Play swapsies with me?

[denny]

I'd like to swap out all the bits and bobs from my PC into a known-working one, one at a time, to make sure it is the motherboard that's fried before I buy a replacement. If you've got a PC you're willing to either bring round my place (lift available in London area), or I can bring mine to yours, and then we can play with screwdrivers for a while, I'd really really appreciate it. Usual bribes of takeaway food etc offered :)

For reference, I think my machine is composed of the following bits: AMD64 3800+ (ASUS A8NE-FM motherboard), 2 x 512MB DDR400 RAM, 200GB SATA HDD, nVidia GeForce 6600 (PCI-E) and GeForce MX4000 (PCI).

Ideally I'd like to play swapsies with everything including the CPU, which would require a socket 754 motherboard in the destination machine, but everything else should go into a variety of modern machines afaik.

Comments

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

I'd offer mine, but it has issues with booting ATM. These can be overcome by use of the Windoze install CD. It also has the "advantage" of a knackered case that won't close properly.
adelpha, OTOH, has just built himself a new one and is getting ready to give me the old one - I'll point him at this post if you like?

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Thanks :)

icon++

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

Have IM'd him.

This icon was (almost) the result of drunken inspiration - I was watching "Galaxy Quest" while thinking about "Little Britain", and it just seemed so wrong that I had to do it. (And yet, still not as wrong as the special Jadis one...)

[adelpha.livejournal.com]

I haven't got a clue what motherboard the old PC has, so no idea if the CPU would fit in it. I'll try to take a look if you want. The new one won't take it though.

The old one won't be able to take the hard drive (no SATA connectors) or the AGP card, but should be ok with the PCI card. The new one can take the hard drive, but I don't think it's got an AGP port either - it's got 2 or 3 PCI-E slots instead. The memory should work in the new one.

So not sure if these are going to be the best machines to use, but I don't mind trying.

I'm in no way an expert on these things, but what does your PC do that it shouldn't/not do that it should?

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Oops, mine is actually PCI-E, not AGP.

It fails to boot - gets as far as the BIOS screen, shows that it's found the CPU but doesn't get as far as finding the RAM.

I tried pulling out the RAM modules individually, and it does the same thing with either one of them in the #1 slot, and fails to boot with a beep code if there's not a module in the #1 slot. Hence I think it's the board that's screwed rather than the RAM, although I could be wrong.

[calnen.livejournal.com]

have you tried looking up the bleep code? There a lists of them for each motherboard type on google

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

The beep code when there's no RAM in the #1 slot is fairly obviously "I have no RAM". There's no beep code when it does have RAM in the #1 slot, it just freezes during boot.

[calnen.livejournal.com]

My bad, misunderstood.
The thing is, if its giving bleep errors then it cant be totally screwed. Could it be a heat issue? Sometimes it'll freeze on boot if the cpu fails a heat test. Or could the motherboard be grounded somewhere or something?

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Good point that it seems to be (partially) working, but I can't think what else would cause it to stop there without reporting the problem - it's the lack of clues that makes me suspect the motherboard.

[adelpha.livejournal.com]

Was this a pre-built machine? There might be something on the manufacturer's website that could help.

I don't know if the Asus website will be much help - I didn't find it that useful when I was trying to find out stuff about my motherboard. But that board sounds like it's used by PC manufacturers - I've found stuff about it on the Fujitsu-Siemens website. They might be others about. Or the Asus forums might be worth a try.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Yes, I bought it from Mesh Computing - over a year ago though.

[adelpha.livejournal.com]

We should be able to stick the memory in one machine or other, so that shouldn't be a problem, and the stuff I have in mine might work ok in yours.

If stuff is appearing on screen ok, it's probably not the graphics cards mucking stuff up. And it doesn't sound like it's getting as far as getting the hard drive going.

So, yeah - happy to swap bits around :)

[ganzor.livejournal.com]

Mine would work...but unfortunately I'm in the USA. AMD 64 3800+ for the win!

[bluecassandra.livejournal.com]

We are in belfast tonight so you could text dave and see if he will let you do that with the spare PC at ours, its not like we will be using it this week and you have access to keys.
Don't leave the cat droogs ou again though, google ran of with the bag and destroyed it under t bed. Under the bed now full of droogs, dribbly cats, and sponges.
Oh, we left Bradwell and Nat (warehouse staff) to do the forums, so don't worry about them, though if you see anything blindingly obvious that they've missed please shovel it into on hold,

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Under the bed now full of droogs, dribbly cats, and sponges.

*rotfl* Sorry :) Although to be fair I left them on the table as you handed them to me while I was sat there - I wouldn't know where to put them (or find them, actually).

I have a fantastic message on my mobile answerphone from Dave offering PC help, where he fails to hang up the phone after saying 'bye' and wanders around the house with it in his pocket, yelling "Argh! Fuck ye!" and generally being entertaining.