how to kill an motherboard ... and then kill it's replacement

rob1891

Here is the score: About I week ago I was doing a little modification to a power connector without having the powersupply turned off, stupid? Of course. One short later and I am assuming the board is dead, it complains about memory on start up but the memory has tested fine. 1 dead motherboard, replacement 120 euros.

Now, the machine I was playing around with is a Dell, things to note about this are:

1. it has a custom interface to the case mounted controls (on/off, hdd light, reset etc...). So my brand spanking new motherboard was going to have some trouble with this.

2. it does not have a standard atx powersupply with standard power connectors. It supplies the 3.3voltage for the cpu on a small 6 pin connector and the rest of the power comes through the standard 20 pin connecter, that is wired in a NON-standard way.

So you might have already guess what I have done. I have connected the dell 20 pin connector to my new motherboard and now I figure that is the second I have wasted in 1 week.

What are your thoughts? Have I killed my new board? When I connected it to the PSU all I got was a high pitched whining noise. When I powered on (with an improvised switch) nothing happened at all. As far as I know the PSU remained in "standby" state and so hopefully it has not flooded the board with wacko voltages.

Right now I am thinking, plant bomb at dell ireland, bray then rewire the 20pin connector to provide the voltages I've seen in the standard pinouts and have another go.

thanks

Rob

Gerry

Dell psu connector is wired differently ( because they are ****s ) Not sure if they do this anymore, from reading on the net I think they have come back to the atx standard on their newest machines. I don't think you have killed your board, this happened to me, and I just went for the quick fix and put in a standard atx psu, and everything worked fine. This was on an xps 450 upgraded with a new motherboard.

It is possible to wire the dell psu to the standard atx connector, they just swapped some wires around. ( google this and you should get the pinouts ). The extra connector is not necessary for operation, its just dell playing it safe.

rob1891

Yep Gerry, had some fun rewiring the standard atx connector and low and behold the thing worked!! So my new board has come out with only a few minor bumps and scratches (I shorted yet another power connector, this time with a multimeter, luckily the board seems a good bit more resiliant and only that fan outlet is dead).

I was a little worried that the standby voltage that the psu always outputs would damage the board. With dell wiring connecting to the abit board I was putting 5 volts where 3.3 should be going, and tho I am getting some strange messages at bootup (that hopefully will be fixed with a bios update) it still loads up windows and everything seems to be fine.

Now all I need is a pinout of that stoopid case controls ribbon. I think I'll be playing with my multimeter yet again, too obscure for the net I am afraid.

Did this belong in Technology? Oh well, sorry if it did, thanks!

Rob

Gerry

Nah, its not too obscure for the net. Theres sites out there dedicated to such conversions.

aidan_dunne

DELLS! AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! :mad:

Don't get me started on Dells. Biggest heaps of $hit I've ever come across. They seem to make PC's using rules they completely made up themselves. Most of the parts in a Dell (PSU and cases in particular) are made by Dell themselves which means if something goes wrong and your PC is out of warranty you can be royaly screwed as a standard "off-the-shelf" part probably won't work or fit. You wouldn't believe some of the trouble I've had with Dells over the years, including cutting my hand when trying to get the case off one once. What the hell do they make them from anyway, razor blades? Jesus, don't get me started on Dells!!!!!! :mad:

Gerry

Have to disagree there, I've cut my hands on cheap generic cases a few times, but never on a dell. I think their cases are quite clever really.

halfab

Dell proprietary (non-standard) ATX design

http://165.193.123.52/articles/upgrade3_01_01.asp

Just to help future visitors to the board.