Pentium III system having trouble starting up

Kilgayne

Kilgayne

New Member
I've mounted a pc using old pieces I had gathered during the past years. Here's what I got :

Pentium III 733mHz Socket 370
160mb SD-Ram (2x64, 1x32) PC100 (The BIOS says it's 133 though)
MSI MS-6153 Motherboard
DVD-Rom/CD-RW Drive (Master 2), CD-Rom Drive (Slave 2), Diskette Drive
Maxtor 4.3gb Hard Drive (Master 1)
D-Link Ethernet PCI Card
USB PCI Card
Sound Blaster 16 ISA Card
3DFX Voodoo 3 AVG Video Card
300 Watt Power Supply (Brand Unknown)

Now the problem is when I start it when it's been off for more than a night, the screen stays black and nothing happens. The drives run for a while then they stop. When I shut it down and restart it with the power button (not the restart button), it works! That's about the only problem I have, apart from that, the system works just fine. Now how may I do so it would start at the first try?

Oh by the way, I could figure where to plug the power light wire but not the hard drive one (on the motherboard). Anyone know where it goes?
 
To find out where the power light goes, download the manual from MSI's site. The problem you describe could be caused by a bad power supply or bad capacitors on the mainboard.
 
well not to make you feel sad but ITS A P3 so you cant expect to be a fx-60

Its going to break sooner or later

NOTHING LASTS FOREVER......
 
does it make any beep patterns...

a P3 isn't likely to break like that... i have one and it runs quite smoothly...
 
yes it seems we have gathered that its a p3 how bout we concentrate on the issue now rather than belittling the system.

seems the hard drive is having issues spinning up, check the power connections to it are ok, do you have another hard drive you can test with it to see if that helps
 
I have a P1 120mHz and it still works perfectly so why shouldnt my p3 -_- anyway

I guess I could try switching the hard drive. I don't have another one right now but I'll try finding one somewhere. But now that I think about it, it could be the power supply, it's getting a bit old... Well actually it could be anything I've put in! XD Anyway I'll try changing some pieces, thanks for the help
 
its probably your best bet, just try swapping out one part at a time for other things. Your right that it could be the PSU too, if its on the way out then it might not be supplying adequate power to run everything. I reckon theres a good chance its one of either two though, HDD or PSU
 
try changing the CMOS battery in the motherboard, it could be that it is dead and therefore loosing all the settings easily when it is switched off for a while, and on the subject of old equipment, i havea 7 year old hard drive which says it has 76% of it's life remaining

Lee :)

edit: i just saw that you said that the ram is pc100 but bios says it is 133, it sounds like it has been overclocked, maybe this could be another culprit, try checking if there is a setting to change it to pc100
 
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