going to work, it's not a shorting problem.

How, pray tell, do you "know" that?

I have to pick up a PC speaker from somewhere because my case, it's a real PITA to get the PC speaker out, and I need to hear the post beeps.

No built in buzzer?

I might have a case in my closet with a PC speaker I can steal but I think I already stripped everything from it.

They're like $4. It's a good excuse to buy some OEM software or a new mouse and save on shipping.

Well - my new cpu (sempron for ruling out the x2 as defective) is suppose to arrive today - so today I can fill out the RMA request on my power supply, so hopefully beginning of march, I'll finally be able to boot this baby and install

This is why sane people buy a PC.
I don't build a lot of PCs, and this is the second time I got a defective part. First time, the defective part was a case that arrived severely damaged.

But I never claimed to be sane, not that I can remember - and if I did, I lied.

Oh - and my old case in the closet did have the pc speaker in it. Only thing still in it.

Last edited by resedit (2008-01-22 10:19 am)

So far I've been lucky building PCs. All I can say is thank Zeus for Newegg.

Antec sent me an EarthWatts 430

The OS is installing now

btw - when removing and replacing CPUs - I use to clean them as best I can - this time, I tried a product called ArtiClean (from the makers of AS5) - it's a two step process. The first step removes the old gunk - and it does a spectacular job. The second "prepares" the surface - and from looking at the makeup pad when I was done, removes a lot of oils that you can't see - because the CPU and heat sink looked CLEAN after the first bottle, but the makeup pad was black after the second bottle.

Anyway - all appears to be good, CentOS 5.1 x86_64 is installing

resedit wrote:

The computer it is replacing would take ~ 10 hours to compile FireFox 2.

Ouch! What the heck were you replacing? My old DV 400 only took 8 or 9 normally.

This thing did it in under half an hour.

And she's running just dandy

Cool

Similar RAM in my case, Firefox for me was stock save for the fact it was G3 optimized. I did tend to do other things as it was building though like chat, surf, & iTunes.