This sounds fairly ominous.   I would first make sure the pin
on your monitor is very straight and connecting cleanly.  Then
I would try this monitor on a second system to be sure it is
working properly.

Now, I would strip down the problem computer.  Remove
or disconnect everything except the motherboard, CPU chip,
ram memory, video card, keyboard and power supply.  Try
powering on the system.  It should boot into the BIOS and you
may need to bypass the hard drive & floppy seek.  If it does not
boot, change the video card.  Then try switching out the ram.
Once you have it booting, I would set the CMOS to the default
settings.

I would also double check the jumpers for your CPU...  improper
jumper settings for the CPU can cause these problems...  they
might even have degradated the CPU till it is really malfunctioning.

Once you have this basic setup working, you can add components
one at a time and trouble shoot each one.   I would add the controller
card next, then the floppy drive...  followed by the hard drive.  Then
start adding the remainder of your cards.

I hope this helps, I know this can be frustrating...  I had a system
do very much the same thing and eventually found the motherboard
to be bad.

   Bob





At 09:52 AM 2/22/98 -0800, you wrote:
>Hi all:
>
>Note: This is a second repost. No responses on the original. Please
>      sound off if you have any pertinent advice or solutions. :)
>
> I recently recieved an old 486DX4/100 standard multimedia system with
>32 Megs of ram. I was told that it had intermittent video problems, but
>that everything else was fine.I proceeded to check out the system for
>probs at that point. Right off the bat I found that the A drive wasn't
>being recognized.I changed out the drive and rebooted. Same problem. I
>changed the ribbon cable out. Same prob. I then swapped out the floppy
>control drive. Same prob. At this point I continued on and got to the
>video card. I powered down and took off the monitor cable for
>inspection. I found the reason for that problem was a bent pin in the
>monitor cable. I straighten it back as much as possible and plugged it
>back into the video card. From this point on no rom basic beep or video
>whatsoever.Since then I have changed out video cards,ram and just about
>everything else except the mobo and chip. I also noticed that the hd's
>no longer are spinning up. This seems to me to be a power supply prob.
>However, I have checked the 2 voltages from the power supply to the mobo
>and they are correct and constant. I have even changed out power
>supplies and still nothing, DOA! Let me add at this point that I had a
>anti-static guard on all the time I was troubleshooting the mobo.Chances
>of shorting out because of static are pretty slim.
>
>At this point I have run out of options. I am just about ready to toss
>the mobo and get another one. Anyone have an opinion or remedy?
>
>TIA
>
>Barry Clark
>
>
>          PCBUILD:  http://nospin.com  or  [log in to unmask]
>
>