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PSU Guru's, Dead short?

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Old Aug 20, 2008, 11:14 PM   #1
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PSU Guru's, Dead short?
Ok have a machine come in today and i'm having a hard time thinking (anything i google draws a blank apparently)

However

The machine will light, fans/leds.... nothing on the screen... no beeps boops nudda, even if everything is stripped down to just the psu/mobo/cpu

PSU tester shows no led on the PG, the -5v rail is not stable at all apparently, if not dead.

So,

Rip out the PSU and plug in one i know works.

Fire it up and varoom, beeps and honks.... it's alive.

However

After getting a few of the basics installed so i can check things.... i see that the -5v rail according to the bios is registering as failure/ 0.000v

Powered down, fired up the psu tester and checked, nope everything is green across the board. what the dealy...

Check around for maybe being a known problem with the board.... or whatnot. But i can't seem to find anything.

Normally i would have gone ahead and installed a replacement PSU in the system, but the -5v concerns me.... considering that is what was showing as dead on the other psu... or as a problem.... i'm wondering if a new psu will oventually suffer similare fate. Last thing i want to do is not only destroy another psu, but put a time bomb in the computer.

When it starts, it just doesn't feel right, the bios even feels "wrong" in how it's operating.. specially for the type of board it is. Yet another reason i'm holding off doing anything to finish the job up....

It's an Asus CUSL2-C with a intel P3 866 CPU and 320mb of ram (2x128mb+64mb)

Video card is a Orginal Radeon .... NOT a 7000 or whatever series... the very first Radeon card... (nice)

I'm going to toy around, swap memory and video cards around .. maybe reseat the cpu and check the rest of it all out.... do a thorough cleanup and see if that shows any improvement...... in the meantime, if anyone can, let me know what you think on the -5v rail showing up as bad...
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Old Aug 21, 2008, 01:59 AM   #2
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I think that I'd flash the BIOS. Especially since you said "When it starts, it just doesn't feel right, the bios even feels "wrong" in how it's operating.. "

Sounds like the BIOS is corrupted, or the chip is failing.
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Old Aug 21, 2008, 03:50 PM Threadstarter Thread Starter   #3
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bios flashed... both to the current official.. and current official beta just to see.... and it still not "right"...

running memtest on the memory and such atm, but i don't know... it just feels well wrong....
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Old Aug 21, 2008, 04:15 PM   #4
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So what's using -5 V on this board..... if it was a dead short on the board it shouldn't even post, so it's got to be a wrong report from the bios.
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Old Aug 21, 2008, 04:36 PM Threadstarter Thread Starter   #5
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I'm trying to figure that out tyrson...


typicall a dead short wouldn't let a system start.. but i've seen cases when a dead short has even allowed windows to boot.. and while unstable.. to use for a considerable length of time. (aka, someone has a mobo mount left on the mobo mounting plate, touching and shorting the connections on the back of the motherboard for an unknown period of time)

I'm trying to figure out what uses the -5v.... where i would find better evidence of what is causing it.

And i don't like to "ignore" things, specially considering that irregular odd situation that the machine is currently operating in.
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Old Aug 21, 2008, 05:30 PM   #6
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Hey Judas,
You can ignore the -5v, it's an optional line on the ATX connector used in days gone by for things like tri-state logic.

How old is this motherboard?
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Old Aug 21, 2008, 06:06 PM   #7
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That's what I figured -5 isn't used much anymore.... BUT

still not something to ignore because it may be present on the board. Did you look real close at all the electrolitic caps, any swelling or leaking going on?
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Old Aug 21, 2008, 07:20 PM Threadstarter Thread Starter   #8
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Yeah i pulled the motherboard, checked the caps... as well got in about an hours worth of checking the traces on the board itself..

it's not a new machine at all, running a P3 866mhz.....latest bios is 2001..

Everything "looks" fine..... but i'm just leary..

I cleaned everything up better, completely rewired the case and reseated the pci cards and such into a more organized and logical fashion. Plugged everything. Fired it up, got windows 2000 to load up with no crashes... and aside from the primary hardrive showing as being unable to run in DMA mode in 2000 (even though in the bios it clearly shows UDMA as working) Things seem to move right along at the expected rate considering the amount of ram it has.

Reguardless..... i've done everything i can think of doing. The Bios is set to ignore the -5v rail as if i didn't set it to that, it would pause at the boot screen asking for DEL or F1 to continue.

Ran it through 6 passes of memtest and a few hd diagnostic tests (SMART TRIPPED on primary, however short/long passed).... i'll have to inform the owners of the circumstances, they said they didn't want to spend much at all on the machine. (considering it's age)...

Anywho, i guess we'll see.

oh btw..

setting the -5v hardware monitor to ignore resulted in the entire system not performing "strangely".....odd lol
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Old Aug 21, 2008, 07:58 PM   #9
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That is wierd..... it doesn't need it, but if it looks for it and can't find it it gets strange

Go figure.
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Old Aug 21, 2008, 08:31 PM Threadstarter Thread Starter   #10
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yeah isn't it?

i mean usually when i come across something as strange and weird like that on a motherboard or in a machine, specially if i just bought it (parts).... i would have returned it as a defective part.
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Old Aug 22, 2008, 01:34 AM   #11
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Judas, it looks to me that the first PSU you were using went bad (strangely only on the -5V rail) and it lacked any short of protection on the secondary side. Perhaps it overvolted, perhaps it 'passed' a harmonic in the -5V rail, perhaps...a thousand other things. But most probably it fried whatever the motherboard is using the -5V voltage for.

The -5V voltage was used by ISA cards. Nonetheless, some of the latest motherboard of the Pentium 3-Athlon era are also using it for 'secondary' functions, such as controlling gates or powering very small chips.
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