Well, before it passed away, i did a check in the BIOS of what the settings were reporting back as, they all seemed within a good tolerance. The HDD's do spin up fine.

I ruled out the PSU because the CPU FAN gets power, as well as another case fan which runs off a 4 plug molex from the PSU. There actually isn't a floppy drive in the system, as i'm told that the actual port for the floppy on the mobo is stuffed.

The CPU is ok too i think, as the temp the mobo reported was 40c (id say 50 coz theyre never right). I should be able to try the RAM in another machine (i think, if they'll let me touch another system after this) to rule it out.

The fact I don't get any POST beeps or stuff like that really makes the MOBO stand out to me.

Also when i was *trying* to do the memory test, it would randomly restart, but in what parts of memtest it did manage to do, t didnt show any errors, and when i had it started up with no POST or anything, the cd drive wouldn't eject either. Maybe i could try a diffeent PSU too if there is one available....

thanks for the ideas, hope i can try them out 2moro