ATX Power Supply

[ArdTech]

Can someone help me with this power supply problem i have? I just bought a new 250Watt ATX case and hooked it up to an ABIT KT7 board with a 750 Athlon cpu...well after hooking in the ATX power cable into the board and the appropriate Power SW wire into the other side of the board which goes to the Power ON on the case, the power supply still doesn't turn on. Is the power supply defective or what?
Thanks

 

[jonnyGURU]

OK....

First, test the power supply to see if you can even make it turn on by itself.

Take JUST THE POWER SUPPLY with NOTHING hooked up to it. Have it plugged in and turned on (if it has a toggle switch on it). Take a paper clip and unfold it. Stick the paper clip in the connector that would normally plug into the motherboard and between the ONE GREEN WIRE and any one of the black wires. The fan on the power supply should spin.

Does it? If no: It's probably a bad power supply.

If yes, put a load on the power supply by plugging EVERYTHING but the motherboard into the power supply. DO NOT HOOK UP YOUR IDE CABLES TO YOUR MOTHERBOARD. Do the paper clip trick again. You should hear everything spin up.

Do you? If no: It's probably a bad power supply or something plugged into the power supply has a short that's crowbarring the power supply. If you think it's the latter of the two possibilities; unplug your devices one at a time and eventually the power supply will spin up.

If yes, take JUST the power supply and JUST the motherboard with the CPU in it and see if it powers up when you hit the power switch. It should power up.

If yes, then pop in a stick of RAM and a video card and NOTHING ELSE and try it again.

If no, remove the CPU. Try it again. If it works now, it may be a bad CPU. If it still doesn't work, you probably have a bad motherboard, because a working power supply with ONLY a motherboard hooked up to it, even with NOTHING in the motherboard, should still power up.

Good luck!

 

[ArdTech]

Thanks a lot, but just clarifying one thing. Should i bend the paper clip and stick one end of it in the green connector of the ATX plug and the other end to any black connector and is there a picture of this somewhere on the net that i can go by maybe? Thanks again.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Didn't know I had to be so literal.

Unfold the paper clip AND THEN bend it into a U-Shape so you can shove it in the green wire and black wire receptacles of the motherboard power connector.

I don't know of any pictures on the net, so to speak. I've always sort of taken it for granted as "working as a tech" common knowledge.

The green wire on a P/S works similar to the blue wire on a car amp. Only on a car amp, the blue wire is energized to turn on the amp and on a P/S, the green wire is grounded to turn on the P/S.

 

[ArdTech]

OK, everything works fine now, i just replaced the memory into another dimm slot, but now it says DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER...i dont know if its just not reading my hard disk or what, and i tried intserting the CD that came with my KT7 board and it doesn't read anything from it when i boot from CD-ROM, could the IDE cable to the Harddrive be defective?

 

[jonnyGURU]

Here's where the Abit is real fun to work with for the newbie....

ALL OF THE IDE CHANNELS despite being capable of seeing your drives, are set to NONE.

You have to go into the BIOS and in Standard CMOS Setup where it "sees" your drive, hit enter. You'll be taken to a second screen and you'll see that it says "NONE" right over where all of the drive parameters are. Hit enter on top of that and change it to AUTO.

If the hard drive is new, don't expect it to boot.

Also, don't expect that Abit CD to boot either.

You'll need either a bootable OS floppy or CD.

As for the "RAM issue" you were having, that would concern me. THERE IS NO REASON ON THE FACE OF THIS EARTH why the DIMM should work in Slot 2 but not Slot 1. It either works or it doesn't. Either you didn't have the DIMM in all of the way or you have a bad DIMM slot.

 

[ArdTech]

it seems like the troubles never stop...I tried to get it to detect my harddrive but it wouldn't save those settings although it did show up, and then i hit the Load FailSafe Defaults option and the screen just went blank, nothing came and on top of that i couldn't shut the computer off, i had to unplug it, then i plugged it back in and turned it on, and it all booted up..but nothing on the monitor and it wouldn't shut off again when i pushed the power off, this is a new one for me!

 

[ArdTech]

Actually, scratch the problem above, i figured out the CMOS just needed to be reset, but now i still have the problem with the disk not booting, and i even changed the settings in the SoftMenu even a boot disk wont take me anywhere, sorry but what now??

 

[jonnyGURU]

All of your IDEs are set to AUTO and the Floppy is your first boot device, correct?

(God, I love Abits)

 

[DaddyG]

Is the light on your floppy all the time ?? If its a Sony or TEAC there a good chance that the cables that come with the ABIT, key the floppy the wrong way. Red stripe on the left looking at the floppy pins. You might need to cut the palstic 'key' off the connector.