NO picture on monitor

To my knowledge NIC's and CD-RW's do not cause screen blackouts...

Perhaps I am taking the wrong aproach to this problem...?? I am making educated assumptions... which is faulty agp slot. I have made this assumption based on fact and experience... Although K.I.S.S. is a very good way of troubleshooting and is a method I use myself, I don't see how this method will work in this situation. Even if you only have the PSU, RAM, Vid card, HDD, and CPU (of course), how would you determine it was the PSU vs a faulty agp slot... You really can't without a voltmeter... Or unless your thinking around the idea that since there are less components that are using the PSU we will notice a difference in that maybe the vid card will start receiving enough power....?? Though I will admit that a dying PSU does seem just as likely...

With the Mobo being not so new.. and the system isnt actually booting..

How abot the CMOS battery?.. if it is Flat as a tack the system will not boot.. (it should be 3V any less than that and the mobo will be unreliable to start.. some will start ok down to 2V below that .. your on your own
And as the duck has commented.. is your 12V, 5v 3.3v working from your PSU

With the comments about the CD-ROM not being able to eject, my money is on the power supply being bad. Was the ribbon cable connected when you tried to eject it? Try it without the ribbon cable, just the power to the CD-ROM.

I've seen the symptons quite a few times but the cause isn't always the same.

!mitationRust KISS method is very sound when you have a non-specific problem like this.

I doubt that this is the videocard directly. Normally a badly seated card will cause bios beep codes as the motherboard will detect a lack of video ram.

Take everything out except the motherboard and the case connections to it. EVERYTHING else. Unplug the power, take out the CPU the ram, unplug the IDE devices from both the power and the ide cables, unplug the floppy.

Put each bit back in one piece at a time. Start with the CPU. Put it in and switch on. It won't boot of course but you're just looking/listening for beeps to let you know the mobo isn't dead.
You might need to juggle parts to identify the faulty componant.

My guess (and it's a guess) it is either faulty/badly seated RAM or ram slot or a faulty power supply. Those were the most common reason when I've seen pcs with the symptoms you describe.

PS a 350MHz PIICPU is a great brick of thing, P1 were small flat chips more like CPUs today.

Whoa, guess what guys. I think it was the PSU. I unplugged the NIC, dissconnected the HDD molex, the FLoppy power connector and the CDroM connector, and now I get a picture on my monitor. Hmm... So I guess it is a bad power supply right guys???

Plug 'em back in one-by-one and see which device causes the failure. In my experiance, if the power supply is bad - nothing works.

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In my experiance, if the power supply is bad - nothing works.

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That is true Dino~, but they don't all go with a flash and a bang? sometimes the deterioration is more gradual. Perhaps the new DVD/Cd was "the straw that broke the camel's back"

I would be inclined to replace it right now as if it does go "pop" there is no knowing what it might take with it.

kyrios I did suggest earlier that the machine had probably been "over upgraded"? this is a typical symptom. Some of those old boxes only had 175W~195W units in them, and their performance is quite likely to deteriorate with time. People forget to upgrade the PSU with the rest of the components.

:)

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I doubt that this is the videocard directly. Normally a badly seated card will cause bios beep codes as the motherboard will detect a lack of video ram.

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POST will not notify you if there is a faulty agp slot though...



Anyway it seems we have found out the problem and I guess it was because of this:

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Or unless your thinking around the idea that since there are less components that are using the PSU we will notice a difference in that maybe the vid card will start receiving enough power....??

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I have just never troubleshooted a PSU that way lol, If I suspect a PSU I just check it with a known good one...

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Originally posted here by The Duck I am making educated assumptions... which is faulty agp slot. I have made this assumption based on fact and experience...

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So what was the fact? What facts should one go by to know when to pretermit solid troubleshooting techniques?

I wasn't just guessing. I have experienced what he has encountered here, you are speculating as to it and quite honestly having a narrow viewpoint. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but if I were encountering the issue for the first time I'd hope I could ask someone who had actually seen a plethora of occurrences with combinations of power, chips and drives, rather than someone who could just dance around the fact that that they have seen one or two and suggest a new board based on little to zilch research and anecdotal evidence. If what he said is true and it's his PSU, you see how the techniques of (POE) Processes of Elimination and (K.I.S.S.) Keep it Simple Silly have worked here?

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Originally posted here by The Duck Although K.I.S.S. is a very good way of troubleshooting and is a method I use myself, I don't see how this method will work in this situation. Even if you only have the PSU, RAM, Vid card, HDD, and CPU (of course), how would you determine it was the PSU vs a faulty agp slot...

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It's simply working smarter not harder. It's not about wild guessing from this component to the next at the beginning. It's about taking a bunch of unwarranted variables out of the equation at the beginning, thus making the problem simpler. K.I.S.S ties into the method of POE. If he had unplugged the CD-ROM and everything worked again he would know that he was juicing too much off that one voltage rail.

You said it's the board get a new one. Why would you care if he starts to unplug the nic and floppy etc...etc...? He has to take them out anyway if he gets a new board.

Sometimes you can't explain why computers do the things they do, at least with pocket change and little time you can't.

EDIT:
All is well duck, hopefully everyone learns something new when they come to this board, at least that's the reason I came. But you start to understand voltage consumption real fast when you start to overclock your graphics card etc...etc...
:)

Eh, !mitationRust , your to late pal :D. I already figured out why the KISS and POE method worked in this situation, look above your last post, second quote...

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So what was the fact?

rather than someone who could just dance around the fact that that they have seen one or two and suggest a new board based on little to zilch research and anecdotal evidence.

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The fact is that POST will not notify you if an AGP slot is faulty... And my research and evidence is my experience... Faulty AGP slots are not always easy to find. It was looking like it could have gone either way, mobo or PSU... and I never ruled out a bad PSU.

But like I said, I learned something new. I learned that it is possible to determine a bad PSU without having to replace it with a known good one or using a voltmeter :).

**Edit**

Bah, didn't see your edit lol :)