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Robert Meckley wrote:
>
> N-Trophy,
>
> At 06:37 PM 5/2/00 -0400, you wrote:
> >i lost a computer at the begining of the year.
> >and tonight i come home and i hit the power. Nada.
> >i switch to a different socket(different surge protector). *BLAM* sparks
> >and that acidic electrical fire smell. well there goes my athlon
> >system. the mb is toast. not a clue about anything else. but i'm not
> >expecting much. looks like i'm going to have to dish out another 800 or
> >so. Anyone got any ways for me to find out what component killed it(i'm
> >betting on the PS) I'm ticked and i wana vent at some company.
> >
> >Laters
> > N-Tropy
>
> There have already been some very fine posts to your problem, but I want to
> add one small point based on my own experience. Even though you have a dead
> system, you may not have to lay out $800+ to fix your machine. But whether
> or not you do, depends on locating the bad component. (Let's assume its
> only one, but it may be more.) You are quite right in assuming that you may
> have a bad power supply or motherboard, but this covers a lot of territory.
> In terms of cost, we still may be speaking of a repair costing somewhere
> between $20 and $800. Using the repairman's basic principle of testing one
> thing at a time, I think this is what you have to do. (I won't comment on
> testing the wall socket except to say that this was very good advice.)
>
> (1) Test your power supply. Unfortunately, you can not do this in the
> machine you have. Some power supplies will not test out unless that are
> properly loaded by the MB. Hence you will need to put your power supply in
> another machine and then fire it up. If it fires up, turn it off and remove
DON'T RISK KILLING ANOTHER MB
Test the power supply with a multi tester and check the output voltages
from the power supply. I have found that there are a lot of cheap power
supplies that are rated 300 watt peak and not 300w rms.
rms=.707*peak
Thus a 300 watt peak power supply actually is only giving you 212 watts
effective power to your mother board. Also, usually there is a zenon
diode on the Mb that will fry protecting the rest of the components on
the mother board.
If you don't have a multi tester see if you smell burnt plastic in the
power supply. If you do trash the power supply. If any chip on the
mother board is fried trash the power supply. The power supply should
only output 5 and 12 volt DC, which is not enough to burn up any of the
chips on the mother board. I have seen power supplies which had a fried
transformer which passed 120VAC to the bridge rectifier which fried the
rectifier which passed 120VAC to the Mother board which fried the mother
zenon power protection diode, which prevents loss of the components
connected to the mother board.
Also, the weakest components in power supplies is the connection to the
mother board, for there is very little power requirements to drive the
mother board whereas the connections for the drives require more power.
If the zenon diode on the Mother board is fried you can gget out a
sodering iron and replace it, but it probable would be best to buy a new
mother board.
> it. You have a good power supply. If not, try replacing the power supply in
> your system. This may be all that's wrong.
Since there was smoke and stuff carefully examine the motherboard and
all circuts for burned parts.
> (2) If the power supply tested O.K., you now have to start testing the MB
> circuitry. Now keep in mind that this includes, along with all the on-board
> circuitry, the memory modules, expansion cards, CPU, and on some boards, a
> replaceable cache. If any one thing has shorted out, theoretically, that
> could result in a dead system.
To test the motherboard remove everything but the most necessary items.
1 memory dim
1 video card
1 floppy drive
1 keyboard
Disconnect everything else including SCSI, hard drives, ethernet, modem,
sound, and any other peripherials that can be connected. Don't risk
burning up anything that can be connected.
Only have connected to the system the bare minimum to boot to the BIOS
--
Rev. LeRoy D. Cressy mailto:ldc@netaxs.com /\_/\
http://www.netaxs.com/~ldc ( o.o )
Phone: 215-535-4037 > ^ <
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life:
no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:6)
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