Pentium IV - Beeping Error

Lord_Vltor · January 8, 2016

Hello LTT Community,

in these days I'm trying to get back on their 'feet' all my old rigs - some of them being AWFULLY old machines, like a P3 I tried to revive with a Linux OS (probably a bad idea since I'm not able to handle that OS).
Anyway.

My main concern right now is with my old, beloved P4, the first PC I owned, and the first one I built with my own hands.

When starting - not always, but often - he ('he') gives up a beeping error consisting into a long beep followed by three short ones.

I went through internet research and found nothing.

Tried to remove and move around the slots the RAM banks (3 of them).

Fiddled with HDs, using almost all the compatible ones I have at my disposal.

...annnd got to nothing, the problem seems to be still caused by... no idea.

I really love that rig. A lot. I mean, I have a lot of memories related to it, and well, I have a lot of physical memories stored in HDs that can be read only by a machine that old - so yes, there's even a practical side-use.

Its motherboard is an ASUS P4S800, and I know isn't nice to say, but that PC had to run for months at a CPU temperature of over 90°C (194°F). I was young and reckless at the time, but even if I had to disassemble the CPU, pry it out from the heatsink with a knife, and re-build everything, I never got a problem since then - until I 'retired' it in 2008. The next time I powered it, years later, I got this 'inconvenient' I can't get rid of.
Any help will be very much appreciated.
If more data are needed to solve the problem, ask, and I'll fetch.