The board failed after the drive was installed? Does it continue to work without the drive installed? Try booting from floppy with no IDE. If the floppy works, try different IDE cable and a different HDD.

Replace the caps close to the power connector. Cant really tell from the picture but one looks bulged.

The top board seems to be some oem board, you never know if it will work with a normal atx psu because some brands used their own pinout at the time.
The lower board is a sis chipset, no agp slot, pcchips board. Three reasons i wouldn't want it....

Sometimes when a board works outside a case there is a fracture somewhere, and it becomes a problem again after fitting it due to the tension from the screws. Keep it in the case but loosen all screws and see what happens. Otherwise i would go with the previous advise and recap the board. Or look for a GOOD replacement.

If there is a fracture and you can't find it you can always try a little ''reflow'' by using a heatgun or try the oventrick. And stop getting pissed, it's supposed to be a hobby 🤣

Inspecting the board much more closely one capacitor does look different compared to the others. The light hits it slightly differently than all the rest. The one marked is the suspect one.

meljor wrote:

The lower board is a sis chipset, no agp slot, pcchips board. Three reasons i wouldn't want it....

Unfortunately beggars can't be choosers and I'm limited only by what I can find locally or on my regional Ebay. I will try to replace what look to be dead capacitors. Would it be impractical to just replace them all or should I just replace the off looking ones.

Either way I went ahead and bought the second board I showed, the "PCChips" board. Managed to get it cheap and it doesn't bother me that it has no AGP because I'll be running a 2D PCI video card along with a 4Mb PCI voodoo. As long as it can run 98 and play late 90's early 2000 era games it'll be good.

Well that's the hope to at least.

Second board looks like a PC Chips M747, detailed in this thread.

Manual is here (PDF). It has onboard sound and SiS 6326 graphics with its own VRAM; there is a jumper to disable the sound but I didn't see any jumpers/BIOS settings to disable the video...?

You can get a Cheap MTester Unit from Ebay, so you can disolder the Capacitors and measure them.

Even if the capacitors test well, if they're bulging, they're dead. Replace them. The reason for this is that your multimeter tests the caps at much lower voltages than they actually get in the circuit.

Even if they're not bulging, they may still be bad. I usually just replace all of the caps, even if only one is bulging.

keenmaster486 wrote:

Even if the capacitors test well, if they're bulging, they're dead. Replace them. The reason for this is that your multimeter tests the caps at much lower voltages than they actually get in the circuit.

Even if they're not bulging, they may still be bad. I usually just replace all of the caps, even if only one is bulging.

So what's the best way to go about that monumental task. Any guides to follow to avoid stuffing it up, or do I just remove them one at a time.

Just inventory the caps you need to replace. You want caps with a similar but slightly reduced ESR, increased ripple current handling, similar or higher voltage withstand and temperature rating, and increased lifetime at spec. You'll need to identify the caps you have, find the datasheet [1], determine your minimum specs, then order caps from a reputable manufacturer and supplier (because fake caps do exist and are a plague).

Once you have the supplies you require, you'll have to actually replace the caps. I tend to remove and replace a single type at one time to eliminate any potential confusion.

[1] Start with this datasheet repository, linked from the Badcaps forum (http://www.badcaps.net/forum/index.php).
http://www.paullinebarger.net/DS/

I replaced the capacitors on the board and tested it the AT case it came from and still as quiet as a mouse. I also tested the PCChips board that arrived yesterday in the same case with the same result. I can't understand how two different boards are acting the same. Both power on any lights and fans attached, but give no other indication of life. I thought something might be wrong with the case, desperation thought to be precise, so I gathered up all the bits and carted them off to the garage. I tested three mother boards on the bench using a 600w ATX power supply and case. My original board was still silent, the PCChips board is inconclusive because I couldn't find, or it doesn't have an ATX power switch connector, but the good news is my old Athlon XP is still kicking.

Since the Athlon board was giving me error beeps I can only assume that I have two very dead Pentium II motherboards in my possession. The PCChips board did arrive wrapped in bubble wrap and not in an anti-static bag, but would something like that kill it?

I also couldn't find a manual for the PCChips board to see if it has an ATX power switch. It has a 20-pin power plug, but that's useless if I can't switch it on.

Maybe I should just rebuild my Athlon XP with a Voodoo Banshee or something similar.

I guess I did get part of what I wanted out of this. I wanted a retro Windows build, but I only got the troubles that go along with this old hardware and none of the fun.

Two dead motherboards for christ sake. 😠

Well, you could hit up local recycle centers and find a Super Socket 7 MB and some K6-II or K6-III CPUs. Those both are pretty easy to find, and are usually pretty reliable.

