I turned my PC on today only to have it turn itself off straight away. On turning it on again I receive 1 long beep, followed by a pause, followed by another long beep and this continues. I see nothing on the monitor screen. My specification is as follows:

MSI K7N2 Delta Series
AMD Athlon 2800XP barton
2 x 256mb Ebuyer RAM
ATI Radeon 9600pro

I have removed the cmos battery for over 10 minutes disconnected. I have used the JBAT1 jumper to clear the cmos also, but this has made no difference. Interestingly, if I remove one of the RAM sticks and turn on the PC I receive no beeps, but still the PC will not boot. It does not matter which RAM stick I use or in what memory slot they are in.

Obviously the situation does not look good, but does anyone have any ideas as to whether the problem lies with the Motherboard or the RAM?

Any help or advice would be much appreciated - I'm really quite annoyed/upset (!) that I'm looking at having to get a new motherboard and/or RAM and refit everything. But I want to avoid a "buy new motherboard...that doesn't work...new RAM...doesn't work...new processor...doesn't work" etc situation