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Supermicro P6SBA 440BX mobo won't POST

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First post, by retro games 100

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The board looks in great shape, except for 2 small cut/knock marks on the item highlighted in the photo. I'm not sure what this "coil thing" is, but it's close to the power socket, and could be the cause of the problem.

When I power-on the mobo, I don't see any lights flash on the keyboard. (I also just get a blank screen on the monitor.)

All of the components on this mobo work, I've tested them on a 2nd identical board. The only curious thing is that the BIOS sticker seems different to the other P6SBA boards I've tried.

Also, what is the bare minimum components you need to test a mobo, just to see *any* POST message on the screen? Can I get away with no ram, and no keyboard? In other words, just a cpu and graphics card? If I remove the graphics card, but plug the keyboard in, should I still be able to see the keyboard's lights flash?

PS - I haven't bought a better camera yet. 😉

Edit: I've just noticed that 2 caps on this board look ever so slightly "domed". Why do caps go "domed"?

Reply 1 of 3, by h-a-l-9000

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You need RAM to possibly see something on the screen.

1+1=10

Reply 2 of 3, by gerwin

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The item you point at is an inductor. used in conjuction with the capacitors and some big transistors to create lower voltages required by the CPU. It is very hard to break this part (the copper wire is thick). I would guess this mainboard is from 1998, this is before the bad-capacitor incident period.
Be sure the CPU cartridge is pushed all the way inside the slot.
Other then that, I have no idea. 😜

Edit:

wikipedia wrote:

The first flawed capacitors were seen in 1999, but most of the affected capacitors were made in the early to mid 2000s

Personally I encountered two systems with this issue: one with an Athlon 1100 CPU, and another one with an Athlon 1700 CPU.

Reply 3 of 3, by retro games 100

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After I packed the board away, I thought the problem could have been incompatible RAM. (Sorry for the useless answer.)

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