Need help putting back together old computer

[Oskar Mcfarlane]

I have taken apart a computer and need it to run again so I can get things of it but it won't start any ideas why

[Guest]

Is that a PS2 port? How old is it? Maybe it's telling you time to upgrade?

[Pcinacan]

1 minute ago, dexxterlab97 said:

Is that a PS2 port? How old is it? Maybe it's telling you time to upgrade?

Did the hardrive or color of psb not hint to you its VERY old

[Oskar Mcfarlane]

It's been sitting in a shed along time I'm not sure what it is but I need it going

 

[MoonlightSylv]

The 20pin connector on the PSU isn't even connected to the board...

 

Connect it.

Edited September 10, 2016 by ShadowTechXTS

[Oskar Mcfarlane]

1 minute ago, ShadowTechXTS said:

The 20pin connector on the PSU isn't even connected to the board...

What is that and where does it need to go

 

[MoonlightSylv]

1 minute ago, Oskar Mcfarlane said:

What is that and where does it need to go

 

It's a large block connector on the power supply, it plugs in above the PS2 (keyboard or mouse) port on the motherboard.

[Ukrainiantrust]

lol

[BuckGup]

7 minutes ago, dexxterlab97 said:

Is that a PS2 port? How old is it? Maybe it's telling you time to upgrade?

Well my motherboard still has PS/2 on it I would have said the Pentium on it but hey whatever I guess

[Oskar Mcfarlane]

2 minutes ago, ShadowTechXTS said:

It's a large block connector on the power supply, it plugs in above the PS2 (keyboard or mouse) port on the motherboard.

There's no 20 pin connector

 

[MoonlightSylv]

1 minute ago, Oskar Mcfarlane said:

There's no 20 pin connector

 

Take a picture of the power supply.

[mariushm]

You need to power the motherboard.  It seems it's the kind that accepts either ATX power (the rectangular connector right above the keyboard DIN connector) , or AT power (the weird connector above the atx connector).

The AT connector is often made out of two separate plugs, which you plug in that connector at a slight angle and they "click" in. If I remember correctly, the black wires have to be in the middle, get the two connectors together and "slide" them in at the same time. One of those connectors is in your first picture at the bottom.

Don't plug both the atx and AT connectors at same time, though i doubt the power supply has something like that.

 

On these old computers, you start the computer by pressing a button on the front case, which is connected directly to the power supply (and runs dangerously at mains voltage). Note on the picture of the power supply, it shows you there that there's a black wire and a red or white wire going to a switch in the front of the case.  Again, BE VERY CAREFUL, don't mess with those while the power supply is plugged in, those are mains voltage.

 

That's about it. 

As a note, some older systems of that time would not start if the memory stick is not placed in the first slot. If your system doesn't start, you should also experiment by moving the stick of ram in the other memory slot, furthest away.

[Sors]

Pentium II.  

 

Those were Good times.

[Oskar Mcfarlane]

[mariushm]

Yeah so like I said, those two connectors to the right. They're often called P8 and P9.  P8+P9 goes in the power slot/connector/whatever.

You put them together with the black wires in the middle and put them in the connector above the keyboard connector (only one where they fit, above the atx power connector)

 

 

 

The ones to the left in your picture are the classic molex hard drive connector and to the right it's the power connector used for floppy disk drives.

 

 

[Oskar Mcfarlane]

OK so it powers now but no post it says to check the connection but there fine what now

[Oskar Mcfarlane]

10 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Yeah so like I said, those two connectors to the right. They're often called P8 and P9.  P8+P9 goes in the power slot/connector/whatever.

You put them together with the black wires in the middle and put them in the connector above the keyboard connector (only one where they fit, above the atx power connector)

 

 

 

The ones to the left in your picture are the classic molex hard drive connector and to the right it's the power connector used for floppy disk drives.

 

 

Yep got it but now it won't display

[mariushm]

Ok, so at least you see something on the screen, which means the video card works.

 

Now you have to get the hard drive to work.

Hard drive is on that flat cable called IDE.  The interesting thing about those cables is that you can connect to devices to one cable, but if you do this, one device needs to be configured as the first (also called Master) and the other device needs to be configured as the second (also called as Slave). No racism, that's just how they were called.

Even if you only have one device (for example the hard drive) on the cable, you have to make sure that it's configured as the first device (master).

On  the hard drive, between the flat ide cable and the power connectors, there's usually a row of pins.  The closest pair to the IDE cable is usually the one which configures the drive as Master, and the next pair is the one which configures the drive as slave (secondary), but sometimes rarely its the other way around.. on your particular hard drive there's a lonely pin which tells you the direction:

 

 

So make sure the jumper (a small thing that shorts two pins at a time) is set on the pair to make the drive Master.

If you have an optical drive on same cable, make sure it's set on slave.  Sometimes there's words like "MA" , "SL" or "CL" right above the pins or on the PCB to tell you which one is which, and make it easier for you.

