Merry Christmas to me. Dead computer...Help

[1 Patriot-of-many]

Have an Asus P5N-D bought in Jan 2009. Went to power it on today, no post, just a continuous beep until I power it back off.
Fans running. Cleared CMOS, Tested power supply-good . Swapped out memory with known good, tried every configuration.
This is an SLI setup, tried video cards individually. Same thing no matter what.
I'm thinking MB at this point. What say you?

[Cypher]

Unplug as much as possible from the motherboard while still allowing it to boot up and POST and see what it does. If it starts to POST then add each piece back one by one until it starts beeping again.

Was it working fine recently?

[1 Patriot-of-many]

Tried that, had the HD's unplugged, keyboard, mouse. Good suggestion.

[1 Patriot-of-many]

I've got another brand new motherboard around and a new PS, I'm gonna benchtest the CPU, memory and video cards just to make sure it's not the cpu, though I would think if the cpu was fried you wouldn't get the beep?

[Cypher]

It sounds like it might be the mobo or CPU. Testing the CPU will help a lot to narrow it down. I had a CPU problem, it was an incompatibility with the BIOS version but it was doing the same thing, blank screen and beeps.

Something else you can do is keep track of the number of beeps and look online for your mobo model, they could be a error code that will help indicate what the problem is. Also look on the board itself and see if there is a little LED panel with a number or letter, that may also show a error that will help determine what the problem is.

[1 Patriot-of-many]

That was the problem I wasn't getting any normal beeps, it was a continuous beep wouldn't stop till I soft powered off.

Anyway, I hooked up the same PS, memory, one of the video cards and the keyboard, CPU and Fan on a Biostar board, It posted. CPU is good, gotta be the MB.....
Cool, I'd hate to sit here all day Fing with the thing.

I bought that Asus in Jan of 2009, so it'll still be under warranty. Luckily they still sell them in any case, cause I've got a raid0 on that computer. I've never been able to save my info escept when I replaced a puter with the same MB or a real close one with the same raid chipset.

Thanks for the help.

[Cypher]

At least you narrowed it down to the mobo, that's a pain to replace compared to the other pieces of hardware but better than losing data.

[1 Patriot-of-many]

No problem there, I've been building my own just after 486's were around :) Just never encountered this situation before with the continuous beep and no post.

[Cypher]

No problem there, I've been building my own just after 486's were around :) Just never encountered this situation before with the continuous beep and no post.

It's amazing how far computers have come from the 486 and earlier days. It makes me wonder what we will be dealing with in another 30 years.

[ksuguy]

If you need one, I've got a spare thats a couple years old that I need to get rid of. The video card went out on it, and I just went ahead and bought a new PC.

[1 Patriot-of-many]

It's amazing how far computers have come from the 486 and earlier days. It makes me wonder what we will be dealing with in another 30 years.

It's astounding for anyone that moved with the technology. My first puter was an Amstrad, it had the keyboard and computer all in one. 8086/8088 processor I think either 2 or 4 mhz LOL
no hardrive, just a floppy. Think there was a whopping 512K memory? It's almost like living in a dream sometimes isn't it?

[1 Patriot-of-many]

If you need one, I've got a spare thats a couple years old that I need to get rid of. The video card went out on it, and I just went ahead and bought a new PC.

Thanks ksuguy! Are you talking about the same motherboard or a computer? Appreciate the offer.
I just ordered the exact motherboard as a spare, thinking Asus will replace this one, so I'm set.

[Oswald Bastable]

It's astounding for anyone that moved with the technology. My first puter was an Amstrad, it had the keyboard and computer all in one. 8086/8088 processor I think either 2 or 4 mhz LOL
no hardrive, just a floppy. Think there was a whopping 512K memory? It's almost like living in a dream sometimes isn't it?

That it is. My first 'puter was a commie 64, first ibm 'puter a 386sx-16 with a whopping 1 meg of mem...

[alismith]

My first computer was a Timex-Sinclair 1000. Then, I moved up to the CoCo 64. WooHoo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000

[Krupski]

That it is. My first 'puter was a commie 64, first ibm 'puter a 386sx-16 with a whopping 1 meg of mem...

Wow... almost like me. My first "real" computer (i.e. not home built) was a Commodore PET with 8K of memory, a built in 9 inch B&W monitor, a horrid chicklet keyboard and a built in tape recorder for data. Then I moved up to a Radio Shack color computer with 16K of ram (which I upgraded with very expensive 64K memory chips).

My first "real PC" was a 386-SX at 16 mhz. with 1 meg of ram (which I upped to the max the mobo could hold... 4 megabytes) and had a 20 megabyte Seagate ST-225 hard drive on it. The monitor was a 13 or 14 inch VGA piece of crap... but it was light years ahead of the COCO and composite video!

Gordon Moore's law still seems to be valid. Where will we be 10 years from now????

