Well, my old reliable Acer PIII @ 800 died yesterday. And when i reffering to die, is because is death. Well, the computer simply no POST, only start a second and instantly turns off. Well, yeah, i did everything:
Tested with 3 power supply from different brands....no luck...
Reset the Bios, with the jumper method and the batt out method...no luck
Tested with different power cables.......no luck
Removed all optical and magnetical devices.......no luck...
Tryed with other monitor............no luck...
.
Removed both Ram cards, cleaned the dimm slots, tryed one or another......no luck....
Removed CPU !........no luck
Tested with other CPU from the same Speed.....No luck....
I removed the entire Motherboard to discard some short and tested out of the case.....no luck....
Tested the motherboard with another case/switch.....no luck..
Well, i even removed the BIOS chip and reinstalled it, but the result are the same, the computer only turns on a second and shut off, no image, no nothing...
The computer now is totally useless. I was researching why does this happened. I ended with a page about the bad capacitors used between 1999 and today on a vast variety of eletronic devices. After, i checked wikipedia and the capacitors brand in my MoBo are some of the "blacklisted ones". Well, the question here is if should change all the caps (20 or 22...) to try to get work a computer does have like 5 years old (PIII with 256 Ram...) ?
Ill guess the new caps will cost like 6 or 7 bucks, all that i need.
Or may i left the Old MoBo, buy a new one and salvage all the compatible things (my memory wont work on a new computer, mine are Sdram, and new ones are DDR, and the processor wont be compatible....i need to buy these too in order to build a new MoBo...)
Well, i consider to find another PIII MoBo, but these are nearly impossible to find (when these were new, a "generic" computer costs maximun 800 Usd, mine were an Acer and Cost 1600 usd....
Sounds like you get to buy/build a new computer all together. At this poinbt it just wouldn't be worth it to do all that work for a 5 year old computer. Especially given the fact that even though there is a good chance, the caps might not be the bad part.
I use newegg.com for all my parts. Or I go to a local electronics store that sells parts for a decent price.
You could also check out the cheap 300-600 dollar PC's that Dell sells.
Yeah, buy a computer will actually save you money. It kinda sucks but it is the truth.
You can get a blazing fast machine for under 600 dollars. Gotta love new technology.
Daniel
for $500 I built a 3400+. All you need is ram(around $20) motherboard/cpu(depends on the place, and power supply, around $35. Oh and that is right after the actual 64's came out.
You guys are forgetting he lives in Mexico. The prices for electronics there are more than they are here.