Computer Hope
Hardware => Hardware => Topic started by: Amats on February 15, 2017, 07:01:31 PM
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This old computer hasn't been run for probably 10 years and when I tried to fire it up it sputtered and died. What components usually go bad first? I have no idea who the manufacturer is but it has a Comp USA sticker on it.
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More info needed. You stated that it started and then sputtered and then died. Right now does it power on? If it powers on does anything show on the monitor, if so what do you see? If nothing shows on monitor does the power LED on the computer blink a code or does it have any beep code? If nothing on the display but its powered on, does it power on for a bit and then shut itself down after a short period of time? Was this computer stored in a dry place away from humidity and weather?
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The first time I hit the start switch a small light behind the start switch flickered and it tried to start but that was the end of it. It wouldn't do anything after that. It has been stored in a dry place.
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In order:
Unplug and replug all connectors
Remove and re-seat RAM and any addon cards
Replace CMOS battery
Borrow a known good PSU to test.
That should do it til you get any further...
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Thx Patio, that was a good list. I did all that and tried another power supply I had but it had gone bad. So I took the psu I had taken out of my 360 and hooked it up until I realized all of its power plugs were sata and of course my ancient computer was ata so I clipped a 3 plug wire off the bad ata psu and wire nutted it onto the other harness and the computer fired right up. ;D Evidently the data on the hard drive is totally corrupted because all I got was a white screen so now I need to find the hard drives I took out of my other computers and put the win95 hd in.
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So I took the psu I had taken out of my 360 and hooked it up until I realized all of its power plugs were sata and of course my ancient computer was ata so I clipped a 3 plug wire off the bad ata psu and wire nutted it onto the other harness and the computer fired right up.
So you used a xbox 360 power supply to fix a PC and had to wire nut it to a power cord?
Ok just noticed you have a Dell Optiplex 360... was lost for a sec there as to where the power supply came from.... but still lost as to why wire nuts were needed? Power to this computer should be a common power cord not requiring wire nuts I would think. :-\
Dell Optiplex 360
Core 2 Duo 2.93 GHz
4Gb ram, 630w psu,Win7 64
Mini Tower
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I had to cut the wire off both psu's and splice the one with ata connectors to the psu that worked so I could hook it up to the computer. I know all that is a little confusing. Turns out that nothing was wrong with the hard drive, it's just the psu is bad so I have to find one of those. This computer has a Pentium Pro which is a 686 chip and works perfect with Windows 95 which is what I'm running in it. I'm going to put a Soundblaster 16 and a GeForce FX5200 with 256mb of video in it, I run old Win95 games on it like Outlaws, Sega GT, Anhilation etc etc and it works great for those. I noticed today when I was messing with the computer that I never plugged the monitor in to the cpu (doh!) :P lol. Plugged it in and works great ;D THX!
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Just FYI t here is no Win95 Driver for the Geforce FX-Series. You'd want a Geforce 3 or 4
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THX!
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I had to cut the wire off both psu's and splice the one with ata connectors to the psu that worked so I could hook it up to the computer. I know all that is a little confusing.
It is...
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Here is an image from eBay.
(http://thumbs.ebaystatic.com/images/g/F0UAAOSwux5YXRrS/s-l225.jpg)
A used 360 without OS sells for under $5 plus $20 shipping .
If you bought one of them and it worked, it would be easier to find out what is wrong with the one you have.
Search for Dell Optiplex 360 for under $35 and get about 7 results.