socket a compaq mobo id help. no post, no beeps

[confus-ed]

To get a sucessful post condition, you need to have present temporary storage (memory) an output source (generally video), an input source (generally a keyboard) & some way of storing things (access to some disk drive or similar).

POST is short for Power On Self Test - & is the routine bios uses to know if it has some memory, an output method (usually a video card, but some very very old machines will settle for other things, such as paper tape ! but if you can find me one of those, I'll show you some rocking horse pooh ! ) & some method for storage (note 'method' & not a place, so a working floppy disk drive, with no disk in it, counts just the same as any attached disk), also a keyboard or some other input should be present (but generally most bios routines let you tell it that you have no keyboard handy & to just ignore that for a bit).

I think you are getting confus-ed with POST & BOOT - so to answer you yes 'bad ram' can cause no POST, but it'll tell you if its 'bad enough' for that - but it won't tell you if its 'bad enough' not to work in windoze, that's windoze's job - but as we all well know, windoze isn't overly smart & all you get from windoze most times is either nothing or some BSOD that's apparently nothing to do with what's 'really wrong' at all !

What I do is to assemble any new machine, with just ram, video, a keyboard & a floppy disk drive connected (don't be using any hard-drive with anything on it, you'll complicate matters & make it hard to know if its a pre-post or boot issue) - then I get my little memory testing floppy out of my box of tricks & run some memory tests, then when its managed all of that, I think about any o/s ..

[slgrieb]

Hey gib! You really only have 2 possible causes here. Either the replacement board is bad, or your memory. You've eliminated power supply issues, etc. You can try swapping RAM, but I'm betting the mainboard is bad. Quicksilvers have been out of production quite a while, so I'd really have some doubts about this board. Hope the seller stands behind it.

Quicksilvers were made by MSI, and are almost (but not quite) standard boards except for the BIOS and front panel connectors. You can drop any micro-ATX board into this case and get it to run, but you would have to jump through some hoops rewiring the front panel connectors. You are better off to invest in a board and case and move the drives over. Of course when you do this, the Compaq restore CD won't run on your system anymore... Uh, maybe time for a new computer? Perhaps one that avoids all this proprietary crap?

[gib7464]

tried different ram with no change. returning the board tommorow. thanx

mike

[gib7464]

gonna try a new board. different model. thanx for all yer help and advice. hope i can help members of this forum some day. and i will if i can.

thanx
mike

[gib7464]

finally!!!!!! ok guys. my problem occured from the strangest of coincidences. the whole time, right from the start the cpu was bad. i cant believe it. i pulled it from a working system. i upgraded the system i pulled it from and plunked it right into the old board it came from. i;ve gone through 3 boards, numerous memory, infinate combinations of pci and agp video cards, power supplies, input devices and storage options. and it all comes down to a preocessor that worked just fine and was never stored. it was put into the mobo immediately after removing it from the other mobo. well my saga is 1 to remember. never trust a "working" component. always double check. i pulled a same socket cpu from a random extra board from work and it fired right up. the upside of this is 1. all i learned from you good folks 2. i have enough components to build at least 2 boxes. 3. i can finally get some decent sleep.
many, many thanx to all who jumped in and helped me to solve this "dummy" problem. i'll always contribute if i can and pay it forward!!!!!

mike

[confus-ed]

Glad you've sorted it .. I guess you know a little now about what can make me confus-ed - always but always, you've got to test all components seperately before making conclusions ..