Also have a dead box [ WAS: Re: OT: dead box ]

[Corey John Bukolt]

On Tue, 2010-03-23 at 06:57 -0600, Tim Judd wrote:
> On 3/23/10, Corey John Bukolt <ruinermailchucker at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sun, 21 Mar 2010 11:23:34 +0000 (06:23 CDT) Chris Whitehouse wrote:
> >> When you press the power button does the cpu fan or the power supply fan
> >> spin for a moment then stop? That's a sign that something on or plugged
> >> in to the motherboard has blown. Unplug things and test again.
> >>
> >> Chris
> >
> > Just a few days ago, I was helping a friend build a system (with all
> > brand new components, I might add) and we had this very problem.  After
> > sticking in the CPU and RAM and hooking up and turning on the PSU, the
> > green LED on the motherboard turns on.  However, the second the power
> > button is pressed, everything flashes for a second, then turns back off.
> > The green LED on the motherboard also remains on.  The only way to get
> > it to flash again is to turn off the PSU, wait, then turn it back on.
> > We tried re-seating everything, to no avail.
> >
> > Reading this thread, someone else mentioned beep codes and that if there
> > were none, it's most likely a fried motherboard.
> >
> > Can anyone else confirm this?
> >
> > ~Corey
> 
> 
> Best way to confirm a dead board in any case is those POST diagnosis
> cards.  They have a dual-digit LED output that changes depending on
> the signal on the wire.  If at any time those dual-digit LEDs stay
> permanently on anything OTHER THAN 00 is a failed POST.  If it fails
> before it gets a shot at testing RAM or anything, there may be no beep
> codes.
> 
> 
> Always good to have one in a toolkit.

So that's what those damn things were for......I have three rack mounted
servers sitting in my basement and they each have an on board dual digit
readout.  I figured they had something to do with the BIOS, but I was
just too lazy to find out. ;)  Learn something new everyday.

Thanks for the advice, I'm going shopping for one right now.