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And so is my tale of woe.
My main system, a Shuttle SN25P build, has lasted me for 5 years now (apart from a video card replacement) which either says I'm getting old or that things stopped advancing as quickly as they did in the days you needed to upgrade every 18 months or be left behind.
I was actually in the middle of designing a new system when my UPS, also a dinosaur, died in a brown out/power surge. I was able to boot up and quickly finish what I was doing with the UPS complaining that the battery was now toast and then shutdown. The next day I bought a new UPS and hooked everything up and then...no power on. After checking the PSU power switch, the cables (swapped the power cable with a cabled tested with the monitor) and removing the UPS from the equation I still can't power on - hitting the power button does absolutely nothing; no fans, no light that I can see, nothing
.
This is not good - while I can easily pop out the harddrive and use a disk caddie to read it on another system it makes it difficult/impossible to export settings from some applications that like to keep them in propritary little places. This is not how I planned to do an upgrade.
I'm trying to figure out how to go about this:
Removing the video card (Sapphire Radeon 4670, no external power connector) seems like a good first step. I won't be able to see anything, but getting the fans going would be enough to indicate the PSU and motherboard are still usable. If that's the case I'll try and pop in a cheap video card.
Removal of the drive bays and other obstructions to check for blown capacitors on the motherboard seems like the next step. If the motherboard is fried then I'm done for.
However the main suspect, the power supply, seems difficult to isolate and test. The PS connects to the motherboard using an "8-pin ATX3" and "6-pin CN5" connector - not the standard fare. I have an old decommissioned system with a working ATX power supply (NSpire NSP-300P4D) but I don't see how it can be used to test since it has a standard 20-pin power connector and 4-pin P4 connector.
For the PSU alone I believe it is possible to turn on a PSU without a working motherboard (short the soft power line) but I think this requires a certain load on the PSU otherwise the fans won't start. I'm not sure where to start on that, I'm not remotely experienced/stupid enough to go messing with a soldering iron and resistors on a 350W power supply.
Buying a power supply without knowing if it will even solve the problem is not worth it - it's not a part I could just pickup at a local computer store (even in Toronto) and would likely set me back $100 plus a shipping delay on the hope it could fixed everything.
My main system, a Shuttle SN25P build, has lasted me for 5 years now (apart from a video card replacement) which either says I'm getting old or that things stopped advancing as quickly as they did in the days you needed to upgrade every 18 months or be left behind.
I was actually in the middle of designing a new system when my UPS, also a dinosaur, died in a brown out/power surge. I was able to boot up and quickly finish what I was doing with the UPS complaining that the battery was now toast and then shutdown. The next day I bought a new UPS and hooked everything up and then...no power on. After checking the PSU power switch, the cables (swapped the power cable with a cabled tested with the monitor) and removing the UPS from the equation I still can't power on - hitting the power button does absolutely nothing; no fans, no light that I can see, nothing
. This is not good - while I can easily pop out the harddrive and use a disk caddie to read it on another system it makes it difficult/impossible to export settings from some applications that like to keep them in propritary little places. This is not how I planned to do an upgrade.
I'm trying to figure out how to go about this:
Removing the video card (Sapphire Radeon 4670, no external power connector) seems like a good first step. I won't be able to see anything, but getting the fans going would be enough to indicate the PSU and motherboard are still usable. If that's the case I'll try and pop in a cheap video card.
Removal of the drive bays and other obstructions to check for blown capacitors on the motherboard seems like the next step. If the motherboard is fried then I'm done for.
However the main suspect, the power supply, seems difficult to isolate and test. The PS connects to the motherboard using an "8-pin ATX3" and "6-pin CN5" connector - not the standard fare. I have an old decommissioned system with a working ATX power supply (NSpire NSP-300P4D) but I don't see how it can be used to test since it has a standard 20-pin power connector and 4-pin P4 connector.
For the PSU alone I believe it is possible to turn on a PSU without a working motherboard (short the soft power line) but I think this requires a certain load on the PSU otherwise the fans won't start. I'm not sure where to start on that, I'm not remotely experienced/stupid enough to go messing with a soldering iron and resistors on a 350W power supply.
Buying a power supply without knowing if it will even solve the problem is not worth it - it's not a part I could just pickup at a local computer store (even in Toronto) and would likely set me back $100 plus a shipping delay on the hope it could fixed everything.