PC Chips had its chips

[luggagewarrior]

I have an 810MLR unit socket A plus 700MHz Duron which has now died after 43 years of faithful service. The bootup keeps cycling and never gets to the post bleep, and the floppy drive led stays on with its motor running. Some of the radial capacitor bases look convex and one is perforated, poss signs of being spiked. I am assuming that the motherboard is now u/s, but I'm not sure about the CPU. The PSU voltages are all correct and the ram / peripherals have all been removed / swapped without any change in the initial fault. How can I now localise the fault so that I can be confident about which replacement part to fit. Is it safe to assume that the CPU has also had it? If the PSU has gone unreliable, I dont want to fit a new motherboard only to find it getting spiked also.
Please don't tell me to scrap it cos we've shared such great times together.
TA

[johnenty]

I would like to buy your time machine or at least borrow it for a weekend. I fancy going in to the future and geting myself a P9 133Ghz so I can stop upgrading for 43 years.

I expect when you bought it you were told by the seller it would last a life time but 43 years for an electrical item is pretty good going. For about £120 you should be able to replace board, ram and cpu. time to bite the bullet and buy some new kit. The normall life of a PC is about 3 or 4 years and for a PC chips board to last 2 years is lucky.

buy your self a surge protector but again 1 destructive surge in 43 years you cant really moan, maybe you could claim on insurance???

[Freekie_Freddie]

It's a fair bet that the CPU is in good condition. Cheaper boards such as PC Chips are known to utilise cheap components and the larger electrolytics are usually the first to go.

[Shambles]

...Some of the radial capacitor bases look convex and one is perforated...

I've seen this twice before, where the electrolytic caps had bulging convexed tops and had discoloured.

Sorry mate, in the bin she must go

[The Prodigy]

Leaking caps!!
Yep no doubt they are cheap caps which a lot of mobo manufacturers have used in the past and have had problems with (Abit's famous overclocking NF7-S for instance)

The line you get what you pay for is very true and although the PCChips boards are excellent budget boards provided you choose wisely you cannot expect them to last or perform as well/long as motherboards costing over twice as much.
DFI and a lot of other more expensive mobo manufacturers now only use Japanese Capacitors as they are of a much higher quality and do not have the problems/issues that you have described above.

Personally I think if you are going to be using the computer a lot then it's worth paying the bit extra to get a higher grade mobo.

[luggagewarrior]

Thanks for those replies, If I am to assume that the CPU is ok and it turns out otherwise, when I fit another mobo, is there a possibility that the cpu might damage the mobo? and if so, is there a way of pinpointing where the fault lies between cpu / mobo. Ta

[Shambles]

Thanks for those replies, If I am to assume that the CPU is ok and it turns out otherwise, when I fit another mobo, is there a possibility that the cpu might damage the mobo? and if so, is there a way of pinpointing where the fault lies between cpu / mobo. Ta

The regulator electrolytic caps are the problem mate.

The two mobos I looked at were both PcChips and you couldn't desolder the 4 or 5 caps that were bloated. They just squished. I'm pretty sure your cpu will be fine.

Just goes to show you, these caps are about 12p each to buy

PS.. do they wobble when you try to wriggle them? Sure sign that they've mashed out.