On 23/09/2019 11:19, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Steve Walker wrote:
On 22/09/2019 14:33, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
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?

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.

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)

I bought from Scan. Not only are they a mail order company, but they are
only about 12 miles from me and have a full walk-in shop there and I am
also about 6 miles from Aria. There was no mention of a serial port on
Scan's website, although it is mentioned on the manufacturer's site -
and it is definitely there, as I was surprised when we found it!

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.

I have only used an external, USB video capture card. As for sound, I
only use the PC sound for trivial things, so I have never needed a
decent audio card.

SteveW