Need help putting back together old computer

[Oskar Mcfarlane]

This is what comes up on screen

[mariushm]

The hard drive seems to be plugged properly.

 

The pictures don't tell me much, at least there's no text printed on that would tell me.  However, there was a manufacturer called PC Chips that loved to rebrand chipsets and give them confusing names to make them look more premium, more high end, more expensive.

I noticed on the heatsink the name "PC100 BX Pro" which made me think of that manufacturer, because BX was a very popular and expensive chipset from Intel without integrated video, and this motherboard uses cheaper lower performance chipset from SiS. By calling the chipset BX pro they were hoping to trick customers into thinking this motherboard is more high end.

 

So from this I determined that this motherboard is made by PC Chips and by looking after this chipset name, I determined that your motherboard is PC Chips M747 and you this should help you find drivers for it.

In the meantime, I found the manual here and I attached it to this post.

As you can see J4 is the video card connector but pin one is to the edge of the motherboard, and pin one is usually indicated on strip cables by the red wire, so it makes me think your vga cable is plugged the wrong way around on the motherboard.

Did you try inserting it the other way around, just to see if you get some signal on the monitor when you power up the computer?

 

M747.PDF

[mariushm]

Besides this, I'd like to point out something that bothers me a bit.

There's something that seems wrong with that green card in the PCI slot, in your last pictures it looks like there's something black oozing from the video card on the white PCI slot.  If that's not some kind of glue to keep that card in place but rather some faulty components leaking on the PCI slot and on the contacts of that slot, you should pull out that card (which I now think is a sound card, so it shouldn't be critical to get this old system booting up)

 

Also make sure sure cards are inserted all the way in, some of these older systems won't even turn on if there's some incomplete connection between the card and the system.

 

ps. In the future, when you take more close-up pictures of components, try out the "macro" feature of your camera, if it has any.

[Oskar Mcfarlane]

10 minutes ago, mariushm said:

The hard drive seems to be plugged properly.

 

The pictures don't tell me much, at least there's no text printed on that would tell me.  However, there was a manufacturer called PC Chips that loved to rebrand chipsets and give them confusing names to make them look more premium, more high end, more expensive.

I noticed on the heatsink the name "PC100 BX Pro" which made me think of that manufacturer, because BX was a very popular and expensive chipset from Intel without integrated video, and this motherboard uses cheaper lower performance chipset from SiS. By calling the chipset BX pro they were hoping to trick customers into thinking this motherboard is more high end.

 

So from this I determined that this motherboard is made by PC Chips and by looking after this chipset name, I determined that your motherboard is PC Chips M747 and you this should help you find drivers for it.

In the meantime, I found the manual here and I attached it to this post.

As you can see J4 is the video card connector but pin one is to the edge of the motherboard, and pin one is usually indicated on strip cables by the red wire, so it makes me think your vga cable is plugged the wrong way around on the motherboard.

Did you try inserting it the other way around, just to see if you get some signal on the monitor when you power up the computer?

 

M747.PDF

Yes I did and it said no video output

[mariushm]

If you can't get the video to work, all I can suggest is to find a PCI video card (they're cheap, less than $10), plug it into an empty pci slot and hope that the motherboard will automatically disable the integrated video card and switch to the new video card.

 

Here's some examples:

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Matrox-G550-PCI-Graphics-Card-High-Profile-32MB-LFH-60-F7011-0001-G55MDDAP32DSF-/331817881684?hash=item4d41e31054:g:wnoAAOSwBnVW~Dtg

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MATROX-G550-PCI-F7011-0001-GRAPHICS-CARD-G55MDDAP32DBF-/371590860686?hash=item56848a8f8e:g:A9QAAOSwGOxXAHEj

http://www.ebay.com/itm/VGA-208PCI-128TW-128MB-/272366293453?hash=item3f6a4bd1cd:g:0AcAAOSwZVlXwhSK (this one is better for games, the two above are better/faster at 2D stuff)

[Oskar Mcfarlane]

9 minutes ago, mariushm said:

If you can't get the video to work, all I can suggest is to find a PCI video card (they're cheap, less than $10), plug it into an empty pci slot and hope that the motherboard will automatically disable the integrated video card and switch to the new video card.

 

Here's some examples:

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Matrox-G550-PCI-Graphics-Card-High-Profile-32MB-LFH-60-F7011-0001-G55MDDAP32DSF-/331817881684?hash=item4d41e31054:g:wnoAAOSwBnVW~Dtg

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MATROX-G550-PCI-F7011-0001-GRAPHICS-CARD-G55MDDAP32DBF-/371590860686?hash=item56848a8f8e:g:A9QAAOSwGOxXAHEj

http://www.ebay.com/itm/VGA-208PCI-128TW-128MB-/272366293453?hash=item3f6a4bd1cd:g:0AcAAOSwZVlXwhSK (this one is better for games, the two above are better/faster at 2D stuff)

Could you just plug in the hardrive to a newer computer

[mariushm]

New computers don't have IDE connectors anymore. Some computers don't even have PCI slots anymore, which would allow you to use cheap PCI controllers to add IDE connectors to your system.

There are also slightly more expensive controllers that you can plug in pci-express slots which are more common.

 

Here's a list of controllers that give you at least one IDE connector, usually besides a couple of SATA connectors : 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007607 600022623 600022626&IsNodeId=1&page=1&bop=And&order=PRICE

 

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I assumed you wanted to rebuild the system to play old games on it, or something like that. If it's just data you want to recover then yeah, you could just buy a controller and be done with it. On that old computer, you'd also have to install a PCI network card to transfer files from it, or a USB controller card (so you could copy data on usb sticks) or a IDE CD-Writer / DVD-Writer to move data from it.

That motherboard is so old that it doesn't have any of the modern "comforts" (like usb and network) built inside it.  It actually has sound card onboard, but I didn't see the bracket with audio connectors in your pictures.