Okay, here's what I've been doing. My sister's kid has this old "Barbie" computer which suddenly stopped working. It's an older saying, I would guess at the end of the Pentium II or beginning of the Pentium III era. Well, it sounded like a power supply to me. It uses a smaller power supplies than a normal computer, although all the voltages and the connector are the same as the standard ATX supply. So I tried a new ATX supply off of a Pentium 4 system, and it would not power up.
Well, I decide I should know a little bit more about what I'm working on. So, I find some pages telling me what the ATX pinout is, and how the whole thing works with the standby power the power good, et cetera. Well, I start checking the power supply, I find it is not putting out the power good signal, but the 5 V standby power is present. I put a few amps of load on the 5, 3.3, and 12 V lines, and ground the power on line. All positive and negative voltages are right on the money, and while it is turned on the power good line is also active. So, I decide to make a small modifications and tried again. I cut the power good line and ties the connector end of it to the 5 V standby line with a 10 k ohm resistor. Try to fire the machine up again, nothing happens.
Well, now I have a better(or just stupid) idea to try. I activate the power supplied manually by grounding the power on terminal. The lights and fans come on, and the hard drive starts spinning, but the monitor does not turn on and there is no sign of the hard drive being accessed. Trying to use the power switch on the computer does not help.
My questions are as follows:
Is it likely that I destroyed anything by forcing the power supply to turn on?
Is it common to see a power supply and motherboard fail at the same time?
Are there any fixable things that happen to a motherboard that can cause it to not turn on? I already tried powering it up with all drives on clogged, and by that I beam data and power lines so that the drives could not be causing the problem. It was not effective.
Thank you
Ed
Well, I decide I should know a little bit more about what I'm working on. So, I find some pages telling me what the ATX pinout is, and how the whole thing works with the standby power the power good, et cetera. Well, I start checking the power supply, I find it is not putting out the power good signal, but the 5 V standby power is present. I put a few amps of load on the 5, 3.3, and 12 V lines, and ground the power on line. All positive and negative voltages are right on the money, and while it is turned on the power good line is also active. So, I decide to make a small modifications and tried again. I cut the power good line and ties the connector end of it to the 5 V standby line with a 10 k ohm resistor. Try to fire the machine up again, nothing happens.
Well, now I have a better(or just stupid) idea to try. I activate the power supplied manually by grounding the power on terminal. The lights and fans come on, and the hard drive starts spinning, but the monitor does not turn on and there is no sign of the hard drive being accessed. Trying to use the power switch on the computer does not help.
My questions are as follows:
Is it likely that I destroyed anything by forcing the power supply to turn on?
Is it common to see a power supply and motherboard fail at the same time?
Are there any fixable things that happen to a motherboard that can cause it to not turn on? I already tried powering it up with all drives on clogged, and by that I beam data and power lines so that the drives could not be causing the problem. It was not effective.
Thank you
Ed
Comment