PC problem.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The new PS arrived. It's not that. ;-)

Stripped the thing down and cleaned everything. The Asus board I have is known to have a problem with the chipset cooling, so removed that and cleaned and applied new paste. Battery was at about 2v so replaced that too.

It fired up and selected the BOIS page. But on configuring, saving and exit, back to not firing up at all.

So looks like an MB failure?

I'd just buy a new motherboard, but this machine is configured for my needs including a Serial port and not sure many new ones have this?

[Andrew]

Going the same way as Firewire and parallel ports I'm afraid.

At least you can still get combo PCI cards to provide a serial port and parallel port though. Whether the latest bios could cope is another matter.

There is this if money was no option :-

[Andrew]

And even this one to control over a lan :-

This one has a pdf on the Novatech website

[Steve Walker]

Quite a few still do, if only as a header for connection to a backplate mounted socket (not usually supplied). Last month I bought a motherboard as part of my eldest son's birthday present, that had one and it is a modern one for a Ryzen processor.

SteveW

[mm0fmf]

Serial ports don't seem to want to die. My 6month old Dell docking station at work for the laptop has all sorts of modern shit (Thunderbolt, USB C connectors, HDMI and DP video connectors) and a serial port. My gast was flabbered when I saw it on there. So a surprising number of shiny new things still have serial ports.

[Fredxx]

Serial ports can be replaced with USB converters.

If this is important, ie you're using Win98 or 95, where you have direct access to the port pins, then it might be worth looking at eBay for used Motherboards.

There are many systems that still use direct control of parallel ports through the IO port using DOS or early windows so there must be a demand for these M/Bs.

I might suggest take the new battery out and see if you can get the BIOS screen again?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Hoever Lindy will do you a serial parallel card that will plug into most motherboard slots

Bios dont have to OS will pick it up

[alan_m]

Does it emit a series of beeps? The number/duration of beeps indicate what could be wrong. Google beep codes for your motherboard.

Also, USB to serial port leads/dongles are available.

[invalid]

somewhat cheaper for one port.

[Adrian Caspersz]

Common fault. Your BIOS 'CMOS' memory settings are corrupt.

Find your motherboard manual, and details there on how to move a jumper to clear it.

[Andrew]

Latest Intel M/Bs don't have PCI slots any longer, which means the cheapest combo serial/parallel cards that once could be bought for less than £10 are obsolete

Rubbish. The OS needs the bios to use the hardware

[invalid]

Windows hasn't used the BIOs to use hardware for decades. Why do you think you need drivers.

[Steve Walker]

Yes and no. Although they work easily for most things, for some pieces of equipment that you might want to connect to, it can take trying 2 or

3 different converters before you find one that works.

Megasquirt engine management systems are one example, while some PLCs are another.

SteveW

[AlexK]

Particularly if any of the caps look bad. Still very unusual that the PS fan only runs while the reset switch is held in tho. Does the new PS still do that ? If it doesn?t, likely just an usual original PS and a separate fault with that.

Plenty still do. It's laptops that mostly don?t anymore and you can still get serial cards.

[Fredxx]

That is why I now go for a brand rather than cheapie no-name USB converters.

I don't know. There aren't many chipsets and so few drivers exist. I've also made my own using an ARM processor and used the Windows native "Usbser.sys" with success.

[jeikppkywk]

But most have pcie slots.

But pcie serial port cards arent.

No it does not. It is free to have a driver for the hardware.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not since MSDOS.

[Andy Burns]

I had a similar sounding issue with two different ASUS models a few years ago, some sort of optimal memory speed setting would kick in, then at next boot it would think the setting wasn't right, so revert the setting, power itself off, and power back on aft a few seconds with the "safe" setting, but it seemed to get stuck in a loop ...

[Andy Burns]

Not with PnP operating systems ...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Interesting. That is what this one has - Com1 being merely a socket on the MB. So I have the adaptor unit. But finding out what MBs include this today seems difficult (I've only really looked on the CPC site - most of the others seem fixated on gaming machines)

It also has a DigiGram audio card that has balanced in outs as well as the various digital options. And a video capture card. I'm rather wary of the costs of updating all of those.