bios chip

[tomask]

My computer won't even get to the first beep anymore, after a month of storage in a closet. All seperate parts seem ok, except for the motherboard, that is. My guess is that I have damaged the bios chip. Resetting it with the proper jumper makes no diffrence. What do I do now? Get a new bios chip?

[Gene C.]

will it even post. so you can get into the setup. you might have lost your cmos battry. have you checked all connections ect. can you boot from a floppie? a bios chip is not going to go bad after a month. there is something else going on. what kinda system is it. make,model ect.and what were you doing when you last shut it down.
Gene C.

[tomask]

It's a DTK socket 7 motherboard (my old cheap system), and I can't get far enough to use a floppy, or even into the bios. I can't think of doing anything wrong when this happened. I have build my last five computers and nothing has ever gone bad before.

[commodsquad]

I would try what Gene C mentioned..
Get your hands on another battery that will work with the mobo and see if that changes the situation...

[Axel]

Be very careful selecting your new battery - the wrong voltage and you will fry the chip.

Take the old one with you when buying the new one - better yet - pull down and print a copy of the motherboard manual if it's on-line and take that with you. It should list the battery specs in it.

Old BIOS chips can be very hard to come by. If everything else works, you might just be better off buying a used board and going on with life. On the other hand - you're here, so you might like to tinker http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

Good luck.

Lastly - any chance you might have a bad stick of RAM in there it can't get past for the post?

[tomask]

Now I've switched batteries and nothing has changed. It looks like I'll have to go for another board then.