My trusty 10 year old P2, 200 finally bit the dust I fear. It locked up, I turned it off, turned it back on and there was a loud pop. Now nothing happens so I’ve had to hook up the laptop.
Question 1. Is it possible or even worth it to get a new motherboard and just “plug and play”, if so, what is the biggest/fastest that will fit into an old case? Or am I just screwed by advances and have little choice but to get a new puter?
Question 2. In the meantime, is there such a thing as a Hard Drive to SCSI card adapter? Is there a simple way to transfer my data from the dead puter to the laptop?
Question 3. The laptop runs W98, and I rarely use it so get a lot of strange things. I am constantly getting a popup that tells me that my MSN password needs updating, or I can’t access MSN or something like that. I never had MSN but want to get rid of this window. I can’t find anything in this that even shows MSN. On a related note, everytime I close email or a browser window, I get a prompt asking me if I want to close open modem connections. Can I turn this off someplace?
Well, if its around 10 years old I’ll assume you’ve got either a plain Vanilla Pentium 200, or possibly a Pentium 200MMX.
Will it fit your case? Depends if you have an ATX motherboard or not. It’s a crapshoot around that age. Depending what failed on your old one (the power supply may have gone) you might not have much choice anyhow. I’d just buy a new ATX case with a power supply to be on the safe side. They’re cheap enough anyhow and you’ll have piece of mind of having a new power supply.
“Hard drive” to “SCSI” adapter? Is your old hard drive IDE or SCSI?
Q1. IMHO get a new one. You’ll spend just about as much money on fix-ups for the old one.
Q2. The pop was for the monitor or for the harddrive? What kind of pop was that? The answer depends on what kind of pop that was. If it’s really truly dead, forget transfering data.
Q3. Are you sure you don’t run MSN Instant messenger? It’s this little person icon next to your clock in the left bottom.
bernse and !ceQueen, me push button on white box. White box make turning on sound, then big pop… like “SNAP”. Will no longer turn on. Monitor fine, hooked up to little grey box, same as board with letters and thing with two buttons.
I can use the hell out of these things, but I don’t know what makes them work. I THINK the two HD’s are IDE, going on old memory.
Computer was a generic shop build model. Case is 7"W, 13"H, 16"D. I haven’t opened it yet because I’m lazy today.
And no MSN IM. Only IM I have ever used on this is Yahoo. I did find a bunch of MSN stuff that came preloaded with it. I was searching for MST like a moron (I was watching MST 3K this morning).
Does the fan turn, hard drive turn, power light, uh, light? If not, then the pop may have been just the power supply. Your other components may still be good.
Another vote for the PS failing. 90% of popping sounds at failure are caused by electrolytic caps failing due to overheating, which is instant death to a switched-mode power supply. At that age, it’s unlikely to be an ATX board, and AT power supplies are hard to come by (though some searching on eBay may turn up a few). Personally, I’d bite the bullet and buy, if not a completely new system, at least one that’s newER. P-IIIs in the neighborhood of ~700 MHz or even low-end P-IVs are dirt-cheap these days.
Well, I just opened it up and don’t know anything more. The only writing anyplace on the MB is Intel and the PS is from LCT Technologies. No obvious damage anyplace but there is a lot of brownish coloring on the PS where the cable comes into it. Been putting off a new one for too long I suppose. Now I just gotta find one that will take a zip drive and hit the junk stores and try and get this one running and give it to the kids. Thanks folks.
The original Pentium topped out at 200. The Pentium MMX topped out at 233.
The Pentium II, IIRC, started at 233 as well.
If he’s certain its a 200, its almost certainly a P200 or P200MMX. Probably a Socket 7 board. They did make them in ATX style (I remember my first PC after my haitus with the Amiga was an Ausus XP55T2P4 ATX board that was brand new on the market at the time… 1994 or 95). The P200 was top of the line at the time (save the Pentium Pro series). However, the odds are it is likely an old AT style.
Either way, I’d bite the bullet and buy a new cheap case with power supply. They can be had for something like $40 and get a cheap mobo and processor. You could be up and running with a “relatively” modern PC for a few hundred $$$ now.
Sounds like the magic smoke all leaked out of the power supply, leaving that brown smudge.
From this distance, I dont know if you’d need an “AT” or an “ATX” power supply, but for $20 or $25, you can get a basic replacement power supply at CompUSA.
Have a look here for some sketches to help identify what you need.