[Krupski]

My first computer was a Timex-Sinclair 1000. Then, I moved up to the CoCo 64. WooHoo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000

To this day I have not seen or used a better processor architecture than the Motorola 6809. Sure it's only 16 bit, but the relative and indirect addressing modes, the "PSHS and PULS any register with 1 instruction" and the auto increment and auto decrement index registers made programming a breeze.

Ever use OS-9 on a COCO?

Way back in the 1980's, a COCO-3 and OS-9 Level 2 was a multitasking, multi user, reentrant real time operating system that STILL to this day puts Microsoft to shame with it's simple, robust and stable design.

Intel processor architecture sucks. Always did, always will. Segment and offset registers.... WTF???

[aliceinchains]

It's amazing how far computers have come from the 486 and earlier days. It makes me wonder what we will be dealing with in another 30 years.



You seem to know computers. If i have any problems i am going to ask you questions. And they will be nice ones LOL!

[Oswald Bastable]

My first "real PC" was a 386-SX at 16 mhz. with 1 meg of ram (which I upped to the max the mobo could hold... 4 megabytes) and had a 20 megabyte Seagate ST-225 hard drive on it. The monitor was a 13 or 14 inch VGA piece of crap... but it was light years ahead of the COCO and composite video!

Gordon Moore's law still seems to be valid. Where will we be 10 years from now????

Yeah, mine was only upgradeable to 2 meg of mem, and I think it cost me nearly $200 for that extra meg (which IIRC, was actually 9 chips...8 mem and one parity...or it may have been 10 and there were two parity chips) though it had a 65 meg seagate drive (woohoo! :) ). With the commie 64 I was just using an old TV, but I sprang for a Magnavox monitor that had dual inputs and a switch on the front, so I could have both 'puters running and switch between views as needed on the monitor. I actually did a basic and a pascal course using the 64, but had to get the sx when it came time for Assembler. Probably about 24 hours after I got the sx, I wiped the drive, partitioned it into 3 drives and reinstalled dos on the C: drive, allocating D: for programs and E: for games.

If there was anything a commie was really good for, it was a leg up on dos. The commie CLI was probably one of the more arcane ever invented.

[1 Patriot-of-many]

Wow... almost like me. My first "real" computer (i.e. not home built) was a Commodore PET with 8K of memory, a built in 9 inch B&W monitor, a horrid chicklet keyboard and a built in tape recorder for data. Then I moved up to a Radio Shack color computer with 16K of ram (which I upgraded with very expensive 64K memory chips).

My first "real PC" was a 386-SX at 16 mhz. with 1 meg of ram (which I upped to the max the mobo could hold... 4 megabytes) and had a 20 megabyte Seagate ST-225 hard drive on it. The monitor was a 13 or 14 inch VGA piece of crap... but it was light years ahead of the COCO and composite video!

Gordon Moore's law still seems to be valid. Where will we be 10 years from now????

My second was a ZEOS(think they were bought out by some memory maker) 386sx-20, the thing cost about $2300 if I remember.... LOL
Now you can buy 1000 times the computer for $500 if that!
I'm hoping we'll have complete virtual 3d with body sensing technology soon. Imagine playing first person shooters fully immersed kinda like the movie Lawnmower Man but actually moving your whole body, crouching, peering around and over things ect. Man That would be intense and you get exercise.....
Or total immersion like one of the new Twilight zone episodes where that lady in red negligee would take him.... :naughty:

[63DH8]

Watch, it'll turn out to be something simple like a key on your keyboard is stuck down. :coffee:

[Cypher]

You seem to know computers. If i have any problems i am going to ask you questions. And they will be nice ones LOL!

Sure thing, I'll do my best to help. I'm sure I will have questions about something you are familiar with too.

[1 Patriot-of-many]

Watch, it'll turn out to be something simple like a key on your keyboard is stuck down. :coffee:

LOL,You know strange things have happened on some of my builds..... I know on this computer in question, if I leave my Droid hooked up to the USB port and turn it on it won't boot..I was like WTF trying to figure that one out....

[raxar]

did somebody say C-64??


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L4lfFKkxnE

[Cypher]

LOL,You know strange things have happened on some of my builds..... I know on this computer in question, if I leave my Droid hooked up to the USB port and turn it on it won't boot..I was like WTF trying to figure that one out....

It might see it as a USB drive and try to boot to it like it can to a CD or DVD.

[ksuguy]

Thanks ksuguy! Are you talking about the same motherboard or a computer? Appreciate the offer.
I just ordered the exact motherboard as a spare, thinking Asus will replace this one, so I'm set.

A computer. I just need to get the thing out of my floor, and I've got no use for it at the moment.

[1 Patriot-of-many]

A computer. I just need to get the thing out of my floor, and I've got no use for it at the moment.

Appreciate the offer for sure, I've got 7 computers in this room as it is so I'll respectfully decline. Just gotta get my best gamer going again.

[1 Patriot-of-many]

It might see it as a USB drive and try to boot to it like it can to a CD or DVD.

I usually have the first boot as removable so that makes sense, but I think it would freeze during post. I'll have to try it again when I get the new mainboard.