Quoted from jonny_eh

I bought a capacitor from a local electronics store to replace the bulging one on the motherboard. According to pinrepair.com it's a 1000uF 6.3V capacitor, but the store only had 1000uF 25V, will it work?

Yes, that will work.

You can go higher on the cap specs  (ie. 25V vs. 6.3V) but not the reverse.

(The voltage is a maximum rating.  ie, the cap will handle UP TO 25V .)

As long as the cap physically fits (..the 25V might be bigger than the 6.3V),
you should be fine ...

Good luck.

Steph

Damn. I replaced the one transistor that was bulging, but no luck, still no booting.

I'll just wait for the right capacitors to arrive and get my guy at work to do the replacements properly. Hopefully that will do it. What other options have I got? nucore?

Good luck Jonny.   Hope this works out for you.

Quoted from jonny_eh

Damn. I replaced the one transistor that was bulging, but no luck, still no booting.

If you didn't replace all of these caps on the mobo, you can't rule out the caps yet.

D

Ok, replaced all the caps on the mobo, but still no boot. I've only tested on the workbench though, haven't brought it home to test in the machine yet. I hooked it up to an AT power supply, AT keyboard (not easy to find these days!), and to an LCD monitor. Yes, the prism card is removed (it's at home).

Now what?

While it doesn't explain why your MB doesn't boot, how exactly are you hooking it up to a LCD monitor?  Is your LCD capable of displaying CGA signals?  If your LCD is just your generic retail LCD, it won't work.

Sam

Quoted from pinsRfun

While it doesn't explain why your MB doesn't boot, how exactly are you hooking it up to a LCD monitor?  Is your LCD capable of displaying CGA signals?  If your LCD is just your generic retail LCD, it won't work.

Sam

I was told that if you remove the prism card, a standard VGA monitor will show the initial POST screen.

I don't know if that's true or not.  It doesn't make sense to me that the PRISM card would alter the video signal to VGA compatible from CGA but I don't know enough about P2K to be positive about it.  

Which path should I take? I guess 1 would be best, but there's probably a long turnaround time.

1) Does anyone know if mindstorm88 repairs pin2k motherboards? I emailed him, waiting for a response.

2) There's a guy on RGP offering a NOS motherboard for $269+$30 shipping. He said he'd take my broken one and offer me the NOS one for $220 with free shipping.

3) Buy nucore (complete, or build my own?) Then sell off my prism card and broken motherboard.

Quoted from pinsRfun

I don't know if that's true or not.  It doesn't make sense to me that the PRISM card would alter the video signal to VGA compatible from CGA but I don't know enough about P2K to be positive about it.  

See here

Cool.  Learn something new everyday.  Thanks.

Price sounds fair for the motherboard. Not just any MediaGX board will work. You need that specific one with the 5520 chipset 200, 233 or 266 Mhz CPU and super I/O.

If you can verify the prism card is ok your probably better of in the long haul selling it and going Nucore IMHO. Here is the issue though with testing the other components. How many people are going to start plugging in cards into a good one of these mobo's to troubleshoot it? I'd be a bit concerned about trying that on my system to be honest.

A bit off topic but anyone have a good source for the CPU fan replacements? A little bit of preventative maintenance would be a good thing. I snagged one last year but I couldn't readily match it up recently.