easiest to check would be mechanical problems like bend or broken pins, dirt

Also look for burnt or broken traces on the top and bottom of the board as well as knocked off surface mount components.

There doesn't look to be anything wrong with the pins or the solder points. At least not to me. There's a little bit of dust and such, but nothing major stands out to me. What do you guys think?

Pazona wrote on 2026-07-30, 22:34:

There doesn't look to be anything wrong with the pins or the solder points. At least not to me. There's a little bit of dust and such, but nothing major stands out to me. What do you guys think?

Is this non-ECC SDRAM (PC133). Pics of all the memory sticks used might help.

What diagnostic codes are you getting on the back panel LEDs... https://web.archive.org/web/20041025172839id_ … iagnostic_codes

In case there is oxidsisation on the pins, might be worth spritzing some contact cleaner and pushing a memory stick in a few times

Alright, so, big update. First off, I'm attaching a picture of all my memory modules. I'll be describing what I did with each stick and addressing them by number, so for the picture, the bottom stick is ram 1 and the top stick is ram 5. I'll lay out the sequence of events as clearly as I can of what all I just did and what happened with it.

Test 1: Inserted ram 5 into memory slot 2 on the motherboard. System successfully powered on and showed the memory module in the bios menu under Memory Bank 1.

Test 2: Took out ram 5, inserted ram 3 into memory slot 2, noticing the ram didn't go in fully smoothly like in test 1. System failed to POST, gave a buzzer code of three long beeps, and an led code orange-orange-green-green.

Test 3: Took out ram 3, inserted ram 4 into memory slot 2. The memory module snapped in harshly. System failed to Post, did not give a buzzer code (possibly because I was spamming the delete key), but gave an led code orange-orange-green-orange.

Test 4: Took out ram 3, then inserted it into memory slot 2 again, being careful to slide it in more smoothly. This time the system passed the POST, and registered 64MB of ram in Memory Bank 1 from the bios.

Test 5: Inserted ram 5 into memory slot 1. Computer passed the POST and registered all memory present in the bios.

Soooo I guess all's well that ends well? I don't know for sure why it worked the way it did. There's not really anything I did differently tonight from previous attempts. If anyone has any guesses as to why this worked the way it did, I'd like to hear your hypotheses.
Right now the system works. However for all I know, memory slot 2 could randomly stop working again in the future, so don't consider this necessarily over yet. We'll have to see if it continues to work reliably.

Sticks 1+2 are with 44pin modules, so maybe SRAM instead SDRAM? 3+4+5 with 54pin TSOP are SDRAM.

no such thing as SRAM DIMMs

HEY GUYS, NEW UPDATE ON THE RAM SITUATION
It's been working perfectly for a few weeks now, but today, for some reason, it's just not. It's not working! When I tried to power on the machine, there were no beeps from the buzzer, but the LEDs on the back lit up yellow-yellow-green-green. When I tried taking out both of the memory modules I was using, then booting caused the same LED code, but also caused a buzzer code of three long beeps as well. Trying to put a memory module in only the first memory slot again caused both the LED and buzzer error codes to appear when trying to boot, but putting a memory module in only the second memory slot (the one that previously didn't work) only gives me the LED error code and no buzzer. I've tried swapping in every ram module I've seen this motherboard work with before, and none of them are working now. I'm at a complete loss for what might be happening now! It just doesn't make any sense! Has anyone seen this happen before?

Dell from 2000-2001. I would blindly replace those two big black and four blue caps (any brand lowESR with same values), will cost you ~$10-15 in parts and might just fix it. Other than that pull it all apart, clean every connector with contact cleaner/isopropyl. Try different Power supply. If that doesnt help new mobo?