Oh yeaaaah! Another "boring" computer question. New! With Raga Jungle Excitement!

I did end up taking the ribbon cable off, but I don't have any jumpers (nor would I know which pins to cover).

I also don't know what BIOS means.

But, as long as I remove the cable, it's all cool? Or good enough?

Thanks!

http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~sm97/ravisankar_music.gif

(this was the most exciting sounding 'boring computer' search results so...)

no real problem. the new laptop has rendered the old win98 box obsolete so now i have a 433 celeron (64M ram, 40G disk, old nvidia video card, networked, sound card...) with no real purpose in life. so, what can i use it for? any suggestions?

(i have another earmarked as a media server so not that. i have an external usb drive for backups so not that either (although backups of backups never hurts).)

Use it for playing w/ Ubuntu/Puppydog/etc

the laptop dual boots winxp and ubuntu edgy. additionally 'three' runs gentoo and 'two' dual boots gentoo again and mandrake 10. 'one' is currently win98 ('pre-installed for your convenience') and mandrake 9. i'm all linuxed up. 8)

Old PCs are ugly, inefficient space heaters. Unless you have a specific use for it in mind, buy a space heater that'll produce more BTUs/kW, spruce the machine up and give it to yr fave charity or needy school.

Give it to a local small non profit.

Um this isn't related to Koogs enquiry but my oldish dell laptop has stopped charging up (even when battery changed) or letting me use mains power. It blinks when I first put in chord but then nada. It was fine before I powered it off for the first time except that it did the same thing with the power chord, I just left the battery run down not thinking that anything too serious was up with it. Any ideas? Anyone?

Try a suspended 7th.

i had reckoned on the celeron being a bit low specced for donatings. a quick google seems to support this view (one place has better specced machines in london still listed as available).

It really depends on the charity. I dated a girl who worked for an education center for the developmentally disabled a few years ago, and adjusting for Moore's Law, I think that's a machine they would have taken. They had Mac Quadras, for god's sake. Granted, a PC loses value a lot faster than a Mac, but that one is good enough to run a lotta apps.

Selfish bump!

Aaaand again. Anyone?

Does it get warm at all kv_nol? Does it have a separate transformer (biggish box that the power cord is actually plugged into which has another cord that actually plugs into the computer)? If so, does the transformer have a light on it and/or does it warm up? If it does have a separate transformer, and it's (the transformer) not lighting/warming up when plugged in, find someone with the same computer as you and try out theirs.

How old is the laptop? Laptops aren't my forte but the batteries will conk out after a while.

The transformer does light up. I've tried flatmate's cable as well and no joy. The battery has been changed a couple of times between the spare and the one used more often. I don't know if it gets warm, should I plug it in and leave it for a while? Problem is that the contact lights don't stay on so I wonder is there a problem with the power contacts in the laptop.

No, I wouldn't leave it plugged in. There's most likely something wrong with the physical contacts or with the voltage regulator circuit on the mother board.

Here's a link to some info on troubleshooting and minor repairs.

Thanks Jaq and Kingfish, much appreciated.

think my CPU died last night. PC just froze and then wouldn't reboot, just black screen of death and repeated "system failed CPU test" message through my speakers. has this ever happened to anyone else here?

i knew the motherboard/chipset was crap and was going to buy a new PC anyway but in the meantime wondering if it's worth me buying and trying to fit a new CPU into this one just to make data retrieval easier (pretty terrified about the prospect of not being able to transfer non-backed up stuff from old internal hard drives to a new machine for whatever reason) - am not 100% sure the CPU is the problem anyway but seems most likely (I tried different plugs, power cables etc.).

Pull the power supply's connection to the mainboard (with the power disconnected, obviously). Let stand for 5 minutes. Reconnect.

This trick has worked for me surprisingly often with seemingly "dead" PCs.

Check the heat sink fan etc, also check the capacitors on the board incase they are leaking.

Thanks for the tips guys. I'll be opening it up tonight for a proper inspection.

fan and capacitors seem fine - no signs of damage (fan is noisy on startup but has been for ages without probs, same with previous PC) - surely it must be internal CPU damage.

tried the power supply->motherboard disconnect as well but no joy