I checked the motherboard and drive settings, and both were ok.
I have the BIOS set to auto-detect for hard drives, but that was before the melt-down.
Now, when I turn on the computer (after a new power supply was installed and properly connected), the BIOS never loads. It just sits there with a blamk screen amd goes no where fast.
The monitor does work ok when connected to another computer.
The hard drive was set as master on the burnt out computer. I replaced the good hard drive on the good computer with the burnt-out computer's hard drive. But the burnt out computer hard drive didn't spin or show any sign than it was connected. Both power and data cables were connected. The cables worked ok since they worked ok with the new working hard drive/
I also had two optical disc drives connected to the computer that burnt out. Before the computer burnt out, the optical drives worked great, reliable reading and writing on the optical drives. After the burn out, one of the optical drive's tray was forceable ejected by the computer. I could not close the optical drive door until I unplugged the computer. The other optical drive did not make its try to force the tray out, but both drives would not work or be rerognized by the burnt out computer or the new working computer.
The RAM chip somehow got scrambled. I replaced the RAM chip with a new working chip, but the system still would not load or work.
I examined the motherboard and CPU (slot A, AMD Athalon), but saw no burn marks or scorches from flame. I traded the CPU for one I knew that works, but still no go.
From what I can guess, there was some kind of surge that wiped the system BIOS and the hard / optical drive bios's. But that does not explain the lack of the hard drive from spinning when started.
If there were a surge, do you know if the hard drive was erased and the hard drive BIOS ?
Thank you for your assistance.