Did I fry a motherboard??

Nathans_Dad · Nathans_Dad's Garage

Ok, I was trying to do surgery on my former main PC tonight. Basically I had two PCs, one that was my main computer and the other was my old PC from about 2 years ago that I kept saying I was going to get running for my kids but never did. So, with my new iMac taking over the main computer duties, I decided to take the parts from both machines and combine them into one. My mistake was that I didn't pull all the data off the PC before I hacked into it. Anyhow, all I did was try and put the 2 PC2100 DDR RAM sticks into the newer PCs RAM Slots. It had some Mushkin RAM already in it which was faster but the slots still worked on the motherboard. So, with the 4 ram sticks in it, the thing booted to the motherboard screen (the one where you can enter setup) and then stuck there. I figured that it didn't like the RAM configuration or something. So, I changed the RAM around in the slots. Mistake here was I put one of the sticks in backwards (DOH) and didn't realize it. Turned on the machine and smelled a faint odor of electrical short. Shut it off immediately and discovered my error. I have pulled the memory out and restored the motherboard to its former configuration with the Mushkin RAM. It won't boot. It turns on, I can hear the hard drives spooling up and clicking, but nothing comes onto the monitor. I changed out the video card with an extra I had from the other machine and still no go.

Any ideas? I still have the mobo and processor from the other system, I could try and swap out the mobo and see if that solves the problem...

Nathans_Dad · Nathans_Dad's Garage

Whew!! The answer was yes I fried it. I swapped out the old motherboard into the case (going from Intel back to an AMD processor in the process), wired it all back together and it booted. Thank God.

I am now in the process of putting all our digital photos of the kids onto a CD and transferring them to the iMac.

Can you imagine what would have happened if I had lost all the photos of our kids? I think my wife might have divorced me...

widebody911 · widebody911's Garage

Quote:

Originally posted by Nathans_Dad
Can you imagine what would have happened if I had lost all the photos of our kids? I think my wife might have divorced me...

Um, the mofo mobo won't cause you to lose that stuff - stick the disk in another system and copy them over.

Nathans_Dad · Nathans_Dad's Garage

Yeah, I know, but the problem is that I didn't have another working system to stick the HDs in to. I had a shell of the old computer which was basically a mobo, processor a couple sticks of RAM and a hard drive. I had to pirate out the power supply because the supply in my main computer went kaput a couple months back. So I had to get one PC system up and running to pull the files off the HDs.

I don't think they make a cable to plug a PC hard drive into an iMac via a USB port, do they??? It would need power, etc.

bryanthompson · bryanthompson's Garage

You can scoop up a cheap USB or Firewire enclosure for that drive, and the mac should pick it up fine.

I can't wait for time machine... manual backups suck

TerryH · TerryH's Garage

The good news is frying a motherboard most times will not affect your hard drives. Glad to hear you got your photos and your wife didn't have to beat you up.

Yes, it's definitely good to transfer those special photos to disk or at least a backup second drive. Better yet, print them at home or take the disk to Kinkos, or the like, and get them into an album. As much as I enjoy the digital world and the ease in which taking photos has evolved, it makes me wonder if future generations are going to enjoy our photos like we enjoy family photos of 50+ years ago.

It's too easy to lose photos electronically. Hard drives crashing and CD's degrading and virus's trying to get us all the time. Are we going to have old digital photos to share with grandchildren and their children if we don't put them into some kind of permanent/tangible shape or form? I know I'm guilty in thinking my photos are safe on my computer... when they really aren't.

We have been getting some of the better ones printed out at the store.

Geez, didn't mean to climb on a soapbox here.... sorry!

bryanthompson · bryanthompson's Garage

Quote:

As much as I enjoy the digital world and the ease in which taking photos has evolved, it makes me wonder if future generations are going to enjoy our photos like we enjoy family photos of 50+ years ago.

We had this discussion when our family was going through photos, looking for pics of my grandpa to use at his funeral / reception. "Back in the day," film and processing were real expensive, so pictures were taken more carefully, and more thought was put into it. Now, you can fit a few thousand pics on an SD card and randomly shoot everything you see. Printing pictures costs, what, $0.10 using the Kodak machines at the store?

