On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 16:26:35 GMT, "steve d. podleski"
<steve.d.podleski@boeing.com> wrote:

>While I was working on my pc, the system shut down as if the power failed.

You were working on it while it was turned on ??!!

Could you describe what you "think" might have happened?
I suspect you might have shorted something, tripping the PSU
to shut off. That might mean you needed to unplug it from
the AC for a few minutes then retry it. If you didn't
unplug it from AC, it might not start.


>I tried to turn the system back on but nothing happened. The only sign of
>power was a green light on the motherboard. I replaced the power supply with
>a used Dell power supply that I got at a surplus store; this used power
>supply had an extra bundle of blue and while cable with a small connector
>that, I guess, needs to be connected to the motherboard but I could not find
>a compabatible socket;

What did that extra connector look like? I'd guess it's for
the PSU fan RPM sensor- and you don't need it, shouldn't
hook it up.

More important, does this Dell PSU's wiring colors and pin
positions match up to your other PSU? it might be a
proprietary, incompatible pinout.


>the old power supply had only one connector to the
>motherboard.This replacement power supply had no effect including not
>lighting the green light on the motherboard.
>
> Also, when the computer was functional, I would get occasional warnings
>from the BIOS that the fan had 0 rpms but the after a few seconds, the fan
>rpm was back to full value; I did not see this warning before the compuer
>shut down.

It could mean the fan was bad, or it could just mean the fan
was running at a low RPM, low enough that the motherboard
bios couldn't detect it's RPM properly- that's a common bios
bug that is "Sometimes" corrected on later bios.

I'd plug the old PSU back into the system, try to start the
system and note whether it's fan is spinning (look at it,
not by the bios health monitor screen). If the fan isn't
spinning then turn the system off and decide whether to
attempt replacing the fan (if the PSU hadn't baked for too
long) or replacing whole PSU.


>This system is over 5 years old with a 1.1GHz Athlon, ASUS motherboard and
>300W power supply and 768MB Crucials (sp?) RAM.


Depends on exactly what happened when you were working on
it. if you think you damanged some particular part, pull
that part out. you might also unplug AC and clear CMOS,
then retry it.