Old PC, dead mobo?

[ep3w]

I have an old emachines that I am trying to get working so I can use it as an HTPC (crt tv), I have tried two powersupplies so I don't think thats it. Right when you plug it in, the "on light" turns on and stays lit. Try to turn it on, cpu fan spins but nothing happens. There is a little red light that lights up on the mobo. When I turn it off, the light stays on the and num lock and scroll lock lights on the keyboard flash. No signal every goes to the monitor. Same thing happened with onboard video and an AGP card. Same thing happens with no ram in it. Any ideas? Is the mobo dead? Its an athlon xp system. I tried resetting the bios by leaving the battery out for a few seconds also.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

yeah the boards dead.. if you can find a pcchips socket a board they cost about 20 bucks if that..

 

[Kirbstomp]

I recently worked on an older eMachine for a co-worker and had a similar issue. While troubleshooting I was able to take the model # off the motherboard and find a PDF manual online for it. There might be something in there to help you with interpreting that red light. In my case I think it was the PSU that was dead, but I had no way to verify it for sure as I did not have a compatible PSU on hand. The eMachine I was working on used some kind of micoATX PSU that I did not have spare.

 

[ep3w]

Maybe I will look into finding a board. For 20$ it might be worth it, much more and its not. I am not sure if the red light it just always on or what, so I will have to see if I can find a manual. I think this one uses a normal PSU. The one I am testing with came from another emachines because the fan was dieing on it and I just replaced it with a standard ATX Antec psu and that works fine.

 

[ep3w]

Found the manual and the red led just means its powered on and you can't take out the memory modules.