[ckphilli]

Good day all,
Long story short, I've gone through 2 power supplies on 2 motherboards with 1 hard drive. The hard drive works in an external hard drive case, but to be sure I'm going to get a new hard drive and a new power supply before trying again. Here's my question (this is why I'm a novice) Is there a testing device specifically designed for testing motherboards? Reason being, I don't want to hook up new parts and get the same results. I'd rather know for sure that one of my motherboards is worth it. Btw I was grounded through all of this. I'd appreciate any comments/suggestions.Thanks

[loserOlimbs]

There are things like these
http://www.pc-diagnostics.com/pc_dia..._pci_bus.shtml

But why waste your money when every motherboard comes with its own diagnostics? (POST)

[ckphilli]

Thanks for the info. I'm right there with you on the money issue...not much to spend...I'm afraid that if I try to hook the motherboard to another power supply and run the diagnostics from there I might blow that one(power supply) too. Please enlighten me, I'm new-

[loserOlimbs]

Really, a motherboard can rarely take PSU with it.

PSUs can easily take a motherboard.

I would worry that you are somehow using non-standard parts, and the pin-outs on the motherboard and or PSU are proprietary.


What PSU and motherbaord have you been using, might look into something like this.
http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=77003

If your PSU takes this out, I'll say you have a non-standard pinout!

[ckphilli]

Ok...after work yesterday I decided to try a few more things. The one thing I hadn't tried was swapping the memory between the two. Low and behold it worked! I now have one good desktop and another to work on. Thanks for the link, I'm going to check that out. The motherboard I have left does some strange things, with the good power supply. It tries to start then stops...etc...I think it may be the pin out you speak of. I'll look into it and post another thread once I get in deep. But now that I have one fixed I have the most important part...time! Thanks for the posts-

[loserOlimbs]

Just sounds like a bad powersupply to me.

If there was a non standard Pin out your board would be dead, no ifs, ands, or buts!

[ckphilli]

Well that saves me a trip. I'll get a new power supply for the second one and go from there. Thanks