Trying to revive older PC -Dr. Frankenstein

[bxmag]

I had a old AMD K6 II 350mhz system that I put on the side a while ago. I'm now looking to revive the system for my daughter.

Hardware O = original N = New

Shuttle HOt 591p motherboard ---- O
AMD K6II 350 CPU -------------------- O
128mb PC100 SDRAM ---------------- O
40mb 5400 Hard drive --------------- N
CD-ROM 52x ------------------------- N
1.44mb 3.5 floppy drive ---------- ???
10/100t NIC ---------------------------- N
56K .V90 modem ---------------------- O
AGP 8mb video card ------------------- O
USB card --------------------------------- O

I start the system checks drives and the 3.5 doesn't respond.
Checked the cables on that drive by re-seating.
Had the cable backwards on drive because the drive light stayed on---> according to a webpage. No light at all now. No beeps during boot. Never makes it to bios. Screen never shows activity, checked on different systems "it''s old but it works".
CD-Rom and Hard Drive both seem happy and responding.
10/100t light also seems to indicate operating properly.

I'm really stuck on making a decission continue chasing this system or replace motherboard, cpu, 3.5, .....


Thanks
Danny

 

[Lurker1]

Hi bxmag

The new 40 gig drive may be a bit much for your system. I suggest you unplug the hard drive and cdrom cables and remove all the extra cards except for the Video card and try to get the system to show the POST on the monitor.

 

[Rockn]

So is it a 40MB or a 40GB hard drive?? If it is 40 Gigabytes, did you install the cable that came with the hard drive? If you did, take it out and put the old one back in. I agree with Lurker on disconnecting the HDD and CD-ROM along with everything but the video card to try and weed out the problem.

 

[bxmag]

OOOPs should be 40G !!!
sorry

Ok starting to unplug things

"I'll be back!"

Danny

 

[deuce]

For the 3.5 (I'm assuming you are talking about the floppy) did you check in the bios to make sure it wasn't disabled? Yes I agree on the 40 GB... it is way to big for that system. With a bios update you might be ok though... You are lucky it came with 128mb ram... that was a lot for back then. (and still is quite a bit for now--in terms of how much you need)

 

[bxmag]

Ok I removed the following

Hard drive
CD-ROM
NIC card
Modem card
USB card

The only things plugged into the board are

sound card ----- that came with the machine
video card ---- that came with the machine
3.5 floppy drive ---- plucked out of dead 386
com1, com2 and printer ribbon cables
and the 128mb of memory PC100


The end results were the same

Machine show activity but never makes it as far as displaying anything on the screen. Any other suggestions?

Danny

 

[Lurker1]

Ok unplug the floppy drive and the sound card then reseat everything left (memory, video card, processor, power, etc).
watch for POST display on monitor. You might also want to use the clear CMOS jumper to reset the BIOS.

 

[bxmag]

I was gonna let this die, and create a newer more up to date machine. But this machine should be ok for chatrooms, surfing and doing homework which it would be used for. Besides my wife (the warden) said no new machines "work with what you got" miserable ~#@!;*%.


Just Kidding re: wife comments
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First change the HD to a 20G / 5400

I have removed the Ethernet card, sound card, modem, and I unplugged the HD and the 1.44 drive.

The only things connected to the MBoard are
memory 128mb pc100
video card in AGP slot
and of course the keyboard and mouse


Fire it up the screen does not even flicker, no Bios No nothing.

HELP Please

 

[~Candy~]

I know this is going to sound strange, but I am looking at your list of remaining items on the motherboard and you have no cpu listed......is this just an oversight?

And I'll also re-suggest this, take the cpu out and reseat it, as well as the video card and the ram.....is it a single chip? If not, pull all but one.......Which slot(s) do you have the ram in?

Double check the power connection from the power supply to the motherboard as well.

 

[mole]

Fought a problem similar to this, only on a new machine I built about 3 weeks ago. Turned out to be 1 bad stick of RAM out of 3. Computer made all proper booting noises, only no activity from the monitor. Did not let out the typical warning cry of mis-seated RAM either. Almost started fooling with video cards.

AcaCandy might be on the right track, start playing a game of "20 questions" with the RAM.

 

[crabman]

try clearing the cmos........ and i agree with mole about the ram stick since you only need a little remove one stick at a time