Hi there

I'm trying to revive an Asus A7V333, socket A. It came as "working, was removed from service because unstable in windows and swollen VRM caps - which were not swollen when it was removed from service".

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/asus-a7v333

I thought it'd be a simple one for a change but no.

VRM caps swapped and board is dead, no post codes.
Flashed new bios, still nothing
Flashed Deksor's 80h BIOS and nothing BUT, while I was probing the BIOS pins, at some point I had 01 post code after a reset. I couldn't replicate it reliably but it happened 2-3 times.

At the back of the CPU I checked
- Reset
- Clock in 100Mhz
- Clock Out 100MHz
- Power good
- PRCRDY says the CPU is ready
- CONNECT, I understand it would be the NB saying "hi", no activity.

VCORE was checked at the top, it reads what it's supposed to read with the CPU I was using - which should be a working one.

Then moved to the BIOS which apparently sits on the LPC bus?
- Clocks and voltages are there
- No FRAME
- No data whatsoever, ever. Not even a single pulse.

There is a jumper called ROMSIP, set to SW. I changed to HW, I understand that way the NB would look for some parameters in the CPU or internally instead than the BIOS. When I did that, CONNECT came to life, but only for a few pulses.

I started looking around a bit better and looked adjacent to the CPU where the screwdriver of those HIDEOUS Socket A mounting spring slips and makes holes. Indeed there was one. Two broken traces, one broken 22Ohm resistor (all resistors there are either 0 Ohm or 22 Ohm on Resistor Networks) plus 2 missing caps.

I re-did the traces, replaced the 22 ohm resistor. Still no life.

I could only guess the values of the caps. I removed two, one was 100nF, the other 6pF? I fitted two 100nF where the two were missing, still nothing.

The "talking BIOS" feature (such a gimmick!) says "System failed CPU test". If I remove the CPU it does change to "No CPU installed".

I am a bit at a loss. I don't see any other damage. Anything that anybody could think of?

Thank you!