[Sussex] Fault possibly developing on my PC

[Desmond Armstrong]

On 15 November 2012 04:22, Paul Willis <phwillis at gmail.com> wrote:

> Read up on ATX here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATX and NB section
> on Dell power supplies!  A look at the wire colours should tell you if
> you have a non standard setup. Your power switch clearly does work
> because the system starts to fire up when pressed. The failure to
> latch is between the board and the psu. If you read the wiki you will
> see that you can power up the system by joining the green wire to a
> black one beside it IF you have the standard wiring, otherwise for the
> odd Dell it is the grey one in the corner that needs joining to a
> black to ground it.
>
> At a guess your problem is a leaky capacitor on the mainboard that
> will not hold your power-on switch circuit down to earth until
> something else has charged up to full voltage. Old age death of
> motherboards is usually due to old capacitors breaking down.
>
> Looks like time for a new board and maybe some other bits..
>
> You can buy a mainboard, processor and memory kit all in for under
> £100. You can get a 20>24pin power connector adapter and if you don't
> have the 12V 4pin connector for the board you can bodge it from
> another one. Or you can lash out on a new power supply for around £20
> if the old one is not up to it. Your local scrap yard may let you take
> a psu from a dumped PC if you chat them up/offer a couple of quid; or
> beg on freecycle. If the new board doesn't have pata connectors you
> may have to buy a bootable controller card (£15) to keep your old disc
> or an adapter sata/pata (~£2 from China) or add a new disc to the
> shopping list (£30-£50) and maybe a CD/DVD deck if you want one -
> Linux folk get by with USB sticks or SD cards to boot, install and fix
> these days. Indeed you can skip the hard disc altogether and just run
> on memory sticks/cards for now - I've been buying 8GB Class10 cards
> for around £5 lately - for my raspberry PI ... another option at just
> £30!
>
> The box I'm typing from now was bought in 1997, is on its 3rd
> mainboard and maybe 2nd power supply. I only took out the original 3GB
> hard disc a few months ago (because it was wasting energy - not a
> failure).
>
> With new life in an old box the performance boost is a real treat!
>
> Paul
>
> On 14 November 2012 19:07, Peter Humphreys
> <peter at humphreys999.free-online.co.uk> wrote:
> > Hello all
> >
> > I use an older Dell Dimension 4600 as my main Desktop machine and it
> seems to
> > be developing a reluctance to boot up from cold. And, that's getting me
> > worried...
> >
> > Symptoms - Whilst pushing the power switch indeed sets the machine
> powering
> > up, I need to continue to hold the power button for up to 10 seconds
> beyond
> > what I ever have previously, as otherwise the unit turns off again.
> >
> > From what I have been able to determine online it seems this is
> symptomatic
> > that either the power supply or motherboard might be developing a fault.
> Or
> > the switch?? And, whilst the PSU might be comparatively inexpensive to
> > replace, if it's the motherboard I suspect that would take the box beyond
> > economical repair. At which point I begine to need another machine.
> >
> > Question - anyone know who can help me ascertain what the fault is etc ?
> You
> > may remember I am not deeply technical, and any help would be greatly
> > appreciated. Or any hint / tip of a reasonable repair person in the
> Haywards
> > Heath area (I will travel a reasonable distance)??
> >
> > Also, any thoughts on whether it might be best for me to leave the
> computer
> > running on 'suspend' which is an option on shutdown, rather than actually
> > turn it off, which I generally do? You maay recall I use KDE running on
> SuSE
> > 11.0. How about trying a restart - which I haven't dared .....to see
> whether
> > the machine does actually power up by itself?
> >
> >
> > Help!
> >
> > And, thanks
> >
> > Peter Humphreys
>

Yes, I agree with all those comments.

I have used a number of sATA - IDE adaptors from China and but you need to
make sure you get the bidirectional ones, they are not the same. In
practice this just means that it has two SATA connectors and one IDE. I
have not succeeded in connecting two IDE drives through one adaptor. But
one IDE - one SATA no problems. So I have left machines with an adaptor
plugged into the old hard drive, And I have left machines with the adaptor
plugged into the mainboard. I have had no problems with booting. And where
the mainboard is only SATA, well a replacement DVD drive is cheap enough.
And, for less than a fiver including delivery the adaptors are cheap enough.

In view of a recent experience where the main board failed, blown
capacitors, and, as it turned out the Intel CPU was also blown, I am now
much more cautious about replacing the capacitors, although replacing that
one to cope with switch on has to be worth the effort.

> > --
>
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