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ASUS P3B-F Rev. 1.0.4 won‘t boot black screen

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First post, by AlucarD86

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I got my hands on an very old Slot 1 BX Mainboard ASUS P3B-F Rev. 1.0.4 and tried to make it work but for some reason it won’t turn on or even boot. What confuses me thou is that the green power LED near the AGP port seems to be on but aside from that I get nothing, no spinning CPU fan, no sounds nothing. Caps seem to be okay visually, I heated it up with a hairdryer (helped me in the past with mainboards). I noticed two things thou, the northbridge cooler seems to be missing and the 7.5 Ohm Resistor on top of the isa port seems to get crazy hot that it smells burnt and you can’t touch it. Also I can confirm that all other components like VGA, CPU and Ram are working ! Anyone has experience with this board and knows a solution?

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    This pink 7.5 Ohm Resistor above the ISA port gets extremely hot to the point that you can burn your finger on it and it smells burnt.
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  • IMG_6898.jpeg
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    Northbridge Cooler is missing.
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  • IMG_6897.jpeg
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    When connected to the PSU the green LED is on.
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Last edited by AlucarD86 on 2024-01-23, 07:01. Edited 2 times in total.

PC Setup: Mainboard ASUS CUBX | CPU Intel Pentium III-S Tualatin 1.4 GHz | Memory 780 MB SDRam | Soundcard Creative SB Audigy SB0160 | GPUs Nvidia FX5900 Ulta Matrox M3D PCI | HDD 2x40 GB WD/Seagate | OS Win98SE and WinXPSP1 in dual boot

Reply 1 of 7, by Karbist

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It's a 7.5 ohms resistor between the ground and the collector of pnp transistor right next to it,
the emitter of this transistor is connected to 5v standby, there should be 4.7v on the base of transistor to keep it switched off,
you need a multimeter to check if the base of transistor is getting that 4.7v or not.

Last edited by Karbist on 2024-01-14, 20:16. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 3 of 7, by danijelm

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your picture, it looks like a blown line here 😀

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I speak sarcasm as a 2nd language

Reply 5 of 7, by smtkr

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Zerthimon wrote on 2024-01-16, 13:44:
danijelm wrote on 2024-01-16, 11:59:

your picture, it looks like a blown line here 😀

Incredible spotting.

It's almost like we've seen that exact same spot get blown out multiple times before... like in the link I posted above 😁

Reply 6 of 7, by AlucarD86

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Thank you so much for the input and feedback! I love this Vogons board 😀 very talented Retro enthusiasts on here !!! I will give this Mainboard a proper USB Microscope inspection to see if there is anything blown near the BIOS chip as it seems to happen to that other board from that link also. From my past experiences its rarely the capacitors that keeps the mainboard from booting, I mean even if its bad caps you will get some life out of the board by using a hairdryer on them, but in this case there is no cpu cooler spinning, no sound noises, nothing just that resistor getting burning hot and that burnt plastic smell. Will look into it with the microscope and report back 👍🏻

PC Setup: Mainboard ASUS CUBX | CPU Intel Pentium III-S Tualatin 1.4 GHz | Memory 780 MB SDRam | Soundcard Creative SB Audigy SB0160 | GPUs Nvidia FX5900 Ulta Matrox M3D PCI | HDD 2x40 GB WD/Seagate | OS Win98SE and WinXPSP1 in dual boot

Reply 7 of 7, by AlucarD86

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Guys, you are the Best 😀 I had time to do a second quick inspection 🧐 on the mainboard and guess what its indeed a burnt trace near the BIOS chip (it seems this one is common for this board) here is the picture (zoom in a little bit as its hard to see with the eye) Now the question remains why does that trace blow up on these particular boards 🤔 will report back once i have bridged the broken trace. Was also following the trace and it leads to the ISA port and the other leads to one of those two black resistors, wonder if that one is the culprit.

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    Burnt trace near the bios chip labeled D27
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PC Setup: Mainboard ASUS CUBX | CPU Intel Pentium III-S Tualatin 1.4 GHz | Memory 780 MB SDRam | Soundcard Creative SB Audigy SB0160 | GPUs Nvidia FX5900 Ulta Matrox M3D PCI | HDD 2x40 GB WD/Seagate | OS Win98SE and WinXPSP1 in dual boot

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