Classic British Flight Sim

Having a backup PC zapped by a local lightning strike, one surge too many for the protector, I was thinking of rebuilding with a new motherboard, processor, power unit and maybe video card. I'm assuming the drives survived.

When I tried to boot up the PC it whirred away but that's all she wrote, no beeps or squeeks that usually give you a clue as to what is non-functional.

So any suggestions for a basic FSX system in the current technical landscape?

Meantime I'll dig out Young Fronkensteen to see if it gives any clues.

Cheers,
Allan

Hi Allan,
Are you able to replace the RAM stick(s) with a spare(s), maybe borrowed from another unit, just to see if only the RAM got fried?

Hi Allan, it sounds like there may be a power connector missing? I had something similar happen a while back and I had forgotten to connect the extra (4 or 6 way connector, can’t remember exactly) to the motherboard.
Failing that, if you remove the memory altogether you should get the infamous beeps.
Are you getting any signs of life from the display at all? If not it could be the power connector on the graphics card isn’t connected properly.

AllanL wrote: ↑

30 May 2020, 22:55

When I tried to boot up the PC it whirred away but that's all she wrote, no beeps or squeeks that usually give you a clue as to what is non-functional.

Allan, the fans start before anything else, then the machine does a Power-On-Self-Test to check that various bits and pieces are present and correct, and then sounds one beep to say all's well. Of course, if the internal speaker has become disconnected from the mobo, you won't hear a beep but the machine will still boot unless something else is wrong. In your case, it looks like the machine is not even starting the POST, so probably some or all of the capacitors are blown. Have a look here:

https://www.geeksinphoenix.com/blog/pos ... itors.aspx

Hope this helps.
MikeW

Thanks for the guidance. Time to start delving!

Cheers,
Allan

Finally got round to poking round inside. None of the capacitors look blown or lifted from the boards. A bit difficult with the GTX560 video card (it was ok in its day!) as it is pretty much enclosed by a cover.

Removing the memory, the only spare ones I have are locked down in England, a start up did not elicit any beeps whatever. The various drives all make waking up noises and the fans on the CPU, case and video card all whir away to themselves.

From memory it is a Win7 32 bit - upgraded from Vista, so a mere stripling of a PC. It ran FSX fine back in the day. The case and the hard drives are hopefully usable as a starter for 1.