William R. Walsh wrote:
Hi!

Thank you ! Well, the mouse and keyboard are not USB - just regular
round green and purple plugs.

These are PS/2 ports. If something was really stuck in a USB port and it
killed the keyboard and mouse too...that's not such a good sign. Since the
system runs, it is very likely that some damage occurred on the motherboard
when the USB port was shorted out.

If the short had caused damage to the +5 volt line coming out of the power
supply your computer probably wouldn't even be able to start up, as many
things depend upon that voltage in order to work.

Look for any breakage or damage to the USB port that might still be causing
a short. You might get lucky--most USB ports that I've worked with are very
well protected against shorting. I've seen some that shorted out and simply
caused the computer to shut down until the short was removed. Others put up
a message stating that the available current from the port had been
exceeded. Remove the short and your computer could recover.

If you cannot find the short, or the port looks to be fine with nothing in
it...then it may be time for either some repair, a new power supply
(unlikely) or a new motherboard/computer.

William


It would appear that you have blown one or both of the micro fuses that
supply power to the mouse/keyboard.

Your motherboard may just have one fuse for all. Find an old keyboard
and salvage the fuses from it and replace the fuses on the blown
motherboard.

Some / many newer high end motherboards have polycrystalline rresettable
fuses they look like two metal plates with some epoxy between them
usually colored green. If you have these and they have the top plate
blown off or deformed or are blackened you need to find replacements and
install them. DigiKey is a good source.


Or just redneck it and install #30 wire wrap wire jumpers, will blow at
about 5 amps.

Hugh