 

Also, the motherboard has two IDE channels, a primary channel and a secondary one. It doesn't really matter in which channel you put the IDE cable, but see below.

 

Now, motherboards at that time sometimes didn't have code in the bios to automatically run detection of drives at boot, you would have to enter inside the bios and press a menu option to tell it to detect the devices connected to IDE channels and save the information. Your motherboard is probably new enough, but older motherboards probably didn't even have this, so you had to enter some parameters manually in the BIOS.

So your BIOS may have forgotten the hard drive information, or maybe you inserted the ide cable on the second channel connector instead of the primary channel connector and the bios can't find the hard drive on the first channel anymore... you just have to go in BIOS to make it detect the hard drive (and optical drive, if any)

 

When you power up the system it should tell you what key to press to enter bios, usually it's DEL or F2 or F1 .. do what i explained above and get back to us.

[mariushm]

Oh, read replies again and... it's not clear if you got something on screen.

You need a video card  (not sure you got one, there is a card which looks like something that could be a video card) but you need to attach the video card to a monitor, and in those times pretty much VGA connectors were the only thing out there. So find a VGA cable and connect it to the video card.to get image on screen.

 

[Oskar Mcfarlane]

3 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Oh, read replies again and... it's not clear if you got something on screen.

You need a video card  (not sure you got one, there is a card which looks like something that could be a video card) but you need to attach the video card to a monitor, and in those times pretty much VGA connectors were the only thing out there. So find a VGA cable and connect it to the video card.to get image on screen.

 

All I have is this

[Oskar Mcfarlane]

5 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Oh, read replies again and... it's not clear if you got something on screen.

You need a video card  (not sure you got one, there is a card which looks like something that could be a video card) but you need to attach the video card to a monitor, and in those times pretty much VGA connectors were the only thing out there. So find a VGA cable and connect it to the video card.to get image on screen.

 

Do you have any images of that or thw thing before because that would be helpful

[mariushm]

Hold on.  See that chip that has written on it SIS 6326 ? That's part of the chipset, and it's the kind that has an integrated video card inside it, so this means you don't need a dedicated video card for the computer, it has one on the motherboard.

 

I initially assumed the green card is your video card, because it looks like a video card to me, but there's no pictures from the other side so I couldn't tell you for sure.

It's plugged into a PCI slot, which is the slot used before AGP slot which was before PCI Express slots.

While AGP was only for video cards, PCI was a universal slot, just like pci express slots are.

 

Now I noticed that SIS 6326AGP text on the chip, which tells me the chipset has an integrated video card built inside it, and that "video card" inside the chip is internally connected to the wires that would normally be used for an AGP slot, for better performance (hence the AGP text on the chip). That's why this motherboard doesn't have a separate AGP slot for video cards.

 

So you should an integrated video card on the motherboard, but there's no VGA connector hard wired on the motherboard, which means the vga connector should be on a bracket and plugged into a row of pins on the motherboard.  I see a bracket but I assumed it's for the mouse.

If the monitor doesn't work, maybe you plugged that flat cable the wrong way in that row of pins?

 

I can't tell from the pictures who made the motherboard and the model, the pictures are from too far away of blurry. If I did know who made it and the model i could find the manual and give you better advice.

Usually the manufacturer and the model numbers are written between slots , or between cpu and memory slots, or on the edges of the motherboard.. try to find this, or take some better shots of the motherboard if you want to get better help.

[Oskar Mcfarlane]

8 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Hold on.  See that chip that has written on it SIS 6326 ? That's part of the chipset, and it's the kind that has an integrated video card inside it, so this means you don't need a dedicated video card for the computer, it has one on the motherboard.

 

I initially assumed the green card is your video card, because it looks like a video card to me, but there's no pictures from the other side so I couldn't tell you for sure.

It's plugged into a PCI slot, which is the slot used before AGP slot which was before PCI Express slots.

While AGP was only for video cards, PCI was a universal slot, just like pci express slots are.

 

Now I noticed that SIS 6326AGP text on the chip, which tells me the chipset has an integrated video card built inside it, and that "video card" inside the chip is internally connected to the wires that would normally be used for an AGP slot, for better performance (hence the AGP text on the chip). That's why this motherboard doesn't have a separate AGP slot for video cards.

 

So you should an integrated video card on the motherboard, but there's no VGA connector hard wired on the motherboard, which means the vga connector should be on a bracket and plugged into a row of pins on the motherboard.  I see a bracket but I assumed it's for the mouse.

If the monitor doesn't work, maybe you plugged that flat cable the wrong way in that row of pins?

 

I can't tell from the pictures who made the motherboard and the model, the pictures are from too far away of blurry. If I did know who made it and the model i could find the manual and give you better advice.

Usually the manufacturer and the model numbers are written between slots , or between cpu and memory slots, or on the edges of the motherboard.. try to find this, or take some better shots of the motherboard if you want to get better help.

 

[Oskar Mcfarlane]

[Oskar Mcfarlane]

1 minute ago, Oskar Mcfarlane said:

And do I have to plug something else into the hardrive