Hello all, I'm just looking for some opinions on this problem I am dealing with right now. I recently aquired an old dell from my work, and it's pretty old but still decent. It has a 1.3 ghz p4, along with 4x 128mb ram and a 128mb old vid card. The computer will not start up, so I'm here looking for advice.

The thing is really old, and the processor is this old thing. The power supply is working (I think), because when I plug the psu in when it isn't connected to anything else, there is an LED on the back that lights up. The psu has a 20pin ATX connector, but the case requires a 24 pin, so I tried to use this 20-24 adapter. The second I plug the adapter into the motherboard, the light on the PSU goes dark, but if I unplug it the LED lights up again which makes me think the mobo is bad. It's so old that I have no way of swapping out any components, so I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on the matter.

#1 can you swap out any parts into a diff. rig I.E. ram , vid card etc.

#2 - Unfortunatly , without another power supply , I wouldnt condenm the MoBo as the problem.

#3 - You could try jumping the power supply so that it powers up without being plugged into the board, and see if it fires up some drives and such also, if it does then Yes it could likely be the MoBo.

have you tryed firing it up with just the bare minimum plugged in? ( unplug the drives and any other stuff beside the cpu ram and vid card ( if it has onboard grafx , use that )

Right now the only thing that I have plugged in is the hard drive and ATX connector. I cannot swap out the ram because it uses this really weird type (184-Pin RDRAM (16bit)). The reason I think it's the motherboard is because the reason I got the computer was because they did not have a 20 to 24 pin adapter. When I opened it up the 20 pin connector was in the 24pin spot, so I think they may have shorted the mobo by attempting to start it in this fashion.

Older Dell's used a power supply that was pinned differently from a standard unit.
And just because a lite comes on the back doesn't matter. You'll probably pay more
to fix it than it's worth. I would just strip out the good parts and sell them.

Quote: Originally Posted by Slaymate Older Dell's used a power supply that was pinned differently from a standard unit. And just because a lite comes on the back doesn't matter. You'll probably pay more to fix it than it's worth. I would just strip out the good parts and sell them.

This is true. I bought a broken dell a while back off a guy for parts and i went to test the psu and i didn't even have a green wire. so i looked it up and it was a dell only psu. (more money for dell i guess)

using the wrong psu could have done damage. try jumping it like mace said and check the manual for the mombo and see if it takes a special type.

eeeeekkkkkk! willimate core! socket 423... I think i have a RDRAM 850i Intel board here somewhere... it would work for ya if you have some RAMBUS....

Hah alright guys. Thanks for the info slay, that's really helpful. I guess i just acquired a new 128mb agp card rather than a new computer.