Question Old garage stored pc one long 2 short beeps no post

[silversmithy]

Friend of mine has an old PC that was sitting in a garage for a very long time. They would like me to find out what's on the 2 old 3.5 hdds before e-wasting. The system is.... Old...

Antec case
Antec 380 watt PSU
AMD CPU, no idea which one specifically.
Asus M3A78-CM Mobo
1gb Corsair DDR2 ram stick x2
2 Seagate 3.5 hdds
No GPU.
2 DVD drives
1 floppy drive, not connected.

So first off this thing has rust on it. I mean the sheet metal of the large rear case fan is all surface rusted, and rust around VGA, DVI, and USB ports. Also spots of rust on the inside of the case at the bottom. The dust is caked on not just loose and easily moved by blowing, etc. This thing has seen moist air obviously. Even plugging in the vga cable has a crunching sound. At this point I have the fire extinguisher not too far away.🙄

So I blow it out as best as possible, check connections and hesitantly fire it up. Initially the blue power lights up rear case fan spins nicely , but stock AMD CPU fan won't spin with zero sign of life. A few seconds later 1 long and 2 short beeps constantly and no display.

I recheck all connections again, and fire it up. This time no fans spin. I try several different times with rear fan almost always turning on, but CPU fan never showing life, and sometimes beeps with blue front PC case power button lit up, and other times no beeps, and no power button lit up, but PC is powered on. The old 380w PSU is a little noisey so I install a 500w PSU. The rear case fan always fires up, but as always CPU fan no signs of life. After a couple of attempts the blue front case power button light never goes on, and no beeps or display. The mobo light near the ram if I remember correctly is lit yellowish green. No other lights.

I realize this thing is a poorly stored mess, but was hoping to at least get it booted to let the owner know if any info, docs, photos on HDD they may want me to transfer to a flash drive before dismantling. It looks like the 1 long and 2 short beeps refer to graphics issues I guess and not surprising looking at the rust. The dvi port looked more promising but trying that produced the same no display no power button light, no beeps, and no CPU fan life even though the PC is technically powered on. I will try reinserting CMOS battery soon, but doubtful this will help.
I will try another 4 pin case fan in the CPU fan connection to confirm if just bad fan or Mobo issue. I would also like to try using an old GPU to see what will happen but hate to sacrifice. Not sure what it will do to it.

My other thought is that maybe the PC was running back in the day and user had no idea CPU fan died and fried the CPU and that's that.
Any ideas on what else I might try to get it booted to go through hdds before scrap. I guess I could install hdds into another PC but at the moment that's not an option.

Thanks for taking the time to read this massive mess.🙂

 

[Darkbreeze]

So long as the CPU cooler does not spin, it is unlikely you will be able to do anything with the system without installing a working CPU fan as the system will either stop on error or shut down if it does not see an RPM signal. Also, that old, there is zero doubt that the CMOS battery is dead, so replacing that first and plugging a fan that will provide an RPM signal on the CPU FAN header might get it going but in truth you are better off to simply remove the drives, get a cheap USB to SATA/IDE drive adapter that comes with the additional cables to adapt power also to the drive, and attach it all to a different machine in order to pull any required files from the machine.

 

[USAFRet]

Don't worry about the PC working.

$25 for a USB SATA/IDE dock to possibly read the drives.
https://www.amazon.com/Docking-Tccmebius-TCC-S862-US-External-Enclosure/dp/B07LGCKMK7

https://www.amazon.com/Alxum-Converter-Universal-Drives-Adapter/dp/B01K7HMVQ6

 

[Darkbreeze]

Actually, the dock is a good idea, especially if you think you might have additional use cases for it aside from this one, but if you just need to read these two drives then you can get something like this for even less. I have one and it has worked fine in every case I've needed it.

https://www.amazon.com/AGPtek-Drive...ta/pata/ide+to+usb+2.0+adapter,aps,281&sr=8-3

 

[silversmithy]

Thanks very much. I currently don't have a newer cr2032 battery so I removed waited about a minute, then reinstalled it, and got another 4 pin fan connected to the CPU.
The PC fires up right away and CPU fan working okay, seems to surge very very slightly. Blue power lights comes on and stays on. No beeping, but still no display, and none of the usb ports show power to the mouse or keyboard.
I left one of the 2 HDD in the PC during all of this. I know the CMOS battery is probably dead, but even with a new one does this PC sound like it's going to actually work or is the MB toast. The strange thing is that there are no beeps at all now.

Again thanks.

 

[Darkbreeze]

I'd start with a new battery. Many boards, especially older ones, would simply not boot because they can't retain settings in order for the CMOS to understand HOW to boot, without one that works. Others will, sometimes, but it's very hit or miss. I can't say how yours will be either way but given it's an older board I CAN say that in MY experience, on boards more than ten years old the chances are good they fall in the "will not cooperate" group.

Given that a new CMOS battery is like two or three bucks, it seems to me that if it isn't worth it to at least find out if that is the reason, then whatever is on those drives is obviously not worth your time, or mine, to worry about further.