I got a free system from someone, with mostly unknown history. Sony VAIO PCV-RX470DS, p4 1.5ghz, "WMT-LE" motherboard, came with 128mb rdram and ONE crimm. After it stopped working, the teenager pulled it into a million or so pieces and did god knows what with it, pronouncing that either the motherboard or the video card were bad and he didn't know which. Later testing showed that the monitor was bad, by plugging it into a working computer and getting no video.
Most notable problems upon getting it were the dismantled cpu fansink (fan unscrewed from heatsink) and the missing crimm. bought a pair of crimms and reassembled the fansink, power on... fans and lights, nothing else. tried a new power supply, no change. figured out I probably had the ram in wrong, swapped the modules around, and got long-short-short beep pattern. tried new ram, no change. tried new video card, no change. tried pci instead of agp video, no change. cleared cmos, no change. nothing I try (except pulling out the ram) changes the long-short-short beep. (and, of course, absolutely nothing is connected to the board except power and the only card is the video cards I've tried)
Since the monitor was found to be bad, and the board was all Rubycons (or so I thought), I figured the "tech" had toasted something in the troubleshooting, and it went in the dead boxes pile. sad, since it's the fastest system I own by a factor of two...
Upon seeing the thread about the little yellow mystery caps, I remembered there were a couple off in the corner of the board, and dug it out of the closet to check. And sure enough, there's two little yellow ones, by the atx connector and ram slots, with vrm parts next to them, and very, very, very slightly domed tops.
Fresh off the digicam: http://www.bushytails.net/~randyg/p1010003.jpg (note that this board seems to use the shaded half of the mask for the positive side, as they even have little + signs next to the shaded halves)
Think it's worth fixing my desoldering station (it's dead AGAIN) and replacing those two yellow caps, or just decide that since the monitor was shown to be the problem, the board was likely destroyed by the guy who took it apart? or for that matter, anything else I should check before giving up?
--Randy
Most notable problems upon getting it were the dismantled cpu fansink (fan unscrewed from heatsink) and the missing crimm. bought a pair of crimms and reassembled the fansink, power on... fans and lights, nothing else. tried a new power supply, no change. figured out I probably had the ram in wrong, swapped the modules around, and got long-short-short beep pattern. tried new ram, no change. tried new video card, no change. tried pci instead of agp video, no change. cleared cmos, no change. nothing I try (except pulling out the ram) changes the long-short-short beep. (and, of course, absolutely nothing is connected to the board except power and the only card is the video cards I've tried)
Since the monitor was found to be bad, and the board was all Rubycons (or so I thought), I figured the "tech" had toasted something in the troubleshooting, and it went in the dead boxes pile. sad, since it's the fastest system I own by a factor of two...
Upon seeing the thread about the little yellow mystery caps, I remembered there were a couple off in the corner of the board, and dug it out of the closet to check. And sure enough, there's two little yellow ones, by the atx connector and ram slots, with vrm parts next to them, and very, very, very slightly domed tops.
Fresh off the digicam: http://www.bushytails.net/~randyg/p1010003.jpg (note that this board seems to use the shaded half of the mask for the positive side, as they even have little + signs next to the shaded halves)
Think it's worth fixing my desoldering station (it's dead AGAIN) and replacing those two yellow caps, or just decide that since the monitor was shown to be the problem, the board was likely destroyed by the guy who took it apart? or for that matter, anything else I should check before giving up?
--Randy
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