IBM PS/1 problem

[im_an_alien]

My PS/1 won't boot. I can't figure out what's wrong with it. I turn it on, the HDD and PSU fan start spinning, but that's it. No video, no beeps. It won't even try to boot from a floppy, even when I disconnect the HDD. Another weird thing is that my printer goes offline when I turn on the computer, and won't go online again until I turn the computer off or unplug the printer. Any idea what's wrong with it?

[Vlad]

Shot in the dark, but it kinda sounds like a power fault of some kind. Assuming the printer is powered by its own outlet and not the computer, is something inside the case grounding out the motherboard or power supply? Did you try to reseat chips in case something got loose or corrosion/dust? If these are on a power strip, did you try another power strip?

[im_an_alien]

Shot in the dark, but it kinda sounds like a power fault of some kind. Assuming the printer is powered by its own outlet and not the computer, is something inside the case grounding out the motherboard or power supply? Did you try to reseat chips in case something got loose or corrosion/dust? If these are on a power strip, did you try another power strip?

Printer is powered by its own outlet. Haven't tried any of those fixes (it is on a power strip), but I will later. As far as corrosion/dust, there's a TON of dust in the case, so I'll try that.

[im_an_alien]

Meh, still can't get it to work. I pretty much took the entire computer apart, blowing off dust wherever I found it (and also where I didn't, as was the case for the CPU and BIOS chips). I also plugged it directly into the wall.

[Druid6900]

Sounds like a stuck bit somewhere, try rotating the RAM around.

[im_an_alien]

Tried that, didn't work. However, by taking out 2 sticks I got it to give me a gray screen with "000000 0001 201" (IIRC) on it, so I'll keep messing with the RAM.

[Druid6900]

Ok, well, if you're using 30 pin SIMMs, it's telling you some are missing.

In that case, take the two in there out, put the other 2 back in, put the two that were in there originally in the two empty sockets and try booting.

The idea here is that, if the fault is in low RAM, you want to move those higher up in the stack so that it MAY boot and give you an error during the memory count. That way, you will know that the bad strip is in SIMM 3 or SIMM 4 and can replace them one at a time until it works.