[olug] Borrow a motherboard?

[Obi-Wan]

> Do you have a spare power supply?  No POST sounds like either power supply or bad motherboard.

No, this is my only PS.  I've seen no indication that it was flaking
out, though.  I would have expected a different degredation path
(like more than one of the five HD's failing for a month) if this
was a power problem.  When I power the chassis on now, all the fans
light up and appear to spin at full speed.  The various LED's on the
mobo itself light up.  This is both with & without all the drives
unplugged from the PS.

I'd be happy to replace it if I could find a loaner spare to test.
Power supplies are cheaper than mobo/CPU/RAM.  I doubt that's the
issue, though.

> Take ALL the cards out (except video), all but 1 (or 2 if required) memory card, not drives attached, not even floppy or CD.  Does it POST now?  If you have a diff PS try it on the bare MB also.  If you get POST then started adding in memory first, then other things until it breaks again.

Video is the only card that's ever been in there.  There's no on-board
video, and this is the only capatible vid card that I own.  I already
disconnected all of the drives and USB devices.  I just now tried
removing each pair of RAM (it had 4x2GB), putting the remaining pair
in the appropriate slots, but neither allowed it to post.

Given that it was POSTing just fine earlier this afternoon, but was
randomly acknowledging my request to enter the boot menu, then
stopped POSTing altogether when I plugged in my PS2 keyboard (perhaps
a coincidence), is there any reasonable chance that this could have
been caused by the BIOS update that I performed yesterday?  Wouldn't
the new BIOS most likely perform consistently, whatever that may be?
Might the new BIOS have triggered problems that already existed?
I rebooted this thing over a dozen times in the couple days before
the BIOS update, and it always booted fine, but had disk issues.  I
suppose the answer to that question won't help me solve the problem
at this point, but it would help assign blame more accurately.

> If still nothing I would say the MB is toasty.

If that turns out to be the case, do any of you have any recommendations
for brands or models of well-equipped mobo's that I should either avoid
or pursue?  Who has a really good or bad reputation these days?

-- 
Ben "Obi-Wan" Hollingsworth    obiwan at jedi.com    PrairieRimImages.com
   The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the
     Giver of all good things, so if I stand, let me stand on the
       promise that You will pull me through.  -- Rich Mullins