Do we have any knowns yet?

Is the monitor known to have output with another system?
Is the PSU known to be good in another system?
Is the video card known to work in another system?

Make sure to get that PC Speaker setup right. Might stumble upon a POST code.

This may get us started on what is working. I personally have had no success with Socket A boards (even less so with MSI and K7 era) but this doesn't mean anything yet other than personal experience.

RogueTrip2012 wrote:

Do we have any knowns yet? […]
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Do we have any knowns yet?

Is the monitor known to have output with another system?
Is the PSU known to be good in another system?
Is the video card known to work in another system?

Make sure to get that PC Speaker setup right. Might stumble upon a POST code.

This may get us started on what is working. I personally have had no success with Socket A boards (even less so with MSI and K7 era) but this doesn't mean anything yet other than personal experience.

Thanks for the reply! To answer your questions in order:

The monitor is known to work (it's my main computer's monitor), and more specifically is known to work in VGA as well as DVI since I was using my Voodoo2 machine on it.

The PSU is also known to be good, as I actually pulled it from another working Athlon XP system of mine because I wanted a black PSU in this system, and put a different one in the other system.

The video card is not known to work in another system. This is the only machine I have capable of running it (none of my other systems support 3.3v AGP). So at this point the Voodoo5 is the biggest suspect.

I looked at the motherboard again and it turns out it has a speaker built in. It's not giving any beeps at all upon booting, though the fans spin up fine, the DVD drive seeks, and control-alt-delete successfully resets the system. It doesn't look like it has a header for an external pc speaker. No diagnostic LEDs either. Apparently the board came with a bracket that has diagnostic LEDs, but of course, I don't have it.

I guess I'll go ahead and swap the RAM for a single 256MB stick to be sure that's not the problem.

I don't know why I didn't try this earlier, but I just remembered one of my motherboards came with a spare Radeon 9700 AGP card. I just removed my V5, put the Radeon in, and... same problem. So that means it's probably not the Voodoo (although this 9700 is untested, so that's not a 100% certainty). So I'm gonna try the ram next; after that I'm not sure what my next step should be.

EDIT: Well I just swapped in a known-working stick of RAM, and still no video. I think I'm done with this for the night; I'll check back in the morning and see if anyone has some advice on what to try from here. Perhaps I'll strip the machine down and check that I don't have an extra standoff in there shorting something out, although I'm pretty sure I don't.

Can you test the 9700 in something else?

Also I would take out the cmos battery for a while to make sure it's cleared, and also test the battery or try a different one.

Can you try a pci video card?

Pfft who needs sleep 🤣

I removed the CMOS battery for about 2 minutes or so, put it back in, and had no success.

I then took out the 9700, and installed my PCI Matrox Mystique 220, which is absolutely known working. Still no video.

The lack of any bios beeps worries me. The KT3 Ultra2 does support Barton right? Everything I find via Google says that it supports Barton CPUs up to 3000+, including the CPU support tab on MSI's page for this motherboard.

EDIT: Wait, I'm a moron. MSI says it supports Barton on the CPU Support page, and I haven't found any references to having to update the BIOS for Barton to work on Google, so I thought the board just straight up supports Barton. But I just noticed after like the 5th time reading it that the CPU Support list has a specific BIOS number, so upon checking the BIOS downloads page, only the most recent one says "Support AMD Barton".

So I guess I'll take the 1600+ out of another machine, try it out, and update the BIOS if it works. Might do it in the morning though as I'm not sure I have the energy now. Man, if that's what the problem was, I'm gonna feel so stupid 😅

Take a good look at the mainboard capacitors. Are there any swollen ones? Check the chips around capacitors and around RAM for any 'holes' or signs of burnout. Also, make sure that the MB supports ECC ram - some boards do not like ECC RAM that much (for example Abit KT7-a). I would advice removing everything from the machine, leaving only CPU, RAM and matrox plugged in - and see if it works.

BTW, this may sound stupid but check if the clear-cmos jumper is in right position too (and if it is not, pray that the board is still alive).

God damn it I can't get this thing to work no matter what. I've searched the board up and down and can't find anything physically wrong with it; to be honest it looks completely brand new. Caps all look perfect, no scratches, missing caps, holes, or anything. I'm running it with only the board, CPU (with HSF obviously), a single stick of RAM, and a video card. I've tried both the 1600+ and 2500+, tried 3 different sticks of RAM, tried all three RAM slots, and tried both my Matrox and my 9700, in countless combinations. I think the board is just fucked.

That's the third board I've bought for this build. The THIRD! The first was an A7N333-X which I didn't realize until after purchase doesn't support 3.3V AGP, unlike the non-X version. Chalk one up to me being an idiot. Fine, I decided to make another build with it. The second was a KT3 Ultra, which being the idiot that I am, I damaged by stabbing a surface mount cap with my screwdriver while removing the heatsink it came with. I decided it wasn't worth fixing since it also had several cosmetic problems (broken IDE port, missing clamp on one of the RAM slots, and a busted chipset fan), so I bought this KT3 Ultra2. Now it's bad too? I hate everything...

Anyways thanks for the advice elfuego. I'm not 100% sure it supports ECC RAM but I have been testing it with some normal non-ECC RAM that's known to work, and no dice with that. The jumper is in the right position; I made sure of that before I ever turned it on. I think it's just toast. It came with no warranty either 😒 Looks like a new one popped up on eBay for $30 shipped with warranty, so I guess I'll grab it... 4th time's the charm, right?

The beeps still worry me. Make sure to get back to us after swapping the CPU.

Maybe you can induce a error to see if the POST error codes are working. Removing the CPU and booting should cause a continuous beep...etc.

Alternatively you can remove the motherboard from the case to see if it is a stand-off shorting you out.

For awhile I thought I had some bad Asus TUSL2-C boards and even replaced the bios chip with no effect. Turned out it was the PSU which was known good on another system just wasn't powerful enough for these boards. It was a generic 400+w. Later on I opened the PSU up and found the input caps and some secondary supply caps had swollen up :p

Take the board out and remove the cpu and ram. Inspect the board for any thing that stands out like bad caps ect. Use different ram if possible as most boards don't run with ecc ram and ram easily fails. If all efforts contenue to fail you can try washing the board under the tap a few times then air blast it to remove any remaining water. Why do that you may ask well some boards sometimes have shorting issues with conductive deposits such as salts form in the slots that cause shorting issue that make the board to appear dead. I ended up fixing a board this way when the agp slot didn't work and the board often didn't run at all. It is running great now 😉