In my previous post, I mentioned that my current computer is dead but I want to try to find a way to fix it. I know the hard drives work, the optical drives work, and the video card is still good. As far as I know the RAM and CPU work, as well as the case and power supply.

I am going to try to get another motherboard, another stick of RAM. Though what are the odds that both of my sticks have gone bad and that is what is causing the troubles?

I guess we will have to wait and see. I don’t want to spend more than $100 fixing this old beast of a computer though, so hopefully some people will donate some older parts or a few bucks to make bringing it back to life that much easier.

It is an older machine, so I am looking for parts that fit into this configuration:

  • Socket A Motherboard with AGP Video Card Slot
  • AMD Athlon 2500+ (Barton Core) CPU
  • DDR RAM

So if you have a Socket A motherboard sitting around that can support such a processor, or a stick of DDR RAM 256mb or larger, please let me know. I will pay shipping costs of course.

Update: 3 Beeps: Base 64K RAM failure

Explanation: There is a failure of some sort within the first 64 KB of system memory.

Diagnosis: The first bank of memory probably has a bad memory chip in it somewhere. It is possible that there is a failure related to the motherboard or a system device as well.

[emphasis mine]

Source: PCGuide.com