Computer don't work

[Butchk]

I am repairing a computer for a friend that I would like a second opinion on. It's a Pionex computer the board has everything on board,ie video and sound. It has a Cyrix 233 cpu with 64 meg of ram. The problem is the last time they tried to turn it on it froze three times then it didn't do anything. When I hooked it up all and turned it on the screen stays black. The hard drive makes a little noise and then nothing. The first thing I looked at was the memory I reseated it and changed slots. I even swaped it out with another set. Still nothing, the fan on the power supply starts to turn then it stops. Then I tried changing the CPU the hard drive stopped making any noise. This unit didn't have a CPU fan on it when I opened the case. All that was on the CPU was a heat sink. I am leaning towards a bad mother board. I have worked on other computers when the fan quit working on the power supply and as soon as you figured out what was wrong it started working again. The mother board is a atx, but it also has a at connection on it. So I hooked up an at power supply to it and got the same thing as before. Any help would be more than welcome.

Thanks Butchk

[Livewire]

Did you try to start with video card CPU and RAM only? Check MoBo for scorch marks around circuitry try all other components in a seperate sys. I would start there and post again if you need more help.

_-Livewire-_

[Butchk]

Livewire:
All components are made on the mother board the only part that isn't is the modem. The ram and CPU are the only parts I can change. I still get the same thing nothing.
thanks for your help.

[richamies]

Have you hooked up the power switch from the case to the AT psu or is it a different one?
Might be worth using a new one.
Try powering up with the hard drive, cdrom, floppy, all fans etc disconnected see if that gets it going a little.
Might be worth dropping the speed down a bit maybe to 166 or even 100 or something, see if the CPU has cooked. Even if it does power on it doesn't mean the cpu is good, would still need swapping. Those Cyrix beasts could heat an entire Intel manufacturing lab so it could well have cooked...

Keep us posted, bet you've already tried most of this but maybe.......just maybe....

[Legoboy]

CPU.

Reseat the CPU and memory and be sure to give the CPU a good press to seat it properly (I just got bit by this problem!).

Legoboy

[Butchk]

Richamies:
The AT power supply has it's own on off switch and I disconnected the switch wire from the atx case to the mother board and still got nothing. I also disconnected all the drives until there was nothing but the board and it did the same thing. Have you ever heard of not putting cpu fans on computers? So far I have ran into three of them in the last to weeks. I upgraded two Quantex computers and part of the upgrade was to install cpu fans on them. As far as dropping the voltage on the cpu, there are no jumpers on the mother board. I even looked under the chip, I have seen jumper there before. I think it is a jumperless board. My friend wants to upgrade to a better board and CPU this just give him the excuseto do it sooner. Thanks for your help if you think of aything else please tell me.

Thanks again
Butchk

[tlwhite76]

Butchk: If you've reseated the CPU & RAM and you think it's OK, I'd suggest that the onboard video is bad. Hope you can convince them to stay away from integrated sound & video on the new board.

[Butchk]

tlwhite76:
We are going to the local computer shop in Sacramento Saturday. We have to get a ATX board because of the case but I have told him the less on board devises the better off he will be. I think the only on board things he wants is the ports and usb connectors. I just want to thank you and everyone else that has helped me through this problem.

Thanks again
Butchk http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Axel]

I've got to agree with TLW - all of that on-board stuff is bad news -

Sounds like either a fried CPU chip - be good to have it checked while in the shop - also - was there any thermal paste between the sink and chip and how much?? Too much can actually be worse than none at all.

If the CPU checks - then I'd say it might be the on-board video is fried. You might actually get the board going again by disabling the on-board video and adding a PCI video card. That's a low cost salvage option -

I personally hate the CYRIX chip - had nothing but trouble with the one I had - kept having bad conflicts with the VIA O/I chipset on the board it tried it on, finally ditched both.

Now I only do AMD and some INTEL ( celeron ).

[tlwhite76]

Thought something was odd here, working two threads. Ahhh!

[Butchk]

Yea it was a computer glitch my machine took so long to post the first time I thought something was wrong so I hit it again. That time it went through real fast, I didn't know it double posted until it went back to the main screen. oops really I didn't mean it!! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Butchk]

Axel:
I can't agree more I hate the boards with everything on them. I also hate CYRIX chips I mainly use AMD I have had a few Intel chips also, I'm tring to talk him into going to a slot one. Anything will be better than what he has now. Thanks for your help

Butchk

[socalgal]

Yea, sorry guys, I missed that double post glitch and didn't catch it in time, obviously.
http://www.sysopt.com/forum/Forum2/HTML/004239.html

[This message has been edited by socalgal (edited 01-14-2000).]

[Butchk]

Everyone:
Well it is a new computer now. first replaced the motherboard and CPU the board is a IWill XA100+ with an AMD K6 2 450 CPU. It still didn't work so then we replaced the case. Then it started to work for a while then it just shut down. I let it cool off then it would run for a few minutes and quit again. So I took the 64 meg chip out and put the two 16 meg chips and everything came up great and it kept running. Could the processor over heating have taken out the ram also? I do know the fan in the power supply was dead too. At least he went home happy with his working computer. The only thing that was left from his original computer was the drives. Thankyou all for the help, be talking to you later.

Butchk

[XT]

Had this happen before, same symptoms. Make sure nothing has come lose, like a screw or such and is shorting out the system. lose or bare wire... Also try reseating the CPU.

[Butchk]

I did reset the CPU 2 times and no change. But as soon as I change the ram the problem went away. Everything seams to be working fine now, I had the system running for over two hours while I was installing the other componets software and setting everything up.

Thanks Butchk