Help - Poss bad mobo?

[Rugger]

Little help please! Here's the system:
Shuttle AK31, v3.1 with KT266A chipset,
AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1Ghz,
WinComm v.92 56K modem,
ATI Radeon 7000,
Creative Labs model CT4740 sound card
Generic case with KME 230W PSU.

This is my Sister-in-law's system. She states that she changed modems to the one listed above after the previous modem was fried (probably a power surge during a storm). When she swapped the modem and powered up the system, she stated smoke came out of the computer. She brought it to me for help. What I've done so far:
1. I pulled all modem/sound card/vid card and did a visual inspection of all three. There was visible damage to the sound card - a chip labeled TPA1517NE. The chip was cracked and had visible signs of heat scorching in the immedaite are of the chip on the sound card.
2. There was no visible damage to the vid card or the modem.
3. Visual inspection of the mobo, memory and cabling revealed no further damage.
4. Tried to power on the system with only HDD, FDD, mobo, CPU and memory installed. Nothing...
5. Disconnected HDD/FDD - nothing.
6. Thought that it could be the PSU. Placed in a known good Sparkle 230W. On the MB, the HSF did 1/4 turn and the indicator D5 lit up. No beeps, nothing else.
7. Put in another mobo/CPU - nothing.

Any ideas on what this could be? I've run into a brick wall here! Thanks in advance for your help!


"He who will not risk, cannot win"
- John Paul Jones

 

[tweebel]

I wouldn't use any components of the old system. A friend of mine managed to burn 2 mobo's with one malfunctioning cpu. I wouldn't risk new hardware by testing the old stuff. Maybe you have an old board around which you can afford destroying. Test the components one by one and start with drives, they might just have survived.

 

[Rugger]

luckily I didn't test the other MB/CPU on the old PSU. But even with the second PSU, the second MB/CPU did nothing - no beeps, none of the fans started to turn - nothing. Could the MB that I had laying around be bad, too?

Have you read the FAQ? Looked for previous posts on this topic?

 

[Flinx]

Reset the CMOS? Testing one component at a time? U may have damage to multiple components.

The loving are the daring!

 

[Crashman]

hehe, I had an old Supermicro board that was working fine with a Pentium MMX. So I set it correctly for an AMD CPU, put it in, and nothing happened. Thinking there must be a compatability issue, I pu it in another board, and that board went up in smoke.

Now I assumed the CPU had been bad to begin with, so I pulled one out of a working system and put it in the Supermicro board, nothing happened. So I put it back in the working board...and smoked the other board.

2 CPUs and 2 motherboards shot, I figured out "The Supermicro board blows AMD CPU's". I put a Pentium MMX back in the Supermicro board, finished up the system, and got rid of it ASAP!

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[Rugger]

Agreed on damage to multiple components, but unfortunately I don't have a good testbed to check components in. :frown:

I do have an old PII 350Mhz sitting around that was given to me a while back. The HDD with OS installed on it was somehow fried along the way. I disconnected the bad HDD and started the PC. It will post, recognize HD (a second HD without an OS loaded), CDROM and FDD, but it won't detect a win98 startup disk or cdrom to load win98. I would only use this machine to test the periph components (vid card/modem). BTW the Sparkle PSU I mentioned in the previous post came from this PC, is back in it and powers the system ok - believe this PSU is still good, but any thoughts would be appreciated. Same PSU in the 'power-surged' system won't even get beeps - no reaction at all. Tried with mobo out of case on phonebook (thanks Crash) and went back to the basics - Mobo, CPU and memory and got nothing when I jumpered the power with screwdriver. The Sparkle PSU fan didn't even start to turn. I think this is telling me the Mobo is fried. What's killing me is that the second mobo I have is doing the same thing.

I haven't reset the CMOS - is it worth doing if I can't even get the thing to post or give any status beeps?


Have you read the FAQ? Looked for previous posts on this topic?

 

[Rugger]

This looks alittle like the road I am travelling right now. 2 mobos, 2 CPUS - both mobos may be bad. I haven't pulled the HSFs from the CPUs yet. I need to find my thermal compound or get some more, but I have a sinking feeling that one or more of the CPUs may be fried as well. What I don't want to happen is to relive your experience - get a new mobo, install CPU and then fry the new mobo.

I want to tahank everyone that has responded so far! Please keep the good info rolling in....

Have you read the FAQ? Looked for previous posts on this topic?