Hi, I just found this forum yesterday and have been real impressed with the attention each thread seems to get and the experience and knowledge of the posters.
My knowledge of computers is very limited; I got my first one only a year ago. (you heard right) But I have learned quite a bit in a year since the computer I bought was an old pentium 2, 333 mhz and I've used it to learn on. (Both my computing skills and comp. repair)
Anyway here's the reason for my post: I got this computer from my uncle which he bought at a garage sale and 6 months later it quit on him. The short of it is I had to put in a new stick of ram and reinstall the o.s. to get it to work. It worked great; so I did a stupid thing and tried to flash a bios upgrade; it didn't go so well-- It wiped out the bios and now I have a dead computer.
There were some other issues with it, the floppy had recently quit working (the drive and cable were fine) the ram going bad seemed fishy too so I started researching the web.
Checking different forums and discussions led me to discover my mobo had leaking capacitors, which I'm thinking may have caused the floppy to malfunction and maybe fry the ram?
Here are the specs for everything currently on the computer;
MSI K7T Turbo ver:3 motherboard socket A (462)
AMD Athlon 1200
ATX form case
Deer Model: DR A250ATX power supply
Western Digital WD 200 Caviar enhanced IDE hard drive (20 gig)
ATI Rage XL video card
The MSI had onboard sound so no soundcard
1 256mb stick of sdram
Here's the options I can see so far: 1. Get my Bios chip reprogrammed ($28) or get a new chip ($25)? and replace the capacitors($_?).
2. Buy an exact replacement mobo (I've seen them go for $20-30 on ebay, but still same cheap caps only new?)
3. Replace the mobo with something compatible with my system only better, something I could eventually upgrade. And when I order a new mobo, also get windows XP (I don't have it now)
Basically its like this; This is all new to me, I know I could probably go buy a new system that would be a better computer and save a lot of time, trouble and money but I want to use this one to learn on and fix it up myself. So if I could get some advice, opinions, recommendations of which way to go, and if I should buy a new mobo which ones should I look at I would greatly appreciate it or any advice I can get.
If you need further info let me know, BTW I'm not looking to build a super gaming comp. or anything, just something upgradable, solid and dependable. Thanks
My knowledge of computers is very limited; I got my first one only a year ago. (you heard right) But I have learned quite a bit in a year since the computer I bought was an old pentium 2, 333 mhz and I've used it to learn on. (Both my computing skills and comp. repair)
Anyway here's the reason for my post: I got this computer from my uncle which he bought at a garage sale and 6 months later it quit on him. The short of it is I had to put in a new stick of ram and reinstall the o.s. to get it to work. It worked great; so I did a stupid thing and tried to flash a bios upgrade; it didn't go so well-- It wiped out the bios and now I have a dead computer.
There were some other issues with it, the floppy had recently quit working (the drive and cable were fine) the ram going bad seemed fishy too so I started researching the web.
Checking different forums and discussions led me to discover my mobo had leaking capacitors, which I'm thinking may have caused the floppy to malfunction and maybe fry the ram?
Here are the specs for everything currently on the computer;
MSI K7T Turbo ver:3 motherboard socket A (462)
AMD Athlon 1200
ATX form case
Deer Model: DR A250ATX power supply
Western Digital WD 200 Caviar enhanced IDE hard drive (20 gig)
ATI Rage XL video card
The MSI had onboard sound so no soundcard
1 256mb stick of sdram
Here's the options I can see so far: 1. Get my Bios chip reprogrammed ($28) or get a new chip ($25)? and replace the capacitors($_?).
2. Buy an exact replacement mobo (I've seen them go for $20-30 on ebay, but still same cheap caps only new?)
3. Replace the mobo with something compatible with my system only better, something I could eventually upgrade. And when I order a new mobo, also get windows XP (I don't have it now)
Basically its like this; This is all new to me, I know I could probably go buy a new system that would be a better computer and save a lot of time, trouble and money but I want to use this one to learn on and fix it up myself. So if I could get some advice, opinions, recommendations of which way to go, and if I should buy a new mobo which ones should I look at I would greatly appreciate it or any advice I can get.
If you need further info let me know, BTW I'm not looking to build a super gaming comp. or anything, just something upgradable, solid and dependable. Thanks
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