Good grief. New ram arrived this morning - 2 sticks of 1Gb DDR2-800 XMS2-6400C4 corsair jobby (with a huge dominator heat sink that won't fit in the first DIMM because of the CPU cooling fan).

Installed it. Still nothing. Can't even get into the BIOS settings to manually configure the new stuff.

And at this point, i'm just about all out of ideas.

The PSU's been tested. By all accounts, it's fine.

That just leaves the CPU, i guess . . .

Yeah, you might verify that the CPU and MB are compatible. Sometimes it isn't lidted really clearly in documentation and you may need to send a msg to the manufacturer of the MB to be 100% but if not then it should be a CPU issue. These are the exact "ghost in the machine" problems that drive us all crazy trying to find.

This is interesting - to me, anyway, lol.

Here is the CPU support list that goes with my new motherboard:

http://www.giga-byte.com/Support/Mot...ProductID=2722

I've been trying to use an Athlon 64 X2 5000+ black edition cpu (65nm, G2) - which, according to this list, is supported only by version 2 of the bios onwards. Could that be the problem?

Ironically, i got just the other day a replacement processor, an Athlon 64 X2 4200+ brisbane, and looking at the cpu support list, like the other, it seems to need version 2 of the bios or better. So if the first one doesn't work without updating the bios, it doesn't seem likely this one will either.

So now i'm wondering if it's going to be possible to flash the bios on a machine that is basically dead

It is possible, unfortunately in order to flash the BIOS you will need a CPU in the board, of course this only requires any compatible CPU if you can obtain one. Most small shops would be willing to do this for a nominal cost as it can be done on a MB + PSU + Keyboard / mouse + BIOS updater on a bootable flash drive, they only need to use a CPU fom another build in order to do this - this will also give you confirmation that the board is good at the same time.

Thanks for your input, dude. I appreciate it : )

I have one further question, though (for now, that is). Is my original cpu likely to have been damaged by my efforts to make it work with a BIOS which does not support it?

No, it is very unlikely that it will have been damaged, mostly due to it not havning ever been powered on for any long periods of time.

I got a new processor - one that is on the list of supported CPUs from the web-link i posted above.

And it's still not working. I still can't get anywhere near anything so simple as a BIOS screen.

I really, really don't know what to do now. I've gone back to basics and checked once more the obvious things like the power connections, and so forth. They seem fine. I might try going back to the OCZ ram i originally had installed, but i have no confidence whatsoever that that will make the slightest difference. When it first went belly up, i took it to a bloke in a shop for him to have a look at it. He wasn't able to give an accurate diagnosis, much less fix it, but he seemed to think the PSU was fine, and i would like to think that what little he did do would include properly testing the power supply.

Like i say, at this point, having changed motherboard, ram, and processor, having checked connections, having taking it once already to a shop to be looked at, i don't have the faintest idea what might be wrong with it or how to go about fixing it.

It might sound a bit odd but you might wanna try to go back to square one and do the barebone start and then procedd from there one component at a time and see if you do get anywhere, It is extremely frustrating to be running around in circles but the least we can do is to try to sort it out for you one way or another.

Raj

I'm just curious - what exactly counts as a barebones start? I guess what i want to know is whether i should leave my graphics card and/or hard drive connected.

I ask about the gfx card because my mobo does not have onboard graphics, and beeps at me if the gfx card is not properly installed. I suppose it'll be an interesting experiment to take the gfx card out and see if i can get it to beep - which is a heck of a lot more than i can get out of it at the moment.

by bare bones i meant that disconnect all the components.
Just have your PSU, mobo, CPu, CpuFan, Ram and probably the gfx card to see if you get anywhere towards the bios. If that works then start connecting one item at a time like the Hard Disk, drives etc....

You might have done it already but since you have bought a couple of new bits so i'd do it just to be sure mate.

Good luck

Raj