Testing set up

[Straf]

My PC died. The motherboard BIOS looks to have been corrupted. It's dual BIOS but it seems that the backup is also defunct. I've managed to get hold of a laptop to use until I can raise the funds to rebuild my machine. I've been setting up software and that on it and while setting up the graphics tablet, after drawing the random scribbles and things that one does, I decided to see how it felt doing something more akin to a map. I've put together this coastline/landmass thing:



It's been scaled down to 2400 x 1600 pixels from 6000 x 4000. If anyone would like to use this for their own purposes, though, I've also exported a .png of the full size drawing on a transparent background:



I don't know if I'll be going any further with this, it was just a quick drawing to check out the graphics tablet was working OK. I still need to set up all the pen dynamics and that to my liking so perhaps I'll use this shape to do that.

[Falconius]

Fortunately motherboards are dirt cheap now a days. Unfortunately none of the other modern components are and I doubt you could find too many MB's for older chipsets. That said people throw out or store indefinitely what used to be high end machines, so with a little nosiness you might be able to scrounge up a free machine.

[Straf]

I have a socket 754, with AGP slot, motherboard in the garage. I'm not certain but I think one of the lugs that clamps the heatsink down broke. I may have sold the CPU that was in it when I picked up a new motherboard. I also found a Socket 7 motherboard! That and the AMD K6-2 processor that was in it was quite happily running FPS games at the time, and continued to deliver a decent frame rate even on some of the newer titles that came out. I reckon the K6 family must have been the best CPUs on the market at the time given their low cost and reliability. I don't think there's been anything comparable in terms of useful lifetime. Whether that's down to the changing demands of modern games or not I don't know. On the other hand there's been a huge increase in retro-gaming interest over here. I see second hand SNES and Megadrive consoles going for silly prices whereas a year or so ago people couldn't give them away.

[johnvanvliet]

if it was still using bios then it was time to get a new maching

EFI is great , it is just Microsoft's Bastard monster creation ( secure boot) of it that SUCKS

are you sure it is the bios and NOT just the bootloader

fixing even the microsoft bootloader is very easy

grub is even easier, even for grub2 or the legacy non efi version grub1

[Straf]

This is what happens when I plug it in and hit the power button:

The fans spring to life but nothing seems to happen. Then maybe 20 seconds or so later it beeps, then a pause of 10 seconds or so followed by another beep. Then I get UEFI Dual Boot at the top of the screen, with a blue screen. It hangs around for a few seconds then it goes black again, takes a bit of time and beeps, blue screen with UEFI Dual Boot at the top, then just cycles doing that. When the screen goes black all of the lights on the keyboard and mouse go off, so it's like it's shutting off all the power to the USB ports as well. It doesn't respond to any key presses. It does this regardless of whether any of the hard disks are plugged in. The only time it does anything differently is when I take all of the memory out and then it just goes on a beeping frenzy.

It's almost like it's trying to enter the BIOS setup screen but then decides it can't be bothered. I do wonder if it might be the PSU, if one of the supply circuits isn't quite pushing enough power for some reason.

[Mouse]

Have you tried giving it a deep clean - as in taking it all apart and blowing the dust out with canned air, then checking all the contacts?

Just an idea from a total hopeless case where computers are concerned, but I had a PC that used to pop its processors for a pastime, so every now and then I'd have to open it up and using the plastic end of a screwdriver gently push them back into the board again.

EDIT: I think the things that used to come lose were called processors - little flat black brick things with lots of metal peg legs down the side. They used to spring out of the bit they were plugged into.