First time posting here so let me get this out of the way first:

Every old computer I touch breaks.

The most recent case is a Gateway 2000 I picked up off of Craigslist this week. It was running Windows 95 with a Pentium Overdrive. Very nice overall. I tried everything out when I got it, all worked like a charm. Only one thing I wanted to change with it which was the crappy IDE hard drive. I ordered a Compact Flash to IDE adapter which came in today. This is where my story turns for the worse. I unplug the hard drive and put the ide cable into the adapter, set it all up nice. Plug in the CF card and... doesn't POST. Troubleshooting time! I take out the CF card and turn it back on, boots fine. My next thought is that the hard drive settings in the bios are stopping it from booting because the old 800 MB drive does not have the same geometry as the flash card. I reset the bios to default, turn it off, plug in the flash card and... doesn't POST. Now I have no clue, I messed around with the hard drive settings in the bios without a card in more, and then it wouldn't post whether I had a card in or not. Ok great, so I reset the CMOS jumper and... doesn't POST. Then I took out the CMOS battery, went to the store to get a new one, replaced it and... doesn't POST. Then I unplugged every ISA card, ribbon cable, and took out all the RAM and not even a beep.

I am out of ideas. Does anyone here have a suggestion for me or is my motherboard just dead forever?