Almost dead computer

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Failed to boot, yes. But nothing at all at switch on?

[John Williamson]

Yes. Not so much as a beep. Then after I sorted out the CMOS battery, it beeped complaining that it couldn't find the HD or floppy.

[GB]

Does that depend much on whether the battery is Alkaline or Lithium?

[John Williamson]

If it's a proper CR2032, it's lithium. If it's not lithium, the part number stamped on it shouldn't read CR2032.

[GB]

Good point.

I have in front of me a packet of CR2032 batteries labelled Tecnocell Alkaline Premium Quality. Bought from the market. :)

I say batteries, rather than cells, because if I understand correctly the alkaline cells are all 1.5V, so these would have to have two cells inside them in order to produce 3v. So, yes, I'll accept that they are just mis-labelled.

[Martin Brown]

It is bad news if the thing can't even manage basic self test beeps.

Obvious cause is that one of the PSU outputs is no longer in spec and the motherboard has crowbarred it to protect itself, but this usually blows the fuse or results in the magic smoke exiting spectacularly.

Even with a completely dead HD you should be able to go into BIOS mode unless the thing has *very* fundamental hardware problems. I have had one portable go bad this way in three decades. It became clear it was hardware after I ran it from a bootable Linux CD and that also failed with the same type of fault. Shortly afterwards it would not even get as far as BIOS since it was the keyboard decoder hardware that failed.

[The Natural Philosopher]

More Nickel versus lithium

Nickel is 1-1.2V lithium is generally 3.5-4V

[ARW]

[fred]

In article , ARW writes

Glad you're sorted.

Re: the recording, I assume that is what they call 'going equipped'.

Maybe go for a new thread for the other comp, too many replies here.