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Troubleshooting Help -- Secondhand Dell GX50

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starhawk

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Oct 4, 2004
Messages
8,908
System make and model...
Dell Optiplex GX50 (as stated in the title, lol). It's in Dell's (very) old "mini desktop" style case (PCI card cage and desktop-style optical drive). I got it from the local tech shop; I'm friends with the owner and he said that "it had some kind of problem" but that I could probably sort them out. I'm a little less confident now than he was then...

Yes, I know it's very old, but if I can make it work I'd like to. I'm funny that way :D

The problem, in a nutshell...
System will not boot. Some lights but not fans or anything else -- no POST beep, no nothin'.

Specifically, regarding the lights... the power LED blinks amber and there is a bright orange LED on the motherboard (I believe that this is the standby LED). In particular, the diagnostic LEDs in the back of the system do not light up at all.

What I have done so far...
(1) Replace PSU with a compatible part from a different system. Both are odd, proprietary slim PSUs, although the ATX connector is standard. The original one is 110w; the replacement is 180w.
(2) Temporarily removed PCI card cage.
(3) Temporarily removed BIOS battery (I don't have a spare battery anywhere, really :( ).
(4) Temporarily removed the "Password" jumper (that's what it's marked as on the motherboard -- there does not seem to be a jumper anywhere labeled as CMOS Clear).
(5) Temporarily removed RAM, leaving one slot open and one slot occupied each time (2 slots total).
(6) Disconnected drive power (but not data cables) for all 3 drives (optical, floppy(!), and HDD).

Other things worth mentioning...
- No components on the board seem overly hot. (I have not felt the CPU.)
- I have not replaced the CPU itself or the BIOS battery. I do not have spares for these right now. CPU is an SL5FQ (P3 1B GHz -- 1000/256/133/1.75), and I have no other skt370 CPUs (gave them away to a friend and fellow [H]er a year or so ago IIRC >.< )


...at this point I suspect that the motherboard is toast. Mostly what I'm looking for here is a sanity check -- motherboard, CPU, or something that I did that I should not have done?

EDIT: just plugged a Dell 200w ATX PSU in to give it another go. That one is known good... lots of coil whine but nothing else changed :(
 
Well, you know how I am by now. I'm guilty of attempting to salvage older computers from the grave too. Over the past few months I too have been contemplating of having an old, static box to run windows 95 or 98.

The optiplex seems to have error lights on the back for troubleshooting. Do any of them light up? You should grab the manual for the unit and see if the lights mean anything. Also, try removing the CPU. some quirky dell units will fire up fans and other periphs without the cpu in. Of course, you won't see anything on the screen and one or two I've tried it on give a long, continuous beep.
 
No lights on the back. (I did mention that in my OP :p )

Think I may have an idea of what's wrong tho -- it has an SL5FQ (1GHz, 256k L2, 133FSB) and 512MB Kingston PC133 in it... along with an original i810 chipset, specifically the 82810-SL3P7 (A3 stepping, so it can support P3s not just Celery's) and the 82801AA ICH. (No, there is not a number after that version. It's that old!)

That chipset only supports up to 100MHz RAM and 100MHz-FSB CPUs... neither of which are present in the system! Whoopsie.
 
starhawk said:
No lights on the back. (I did mention that in my OP :p )

Think I may have an idea of what's wrong tho -- it has an SL5FQ (1GHz, 256k L2, 133FSB) and 512MB Kingston PC133 in it... along with an original i810 chipset, specifically the 82810-SL3P7 (A3 stepping, so it can support P3s not just Celery's) and the 82801AA ICH. (No, there is not a number after that version. It's that old!)

That chipset only supports up to 100MHz RAM and 100MHz-FSB CPUs... neither of which are present in the system! Whoopsie.
Click to expand...

yep, could be the issue right there. Time to scoop up a 1ghz celeron, 512mb pc100 ram and a small 7200rpm drive to max things out. :D
 
Thought you all might want to find out the answer :D got some spare parts in the mail this morning, some of which were compatible with the GX50, and got to work.

Put in a 66MHz Celeron and a 128 stick of PC100. No effect. Had an idea that it might be the CPU fan so I rigged up a tester. Fan spins.

I'm diagnosing this with a dead mobo and giving up.
 
Well... "giving up" was a bit incorrect. Went on fleaBay and found out I could replace the CPU for $3 and the mobo for $18.

Just figured out (of course) that I ordered the wrong CPU tho... fortunately it hasn't shipped yet so it shouldn't be a big deal to fix. I've messaged the seller --who also sells the correct CPU-- and we'll see how that goes. FWIW what I ordered was an SL5XS (1.2GHz Tualatin) and what I meant to order was an SL5XT (1GHz Coppermine) -- this heap doesn't actually support Tualatin chips!
 
dunno. I would personally be hard pressed to buy anything socket 370 at this point.

Then again, I've been yearning to build a full windows 98 machine lately...
 
Well, here's what I'm thinking...

My netbook (usual backup sys) has a virus and I was going to Factory Restore it to fix that --since there's nothing of any value at all on the HDD right now-- and I do need an XP sys to play some games I have that won't run in W7 but will work fine in XP. In the meantime, I've been wanting to transition from Win to Lin for a while.

So what this lets me do is this. I can put Linux on the netbook, leaving the Restore partition intact in case I sell it or otherwise want XP back. All the games I want to play are very old -- stuff you'd find at Abandonia. So a P3 (actually a Coppermine Celeron, 1GHz) with 256 RAM and XP is enough to run what I need to run.

Only thing I'm worried about is the RAM -- this system only takes PC100, and PC133 gets grumpy when you try to downclock it... my PC100 stash maxes out at 128mb/stick and I get two slots in this system. (Max for the system is 512mb anyways.) Is 256mb enough to run XP and some shitty old DOS games? (Seriously, the newest stuff I'll be running is meant for Win9x!)
 
Final report.

FIXED.

Bought the board and chip. Put it in. Plugged in the power. Orange mobo light and a squeeky piezo beep. "Oh boy..." Pressed the power button "just for the halibut" (as my father would say) and...

"Holy shit!"

Powered on. POST LEDs did there thing and settled on all green except for D which was orange. Two beeps.

"Shit."

Looked it up, manual said that was the "other" error condition -- something that wasn't covered by the usual stuff. Shrugged, unplugged, added keyboard, mouse, and screen, and watched my local tech shop's typical XP install pop up. (The owner has done some minor customizations to the image he drops on his systems -- mostly optimizing things for better performance.) I'll have to haul it back to him for a new image, since XP woke up grumpy, but that is way not a big deal.
 
thats a lot of hoops for a socket 370 board.

forget xp. put windows 98 on that bad boy :cool:
 
I don't have a 98 CD, and I want full USB support, for hauling data around (it's somehow just a little more convenient than CDs, ya know? ;) ). Besides, IIRC I've got a program or two that I want to run on this thing that won't dig 98... can't remember which one ATM tho.
 
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