Old desktop

[emperor76]

Hi, I have acquired an old desktop computer, it's and Advent 3319, it has a Pentium 4 FSB800 3.2ghz cpu, ddr ram, the first thing I did was strip it and get all the dust out. There were quite a few un-needed components I removed, it had 2 dvd drives, which I removed one of, a floppy drive I removed, a dial up modem and a tv card I removed. For some reason I can't get video, everything else seems fine, I can see the cpu fan spinning, I'm sure I can faintly hear the hard drive. The on board vga slot had a cover screwed into it saying do not remove, which I removed, but the onboard doesn't seem to work. The motherboard has 3 pci slots and AGP slot, the graphics card is AGP, the fan on the card doesn't spin, I do fear I was possibly a little heavy handed when dusting the card as I had to get the fan off, but I'm not sure, I've just removed the cmos battery hoping resetting that might help, is there anything anyone can suggest, I do plan to go to a second hand computer shop up the road in the hope they'll have an old agp card I can test with.

 

[rowcon123]

I had this same problem strangely replacing the ram or refitting it sorted out the problem for me

 

[jmacavali]

Typically it's the RAM that needs re-seated or it's the motherboard.

Take the ram out and turn it on and see what happens.

 

[emperor76]

Typically it's the RAM that needs re-seated or it's the motherboard.

Take the ram out and turn it on and see what happens.

Thanks, I tried taking the RAM out, nothing happened, I also tried reseating the ram, still nothing, there is still a chance I don't have everything set up correctly, It really isn't labelled very clearly at all, but I've found some instructions so I'm going to check absolutely everything and make sure I have everything right.

 

[jmacavali]

If you took the ram out and didn't hear beep code errors, then there's a good change the mobo is bad.

Did you try the on-board video with the video card removed?

 

[emperor76]

If you took the ram out and didn't hear beep code errors, then there's a good change the mobo is bad.

Did you try the on-board video with the video card removed?

I did wonder if the motherboard was bad, I was also wondering if there was any chance the internal speaker wasn't working. I did try the on board with the video card removed, I wanted to try mine, but it was pci-e, so obviously I couldn't. One problem I have noticed, is that the stand off's are in silly places, causing the end of the board to hang slightly off the end, so when I insert the 12 pin connector, the board bends slightly under the pressure, I can see this is wrong, but because the case is so poorly designed, I can't move them.

 

[emperor76]

Sorry, 20 pin connector, been a while since I've been inside and looked, was just trying my psu on this motherboard to rule it out, looked at the number of pins and thought, idiot! it still didn't work, even oven baking didn't work, thought it was worth a try, I think I'm going to actually get a different motherboard as I could probably get a better one with a cpu and pci-e for not much more, but then I'd have to hope the heatsink fits the new motherboard so I'm at a bit of a loss, and then I'd be worried about breaking the new motherboard in this crappy case.

 

[emperor76]

PC Motherboard Asus P5GD1-FM/S Rev:1.01 Computer Intel Pentium Socket 775 610839119493 | eBay just been looking at this, I can't see an on board vga connection, but it does say it has pci-e, I also see that ebay seems to think socket 775 supports the pentium 4, is this right? as it also supports a lot above as well, leaving it open to upgrades and could also have my graphics card when I upgrade

 

[emperor76]

I think I've solved my problem, I took the computer apart and found 2 broken pins and some bent pins on my cpu, I've just ordered another, I'll report back if it works, I did briefly mention this in another thread, but putting it here in case anyone has a similar problem.

 

[emperor76]

Damn Ebay, my replacement cpu arrived which was listed as 478, I opened it up with Glee, only to be horrified by the sight of no pins! nooooooooo! socket 775 it was!, not impressed! I did try and straighten out the remaining pins in the hope the broken one's were not needed as I found a video by someone who successfully repaired one, but no luck! Fixing a Bent / Broken Pins on a CPU (NCIX Tech Tips #36) - YouTube