<< system didnt boot up either. nothing on the monitor and it looks like it basically dead!!!!
if it were the keyboard, wouldnt it say something like keyboard error, press any key or something? >>
Yes. Award bios, at least, only resorts to beeps when it can't initialize the vid card to tell you about other problems (because of the CPU, memory, or vid card problems).
Edit: a quick check shows the AMI bios beeps six times when the keyboard is nixed. Other bios might do this, but award doesn't.