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Re: [LUG] Arghhh! I keep killing motherboards...

 

Gordon Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Mar 2009, jon.davey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
>   
>> OK, I have just moved and taken my computer set-up plus about four other
>> boards I have aquired along the way. I set up the board that I was
>> using...nothing. I set up one of the other random boards and it posts but
>> doesn't load the OS so I try to hook a CD ROM up to the system and it kills
>> it....The same thing happens with another board with a different CD drive as
>> I thought it was the drive that killed it.
>>   Adding a CD drive to an IDE cable shouldn't stop a Motherboard from
>> working, should it?...what's going wrong here? Ahh! I've turned into a
>> computer killer!!!
>>     
>
> You can get weird things happening if you plug in IDE cables the wrong way 
> round - which, despite the identifying lugs and pins is still possible to 
> do...
>
> Gordon
>   
Yup, I have a couple of IDE cables kicking around that are missing lugs 
and it's so easy to get them the wrong way around.  I'd suggest try 
disconnecting everything (drives, cables, extra cards etc) and plug in 
the bare minimum (CPU, memory, power, video) and see if that works.  You 
could also try resetting the CMOS, sometimes that can help.

It kind of reminds me when I worked at eBuyer.  They had a load of 
boards sent back by customers which were supposedly not working.  Turned 
out they had the CMOS jumpers set to clear.

At least you haven't done the silly thing I did once, plugging a SCSI 
hard drive into an IDE cable my mistake.  Let's just say the puff of 
smoke coming out the drive was not a good sign.

Rob



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