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Silver Strike Bowling 2005 faulty PC
lilshawn:
if you power on the computer and arent getting the POST beep, there is something preventing the startup process from starting the BIOS... bad ram bad CPU...
now, i'm not saying you have bad ram or a bad CPU, im saying in order to pass the POST test, the computer needs a CPU and RAM to be detected... before the CPU begins loading the BIOS.
in a nutshell... the computer board gets power... the computer kicks on and starts powering the stuff... ram, rom,chips,cpu,etc. once the power is settled, a hard coded instruction in the CPU starts reading and loading info (a bootstrap program) from the BIOS chip into RAM where it can start to run. once this is done and the program hits the end and get's it's instruction to run, and then has indeed started to run, the computer does its BIOS "BEEP" sound and begins to load the things it needs to boot. (programs to initially access the harddrive floppy drive video etc.) all this is the first 1 or 2 seconds of boot, done before anything is even displayed on the screen.
if it's playing dead, something is preventing the CPU from loading that initial bootstrap and loading the BIOS program so it can start to run.
dirty power can cause the CPU to never become ready.
bad ram connection can cause there to be nowhere to even put the bootstrap
bad CPU pin connection can hang the CPU
typically the board will issue diagnostic beeps if there is an issue like these though, but not always.
MrMatt:
--- Quote from: lilshawn on November 21, 2022, 08:47:13 pm ---if you power on the computer and arent getting the POST beep, there is something preventing the startup process from starting the BIOS... bad ram bad CPU...
now, i'm not saying you have bad ram or a bad CPU, im saying in order to pass the POST test, the computer needs a CPU and RAM to be detected... before the CPU begins loading the BIOS.
in a nutshell... the computer board gets power... the computer kicks on and starts powering the stuff... ram, rom,chips,cpu,etc. once the power is settled, a hard coded instruction in the CPU starts reading and loading info (a bootstrap program) from the BIOS chip into RAM where it can start to run. once this is done and the program hits the end and get's it's instruction to run, and then has indeed started to run, the computer does its BIOS "BEEP" sound and begins to load the things it needs to boot. (programs to initially access the harddrive floppy drive video etc.) all this is the first 1 or 2 seconds of boot, done before anything is even displayed on the screen.
if it's playing dead, something is preventing the CPU from loading that initial bootstrap and loading the BIOS program so it can start to run.
dirty power can cause the CPU to never become ready.
bad ram connection can cause there to be nowhere to even put the bootstrap
bad CPU pin connection can hang the CPU
typically the board will issue diagnostic beeps if there is an issue like these though, but not always.
--- End quote ---
ThisnPC didnt beep even when it was booting ok.
I'll get another CPU and try that but I wont be able to do it for a few weeks now.
I'll report back once I've done it
Thanks.
MrMatt:
Oh yeah, there is one more thing which may or may not be important in why this PC broke down. It was always used on another cab in medium resolution, but I had just put this PC into another cab with a VGA CRT and started to run the game on VGA output. The PC broke down on like the 5th time of running on VGA.
lilshawn:
i wouldn't discount the blown caps on the video card contributing to it getting pushed over the edge. higher resolution does use more energy and computing power. in the scheme of things, it's not much...but not a zero amount more that's for sure. i wouldn't doubt if it was marginal... the additional tiny bit of stress of having to do 2x as much work.
normally in a case like this, i would swap out all the parts to see if something died (ram CPU video card, power supply etc.) with known good parts to eliminate those as a source of issue, so if indeed it is still a dead rogue cap on the motherboard somewhere causing it, i can focus my efforts there on the board and i'm not chasing a red herring changing out all the little caps and stuff when it's actually due to a plotzed CPU.
that said... double check the polarity of your capacitors you've installed to make sure one didn't slip in backwards, that can cause it to play dead.
MrMatt:
Cool.
I'll get another CPU and some MOLEX connectors and hook the power up to a JAMMA PSU.
Cheers again for the help. I'll be back in a few weeks because of work.