I was given an old 66mhz computer which worked for a day, but when I turned it back on the next day it was compleatly dead, the screen was black and nothing happence. I am betting on the motherboard battery to be dead but it is soldered to the board. How do I change it?? can something else be wrong??

Please help!!
Arndís

it doesn't do anything at all?
all the batt does is save the bios config...
if the batt wasn't working, it would come on, but everytime you did a cold boot, it would need to have things like the hd reconfigured...
so if you get just nothing, then that's not it....
what does it do?....does it beep at all, does it sound like it's working as usual... even starts to load the o/s, but no video?
does the power come on at all?

Could be as simple as a fuse blown....

Hi,
Get an external battery pack from any computer store, about $5 I think, and plug it into your mobo external battery jumper pins, usually a 4 pin jumper located near the original battery, the center two pins when jumpered will clear your CMOS settings...

.. good luck!

Thank you so much for your help. I actually got the battery out and had it checked and it's working fine and is back in still working OK, so it's right, it's not the battery. When I turn on the computer the power seems to come on, the light indicate that and it sounds like the hard drive is starting up but then nothing, I can not hear the drive go on and the hard drive light does not go on at all, and the screen is BLACK there is nothting there not even one letter. if the hard drive was not working wouldn't I at least get the bios settings or something on the screen???

Please help me!!
Arndís

OK.
Check all your power connections, maybe
you jogged something loose when you were
messing with the cmos. Second check all your
data cables for correct alignment. Next,
switch up some of the power connectors, use a different connector for your hard drive,
then your floppy, etc..
If this does not work, I would start trying to get some response by removing the memory
or reversing the data cable on your floppy,
just to see what does work. It does sound a lot like some power supply problems I've had on the job, so check that your voltage is
selected properly.
Good Luck.

when was he messing with the cmos?

Thanks marsd, I tried everything you suggested and nothing works. The cd drive was already not working when I got the computer and the floppy had problems too. I took out the floppy drive and connected the cable properly, it seemed to be loose and that resulted in the floppy drive constantly running, so I disconnected the power cable from it. There are 2 drives on this machine and when it worked for that one day the computer could only find one hard drive and I don't know which drive it found. There is an old 5 1/4 floppy drive installed too, but I disconnected that one cause I won't use it. I have tried switching all the cables and checked all the power lines etc. and nothing happence. This sounds like a power supply problem like you suggested, The pc is set for 230 voltage (I am in Iceland) which works for us we have 220V power in our homes. Can the power-box(is that the right word?) inside the computer be damaged? if so what do I do about it??? LOL, thanks for your patient towards me, I am no computer genius, but I am trying to safe me some money.
Thanks alot!
Arndís

that box inside is the power supply...

try pulling all of the drives, and all of the cards that you can....all you really want plugged in is the video (which should be onboard if i recall correctly) and the mem plugged in.....do you get a display at all after that?

HEY!!! Lucas, I pulled everything out and I got a display!! I get a CMOS failure because I did pull out the mother board battery! OK, but this worked, so what does this tell me??
what do I do now??
Arndís

p.s. thank you so much!!

Put the items you took out back in one by one until you get back to the original problem. That should show you what the culprit is. Also, you said that your floppy drive ran constantly. Check and make sure the floppy drive data cable is not on backwards. Good luck.