At the same time... we're going to have pictures of *everything*, so there'll be more for our future generations to see than we had. Maybe they won't have the same kind of appreciation, but at least there'll be more of 'em

Yellowbird RS · 09-03-2006, 06:53 PM

lendaddy · 09-03-2006, 07:02 PM

On a Mac you can plug the memory(any type of stick, it matters not) in anwhere it fits and it will work just fine. A perfect fit is not important, just get get it "stuck " in there somewhere. In fact, as long as the memory stick is withing 30'(80' on water)of the motherboard the Mac will utilize it.

rcecale · rcecale's Garage

Quote:

Originally posted by lendaddy
On a Mac you can plug the memory(any type of stick, it matters not) in anwhere it fits and it will work just fine. A perfect fit is not important, just get get it "stuck " in there somewhere. In fact, as long as the memory stick is withing 30'(80' on water)of the motherboard the Mac will utilize it.

And don't forget, you can't catch a venereal disease by looking at porn on a Mac, like you can on a PC

Randy

930addict · 930addict's Garage

Quote:

Originally posted by Nathans_Dad
Whew!! The answer was yes I fried it. I swapped out the old motherboard into the case (going from Intel back to an AMD processor in the process), wired it all back together and it booted. Thank God.

I am now in the process of putting all our digital photos of the kids onto a CD and transferring them to the iMac.

Can you imagine what would have happened if I had lost all the photos of our kids? I think my wife might have divorced me...

I dunno how many digital photos you have but copying them to CD then transfering them to the hard drive migh be tedious. I had 40GB of photos and 20 Gb of music that I wanted to move from the MAC to the laptop as a back up. Copying to CD even DVD was out of the question. So I bought a cat6 crossover cable and connected the MAC to the Laptop directly. It copied everything right over in no time. Or if you wanna buy an external drive that's another option but way more expensive. Just something for you to think about. It' really simple to do.

Nathans_Dad · Nathans_Dad's Garage

Yeah I thought about just trying to network the two together and transferring everything over that way, course I still would have to have an operating PC to do that. Good news is it only two 2 CDs to get all the pics over and they are safe and sound inside the Mac now. Plan today is to go through the PC harddrive again and make sure there isn't anything there I need and then wipe the hard drives, disassemble the PC, clean it and then put it back together with more components pirated from the other PC. At the end I will have 3 hard drives, 2 floppy drives and 3 DVD drives in one machine. I don't think we'll ever use all that, but maybe it will look cool....

Anyone know if there is a place that buys used computer equipment?

stomachmonkey · 09-04-2006, 07:45 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by bryanthompson
You can scoop up a cheap USB or Firewire enclosure for that drive, and the mac should pick it up fine.

I retrieved files from 2 hard drives for a friend that way. Just plug em in they show up, locate your user folder and it should all be there.

You can even leave it there as backup.

Scott

Joeaksa · 09-04-2006, 02:48 PM

Just did much the same thing this weekend. Took an old desktop that was not being used and built it up into a server for my home network.

It sits in the corner of the office and is networked with my system. It auto backups everything I program on it at night. Cost was nothing as I have had it for years, and I stuck a couple of old 160 gig hard drives in it from another project.

Could care less about how much memory or speed as its used only for backup. Does not have a word processor on it, nor any other programs, its ONLY for backup. That might be a solution for you is to take an old unit and backup all the photos, letters, Quicken and so on onto a separate system. That way if one hard drive goes down, you have a backup.

I also burn everything onto a DVD every month or so and store it in another location. That way if the house burns or whatever its not a total loss of data.

Joeaksa · 09-04-2006, 02:50 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Nathans_Dad
Anyone know if there is a place that buys used computer equipment?

Yea, Ebay. Just spent the last couple of weeks going through things at my house and if they had not been used in the last 3-5 years and are not family heirlooms or 911 parts, they are getting sold on Ebay.