First post, by VivienM
Hi,
So... discovered this forum a few weeks ago and you guys made me realize that what I viewed as an old-not-great-for-Win10 C2Q machine in my closet could actually be a great vintage XP box. And hey, why not, especially if I already have all/most of the parts or can pick up some affordable upgrades?
When it went into the closet in early 2017 (to be replaced by a machine that doesn't meet Microsoft "performance and reliability expectations" for Windows 11... but that's a story for another day), this machine had a Corsair TX750W PSU, Asus P5QL-E, Q8300, ATI 5770, SB X-Fi, 8GB of RAM.
Took the machine out of the closet. CMOS battery was dead, replaced that. Got a Q9650 on eBay, put that in. Got a new elcheapo Kingston 480GB SSD (for 1/10th the price of what I had paid for my 160 gig Intel 320 over a decade ago). Installed XP and 11 (hey, why not?) in a dual boot set up. The 17-year-old SB X-Fi seemingly died after a few hours, okay, fine, so had to take that out, but everything was happy.
Then I decided (based on what I read around here!) to put in an AMD 7970 from eBay, and... well, no POST. Fans come on, including on the video card. After much screaming, I decide to put the 5770 back in... and... same problem. So clearly my 7970 isn't bad... or its badness is infectious and spread to the 5770.
Attempted to reset CMOS using the CMOS reset, no luck. Haven't tried removing the CR2032 battery, maybe I should, but that would require (again!) removing the video card.
I went to the computer store today, picked up a $5 PC speaker - no beep codes.
All the drives are unplugged. I am a little hesitant to touch the RAM because that RAM had been happy untouched in that board for 13 years... as had the 5770...
Thoughts? Did I fry something? What did I fry? PSU? Motherboard?