ASUS P5A won't boot - did I fry it?

  • Thread starter Thread starter George
  • Start date Start date
G

George

I have an ASUS P5A that I have been running with a AMD K-6 500 MH
with GNU/Linux Debian. I replaced the the hard drive and
now it does not boot. When I power up I get only a response from
the speaker ( one long beep followed by three short beeps ). After
that I see the access lights from the CD ROM and the new hard drive
light up. Nothing else happens, no post, nothing. I tried putting back
the old hard drive but same response. I hate to admit it but
I installed the new hard drive without turning off the power to the
mainboard.
Did I fry my P5A? Any help will be appreciated.
 
George said:
I have an ASUS P5A that I have been running with a AMD K-6 500 MH
with GNU/Linux Debian. I replaced the the hard drive and
now it does not boot. When I power up I get only a response from
the speaker ( one long beep followed by three short beeps ). After
that I see the access lights from the CD ROM and the new hard drive
light up. Nothing else happens, no post, nothing. I tried putting back
the old hard drive but same response. I hate to admit it but
I installed the new hard drive without turning off the power to the
mainboard.
Did I fry my P5A? Any help will be appreciated.
Click to expand...

probably got plug backward on hard drive or offset by a row or one or more column of pins. i have done that a bunch and have never lost board, really easy to do on floppy.

OTOH if you plugged it in with power on, you may have popped a capacitor. Look for some of those big ones that have an "X' in the top of the capacator and see if there is one or two that are puffed out at the top. If you find one, snip it off. usually they are all in parallel and you can do without just one more often than not.

see if it still beeps if you disconnect just about everyting except the speaker and cpu.
 
George said:
I have an ASUS P5A that I have been running with a AMD K-6 500 MH
with GNU/Linux Debian. I replaced the the hard drive and
now it does not boot. When I power up I get only a response from
the speaker ( one long beep followed by three short beeps ). After
that I see the access lights from the CD ROM and the new hard drive
light up. Nothing else happens, no post, nothing. I tried putting back
the old hard drive but same response. I hate to admit it but
I installed the new hard drive without turning off the power to the
mainboard.
Did I fry my P5A? Any help will be appreciated.
Click to expand...

Probably memory or video card according to typical 1 long 3 short beeps.
Look up "beep code" with Google for your BIOS maker.
Billh
 
billh said:
Probably memory or video card according to typical 1 long 3 short beeps.
Look up "beep code" with Google for your BIOS maker.
Billh
Click to expand...
Thanks Bill,

I think this P5A has Award BIOS so that indicates video failure.
Learn something new everyday. AnywayI will replace video card and see
if that is a patch. Thanks for the help. I am still trying to remember
why I neglected to turn off power before hard drive replacement. Likely
it was a result of aging brain cells.

George
 
Beemer said:
probably got plug backward on hard drive or offset by a row or one or more column of pins. i have done that a bunch and have never lost board, really easy to do on floppy.

OTOH if you plugged it in with power on, you may have popped a capacitor. Look for some of those big ones that have an "X' in the top of the capacator and see if there is one or two that are puffed out at the top. If you find one, snip it off. usually they are all in parallel and you can do without just one more often than not.

see if it still beeps if you disconnect just about everyting except the speaker and cpu.
Click to expand...

I checked all the things that you suggested. The capacitors all look
normal, flat tops. I replugged the cables and power supply to the drive
and even to the mainboard end and they appear to be correctly inserted.
It is hard to get them
wrong since they basically just can be inserted only one way. When you
say disconnect just about anything I am not sure what you mean. The
board has connected to it a IDE hard drive, IDE CD Rom, floppy, serial
port, parallel port, keyboard, PS2 mouse, AGP video card, sound card,
and network card. The serial port and the parallel have nothing
connected to them.
 
Pull and reseat your video card. With the power off!
I had this board at one time and if the card is disturbed it can slip a
little and not work.
Good luck.
Dale
more column of pins. i have done that a bunch and have never lost board,
really easy to do on floppy.capacitor. Look for some of those big ones that have an "X' in the top of
the capacator and see if there is one or two that are puffed out at the top.
If you find one, snip it off. usually they are all in parallel and you can
do without just one more often than not.
 
Dale, I did as you suggested and sure enough it seems to work now, BIOS
found all the hardware and video card seems to work. I will install OS
(Debian GNU/Linux) and roll on I hope. Much thanks to you and all who
helped me. I learned a lot. Thanks again.

George
 
Back
Top