Hi Arkas, welcome to the forum.

If your hard drive is dead you should still be able to see the bios when booting. Systems of that age should sound a series of beeps if there is anything wrong (extra to the single beep that means it's powered on). If you don't know whats inside the computer photos will help us identify your hardware and get you closer to getting it up and running.

Useful photos would be of:
The rear panel ports and its connections to monitor and other peripherals.
A overview photo of the inside of the PC.
Any close ups of the individual cards inside.
What the monitor displays after booting.
A general view of the case and front.

I hope we can get you up and running. W.

Thank you for the welcome! I took some quick shots with my cell phone. I believe it is an AMD CPU, but I can't get anything to display. I am using the bottom VGA output, as that is where the graphics card is connected. I uploaded 4 pics.

http://tinypic.com/m/k0ptlf/2

The best place to begin judging from these photos would be to take out all the cards to give them and the motherboard a good dusting down.
Some times just reseating hardware can fix boot issues, especially if the contacts are dirty or oxidised.

While the cards are out it's worth taking a closer look at everything to see if any capacitors have leaked.
If everything looks ok still, reseat the memory and only plug the the graphics card back in and see if you can get it to post.

No visible bios can be caused by a few things. Bad GPU, bad memory, dead motherboard, bad power supply, or sometimes just a rogue piece of hardware which isn't compatible with the rest of the setup.
I think we can rule out that last one if the machine was put into storage in a working condition.

Best of luck. W.

PS. The motherboard looks like a Chaintech 7VJL KT333 which sockets an AMD Athlon/Athlon XP/Duron CPU. A review from 2002 can be found here https://hothardware.com/reviews/chaintech-7vj … d-review?page=1

Thanks! I will take out the cards and the RAM and reseat them.

Based on the year of the system, it's possible that the motherboard could have failing capacitors. Not simply because it is old, but because of multiple incidents of industrial espionage that resulted in (defective) formulas for the electrolitic compounds for capacitors falling into the hands of component makers. Long story short, bad capacitors with short lifespans ended up going into lots of electronics in the nineties and early 2000s. Dead caps on a motherboard often manifest in similar states of non-functionality. I can't see if the tops of the capacitors in the photos indicate bulging or leaking, though.

Arkas wrote:

It powers up and gives electricity to the keyboard and mouse, but I dont hear the HDD spinning.
If the HDD isnt working, wouldn't I still be able to see the BIOS through the VGA output?

Indeed. From this it sounds like it might be a PSU problem... you could temporarily try powering up with a different power supply attached.

Found the culprit...
http://tinypic.com/m/k0pwcg/2
It's the CPU, I swapped it with another one from a friend that was kind enough to rush over with another CPU, and it fired up.
Now time to hunt for a replacement.

Socket A CPUs should be easy to find even though you might easily find dead ones as well since these liked to die within seconds without a heatsink

Oh, I didnt know that. What would be an Intel equivalent with a mobo that I'd still be able to use the graphics and sound card with?
The GPU is called Prophet II with 64MB VRAM

Looks like a nice system.
basically you just need a motherboard that has AGP for the video card. Intel had this upto Socket 478 (P4)
Anything that has AGP will have PCI slots for the soundcard.

Although I'd go down the replacing CPU route, this system will have move sentimental value then any generic Pentium 4 will ever have

Mister Xiado wrote:

Based on the year of the system, it's possible that the motherboard could have failing capacitors. Not simply because it is old, but because of multiple incidents of industrial espionage that resulted in (defective) formulas for the electrolitic compounds for capacitors falling into the hands of component makers. Long story short, bad capacitors with short lifespans ended up going into lots of electronics in the nineties and early 2000s. Dead caps on a motherboard often manifest in similar states of non-functionality. I can't see if the tops of the capacitors in the photos indicate bulging or leaking, though.

Actually the bad capacitors era is 2001-2008, 90's caps were still good.

The bad caps in the nineties seemed to go into a lot of game systems, less so into personal computers, which is why the first mod to be performed after acquiring things like the TurboGrafX 16 and the Game Gear are to replace the capacitors.

Bad caps definitely plaque early 90's computers as well, but in a different way. It was more leaking, not bulging, and for the most part only surface mount caps. Also, leaking batteries... (ugh)

The Amiga 600/1200/4000, and most all Apple computers from that time period come to mind first...