Pentium II went kablooy \ VOGONS

Pentium II went kablooy

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First post, by ookamithewolf1

Posted on 2019-01-06, 01:09

ookamithewolf1 Offline

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Joined: 2016-11-07, 21:25

Alright, I have a problem. Last year I picked up a HP Pavilion 8400A desktop PC for $5. I bought it for the case but when I plugged it in I found out it worked great. I set it up with tons of old games and applications. I used it every few weeks, until last week it all went wrong. When booted, it made it as far as the desktop before freezing. I re-set it and it seemed to go fine, but I blue-screened while i was trying to insert a usb storage stick. I re-booted, only to have the PC freeze halfway through scandisk. I re-booted again, but this time nothing. The lights on the tower light up, but the monitor stays asleep. There's no signal. It won't post

I took the hard drive out (a nice Quantum bigfoot )and tried to boot from another hard drive. nothing. I took the quantum and put it in another machine, and it booted fine, so i know it's not the hard drive. I re-installed the Quantum into the HP and tried an untested new-old stock power supply I had. Still nothing. The only thing I haven't tried is taking a power supply I know works and trying it with that. Any ideas on what might be the culprit here? Stats below

Pentium II 233MHZ
Quantum Bigfoot 8.4GB hard drive
Maxxor 20GB slave drive
256 mb Ram
unknown power supply/motherboard/sound card

Reply 1 of 8, by cyclone3d

Posted on 2019-01-06, 01:15

cyclone3d Offline

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Maybe the CPU needs the edge contacts cleaned with a pencil eraser. Same goes for the RAM and possibly any add-in cards.

Oxidation on the contacts can cause all kinds of problems.'

If cleaning the contacts on the CPU and RAM doesn't help, I would guess that maybe a stick of RAM died.

Could also be that the motherboard died or the capacitors on the motherboard need to be replaced.

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Reply 2 of 8, by ookamithewolf1

Posted on 2019-01-06, 05:39

ookamithewolf1 Offline

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cyclone3d wrote:
Maybe the CPU needs the edge contacts cleaned with a pencil eraser. Same goes for the RAM and possibly any add-in cards. […]
Show full quote
Maybe the CPU needs the edge contacts cleaned with a pencil eraser. Same goes for the RAM and possibly any add-in cards.

Oxidation on the contacts can cause all kinds of problems.'

If cleaning the contacts on the CPU and RAM doesn't help, I would guess that maybe a stick of RAM died.

Could also be that the motherboard died or the capacitors on the motherboard need to be replaced.

I'll try giving everything a good cleaning. I'm going to try another power supply as well just to rule it out. The CPU is a bit difficult as I can't seem to get it out.

Reply 3 of 8, by SSTV2

Posted on 2019-01-06, 08:45

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My guess would be a faulty PSU, VRMs on motherboard or anything that has to do with power. Does motherboard use linear or switch-mode voltage regulators for CPU/RAM?

Reply 4 of 8, by kaputnik

Posted on 2019-01-06, 13:33

kaputnik Offline

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Also try replacing, or simply boot without the CMOS battery. Experienced all kinds of strange behavior when the CMOS battery has been on its way to go flat.