21603 wrote:

I also couldn't find a manual for the PCChips board to see if it has an ATX power switch. It has a 20-pin power plug, but that's useless if I can't switch it on.

It's the PDF I linked earlier. ATX power switch ("PW-BT") connects to pin 21-22 of the front panel connector block (J8).

21603 wrote:

Back to square one!

I did not understand the 1st try, if by pressing the power button the mobo started working (fans on cpu and psu went on) or remained completely dead.

Anyway start again from step one. That mobo showed signs of working.

Check psu connections, clean'em with contact cleaner and insist plugging and unplugging it. or change psu. Try with a different one if you have it. PSUs tend to show correct voltages, but under load they can fail.
Clean also slot 1 and cpu pins.
You'll probably already did this, but try removing the old coin cell battery, clear cmos and put a new fresh battery . Set up again bios and double check jumpers on motherboard.

If mobo starts up again and hear the beeps, try different ram sticks one at the time. Many mobos are picky about ram, like mine.

Yes with power plugged in to the motherboard the CPU fan receives power as do other things like case lights.

Regarding the ATX power switch connector on the PCChips board, I had the lead connected to those pins both ways and it wouldn't power on.

Anyway I'll try again tomorrow starting from absolute square one. I'll clean all contacts for everything and see what happens.

In case this doesn't work out, would this Super Socket 7 Epox board be a good replacement?

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Super-Socket-7-Epo … fwAAOSwXeJXdXgc

Only problem is it would cost me around $120 and if it is a pile of junk like PCChips boards then I don't want to bother.

As for picking stuff like this up at junk stores and garage sales. I live in a rural area and this stuff just doesn't come up that often if ever.

I had this thing (the original not the PCChips turd) running on the bench all day yesterday. All I did was clean the contacts on the CPU and RAM sticks with booze, but it boots like it should on the bench with everything attached. I haven't plugged the sound card in yet so I'll do that today.

I ran several tests off the ultimate boot CD and everything seems to be in working order, even boots into XP without issue.

I did notice during testing that the CRT monitor was causing issues with it plugged it. I plugged in a spare LCD and haven't had any problems so far regarding the display.

The only problem I seem to have with the guts out on the bench is the powervswitch. I'm using the ATX power switch and several times during the day the machine kept turning itself on from being completely powered off. I'll have a look in the BIOS for any wake up settings and disable them, but apart from that I can't think why or even how it would be able to do that.

The next thing will be getting it all back in the case, that seems to be where it hits the fan.

Speaking of the case is it possible to change the AT power switch over to the ATX switch? I want to keep the ATX power supply that I'm using to test this thing, but I want it back in the AT case.

EDIT: I checked the BIOS settings and all options relating to wake up or power on are and were disabled. I thought it might be a dicky switch, but even unplugged it still turns on randomly. I guess turning on is better than turning off 😒

Well with an AT psu you won't have that issue because the power switch on AT psus acts just like if you were unpluging your board. Maybe you could use the ATX psu and use an ATX to AT adaptor and use your atx psu just like if it was an AT psu. Be careful though, ATX psu in an AT case would be upside-down. If the fan is normaly on the bottom of your psu, it will blow against the case and it may overheat

Deksor wrote:

Well with an AT psu you won't have that issue because the power switch on AT psus acts just like if you were unpluging your board. Maybe you could use the ATX psu and use an ATX to AT adaptor and use your atx psu just like if it was an AT psu. Be careful though, ATX psu in an AT case would be upside-down. If the fan is normaly on the bottom of your psu, it will blow against the case and it may overheat

yea it's a good idea to get a PSU with a rear mounted push-pull fan or drill new holes in the case to fit the PSU.

So far I have it working 😀

I installed Windows 98 SE this morning with a bit of a struggle. I think the floppy drive might be on its way out and I had to use some partition program off the ultimate boot cd to get the 4Gb on the hard drive back. For some reason I only had 8Mb.

I've installed the drivers for the Sound Blaster Live! card and the junk S3 Trio3D/2X. Sound card works, but I'm not so sure on the video card. I've been having a lot of issues with it when testing over the last few days. The card would be installed, but the machine would beep like it wasn't. The card also refuses to do any kind of 3D. I ran the 3D test in DXDIAG and it locks up, I've also tried running Tomb Raider II in hardware at 320x200 and 640x480 and I just get a black screen which also locks up the system.

2D performance isn't bad running at 320x200/240. SkyNET ran a bit rubbish no matter the resolution, but that could be anything it is a Bethesda game after all.
EDIT: I think it was a dicky CD drive.

I'll have to try and get a Voodoo 3 2000 for it, assuming of course that it continues to work.