[Nolug] Hardware gurus on the northshore

I'm wondering if there are any hardware gurus on the
northshore (Slidell, Mandeville, Hammond, etc)?
Last night, my primary PC died. However, I don't
know enough about hardware to determine the cause. I
was wondering if there was a kind soul out there that
would be willing to take a quick look and see if that
person can determine what, if anything, I'd need to
replace.

Here's the situation:

I have an EPoX 8RDA+ motherboard, Athlon 2100+ CPU,
400W PSU, Radeon 9600 Pro, 3 HDs, 1 CD-RW, 1 DVD-RW,
1 Floppy and 2 controller cards (1 for the 3rd HD,
1 for the DVD-RW) installed.

When I turn the computer on, the LED on the MB shows
as FF; the LED doesn't change at all. I can see and
hear the 2 cooling fans, the heat sink fan and the
PSU fan all running. However, I don't hear that HDs
spinning. I also don't hear the click of the floppy
drive as the PC seeks for a boot floppy.

I've unplugged all the drives (3 HDs, CD-RW, DVD-RW)
to see if that made a difference; perhaps they were
causing too much of a load? Well, no change. I then
removed the 2 controller cards as well. No difference.
I reseated the CPU, video card and RAM. Still, no
difference. I removed the CPU then the RAM then both
at the same time and turned the PC on. IIRC, this
should have caused the MB to beep indicating that a
vital component was missing. No beeps.

So now I'm down to purchasing a video card, PSU, CPU
and MB in turn to see if any of those fix the problem;
I don't have a spare MB or CPU that I can just switch
out. I just don't know enough to be able to determine
if any one of the above is faulty based on the
symptoms. This is a significant expense (not to
mention amount of time) I'm hoping I can avoid by
getting someone significantly more experienced to take
a quick look.

This PC is only a little over a year old. I ordered
each part in turn over time and built it myself
last March. I've not put any new hardware into it
since the DVD-RW last June. I've also not installed
any new software since installing a game in early
April. I leave the PC on 24/7 and rarely need to
reboot it. This PC (along with 2 other and 2
monitors) are plugged into a 200W (I believe it is)
UPS and are using the surge protected sockets. The
UPS is plugged into the wall. Neither of the other
PCs have experienced any problems.

So I'm wondering if there is a kind hearted hardware
guru on the northshore that would be willing to take
a quick look at my PC and see if it can be easily
determined what component might need to be replaced?

thnx,
Chris

        
                
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Received on 05/13/04