First post, by JimKusznir
Hi:
I have a Pentium 1 MMX 233Mhz I've been asked to fix. It was working, turned off for ~6 months, then when it was turned back on, I'd get the normal successful single beep (normal pitch), then I'd get a continuous string of rapid higher pitched beeping. If I had to guess, I'd say the rate of the beeping is 50% on/off ratio, and more than 10 beeps per second. With different video cards, its a bit different. Some take longer before the continous beeping, some its instant. With no video card its about 1 second after the post successful beep. In all cases, the display never lights up, and the HDD light never blinks, suggesting no attempt to boot.
I pulled out all cards and unplugged all drives and accessories except CPU and RAM. I've tried 4 different video cards of three different varieties (one of which was the original trident card it came with). I suspected it was video in nature, but perhaps not....
I have reseated the CPU and RAM (and I have cleaned the edge of the RAM). I only have the one DIMM, no spares, so nothing to test with.
I don't know if my alternate video cards are compatible: Matrox Mystique, 2x ATI Rage XL. I know it was working with a Trident TGUI9440.
I'd like any pointers. While I did build systems of this vintage when it was "new", that was a long time ago 😀 I also don't have much in spare parts to experiment with. I haven't been able to find the beep code referenced in the mobo manual (Asus TX97). Am I just hosed (dead mobo or CPU?)
Thanks!
--Jim