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motherboard problem? bios problem?

I bought / stripped several parts from various places to build my own system. The motherboard I got i believe is this one...

http://www.linkpca.com/alliancepc/pcchipp4soc4.html

So today I got a 423 socket p4 1.5ghz processor and popped it in, and booted the machine with the PS, AGP video, 1 stick of DIMM ... And i got 3 beeps ...

I looked it up, and it meant that I had a ram problem so i popped it out and got the same 3 beeps.
Then I swapped it out for a stick of DDR that i had... ( apparently the board can support both, but not at the same time) and I got no beeps, no video. I thought maybe it was working and it was looking for a pci video card instead of an AGP, swapped the AGP for a PCI, no beeps no video.

Here's where i think i might have screwed things up. I then tried clearing the cmos with the jumper while the board was still on and once I jumped the cmos reset the board powered down, then I put it back to normal and the board powered up again, but now I can't get the board to beep again when i remove all the ram or put the DIMM back in.

Did I fry the bios ? Any suggestions / help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

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rindi

You might want to check if there are any jumpers on the board to set (maybe for RAM Voltage or FSB speed). You can also try disconnecting the powersupply from the mobo, wait some, then reconnect it. This can sometimes help. Also make sure the heatsink is attached correctly to the CPU, and the Graphics card is seated correctly. If you have an old pci graphics adaptor lying around, use that.

rajeev_nice

humm YOU ACTUALLY SHORT THE BIOS JUMPER WHILE IT WAS POWERED ON...!!!!! :O...

very likely the BIOS is gone... u didn't specify what kinda RAMs u used... and what were ur BIOS settings and devices u have... anyways.. getting a new MOBO will save u from both BIOS/Mobo problem.

in the meantime Remove all cables, short the BIOS jumper and wait for cpl of hrs.. put the BIOS jumper back and switch it back on... this time dont use any addon cards/devices except for RAM and VIDEO only. See if u see display or hear some beeps... Some times BIOS looks for the VIDEO in AGP/PCI as per BIOS settings. maybe u used a PCI display with AGP as BIOS Settings.

now u shud not worry about anything else going wrong.. so do ur R&D and see if any thing works out..!!

gud luck.

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rid

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edkim80

ASKER

Thanks for your comments all, I also talked to a hardware guy here that I work with that agrees with rid, saying that the BIOS would not be fried by jumping the CMOS while power was on.
I'll do some more testing today and I'll get back to you all with the results. Thanks again.

Ed

>> not be fried by jumping the CMOS while power was on << I agree with that, but I have scrambled a couple of "junk" mobo's I was playing with, doing this. ie: they posted before doing the jumper, they didn't after. Others it didn't seem to bother a bit.

Good Luck. : )

edkim80

ASKER

Thanks guys, it turns out I had more problems than I knew what to do with... I swapped mobos and that seemed to work but I also found out thro memtest that my ram is bad too.

Thanks for your help..

Thank you much. : )

Glad to hear you got it sorted out.