Hi everyone. Posting here after I over a decade of absence. This community feels just as vibrant if not more. Feels good to be back.
So, here's a tale of my experiment at home with an old computer sporting the Intel DH55TC motherboard.
I opened up the old PC which was lying unused for over a decade to save some cost in building a new home server and put this one to use instead.
Connected it to my monitor and tested if it boots after all these years. It did. Hadn't connected any of the peripherals or storage. It booted fine, said "WARNING: keyboard not found", but went ahead and said "no Boot device found".
Being a satisfactory and expected result, I went ahead and searched for DDR3 RAM prices. Having found it to be really cheap, got a couple of 8GB sticks for about ₹1.5k on Amazon and slapped it on replacing the measly 4GB one that it had. Connected the wireless keyboard's USB cable and tried to get into the BIOS. Keyboard not detected. This was the only keyboard I had on hand since I had just given away all my partially working wired keyboards just a couple of months back.
Connected the "USB to PS/2" converter to the USB-A end of the keyboard's cable and tried it on the PS/2 combo port on the motherboard. Still nothing. Same "Keyboard not found" warning and yet goes ahead to boot.
Connected an old hard drive which had ubuntu installed on it ages ago. It booted into the OS just fine, happiness cut short immediately since but no keyboard or mouse detected. Couldn't even shut down properly.
Took out the motherboard, gave it a good bath in Isopropyl alcohol and a good brushing with a (unused of course ) toothbrush to remove a decade's worth of stuck debris that might be causing shorts.
Tried all sorts of things like trying all the different USB ports, connecting a USB panel to one of the headers and tried the keyboard on those ports, checking the 4 RAM slots individually, checking with single stick of RAM, removing, reseating and repasting the Intel Core i5-650 CPU, a different working PSU - Corsair VX450, disconnecting all front panel and other USB headers, DVD drive etc, replacing the CMOS battery with a brand new one, resetting the BIOS by letting it run for a few minutes without the battery, changing the jumper settings for the CMOS reset, etc. Still no luck.
Ordered a native PS/2 keyboard and tried all of the above with it after it arrived a week later. No luck still.
One interesting observation is that the keyboard lights comes on on both the PS/2 and USB ports, albeit just for a split second and then not detected which makes me believe that the ports are being powered on and they themselves don't have any problem. What it could be is now beyond me.
Now waiting to take it to a service centre to check it at the chip level having invested the time on this and the money for the RAM.
Posting this here to share my experience if it might help anyone.
Please feel free to share your thoughts.
So, here's a tale of my experiment at home with an old computer sporting the Intel DH55TC motherboard.
I opened up the old PC which was lying unused for over a decade to save some cost in building a new home server and put this one to use instead.
Connected it to my monitor and tested if it boots after all these years. It did. Hadn't connected any of the peripherals or storage. It booted fine, said "WARNING: keyboard not found", but went ahead and said "no Boot device found".
Being a satisfactory and expected result, I went ahead and searched for DDR3 RAM prices. Having found it to be really cheap, got a couple of 8GB sticks for about ₹1.5k on Amazon and slapped it on replacing the measly 4GB one that it had. Connected the wireless keyboard's USB cable and tried to get into the BIOS. Keyboard not detected. This was the only keyboard I had on hand since I had just given away all my partially working wired keyboards just a couple of months back.
Connected the "USB to PS/2" converter to the USB-A end of the keyboard's cable and tried it on the PS/2 combo port on the motherboard. Still nothing. Same "Keyboard not found" warning and yet goes ahead to boot.
Connected an old hard drive which had ubuntu installed on it ages ago. It booted into the OS just fine, happiness cut short immediately since but no keyboard or mouse detected. Couldn't even shut down properly.
Took out the motherboard, gave it a good bath in Isopropyl alcohol and a good brushing with a (unused of course ) toothbrush to remove a decade's worth of stuck debris that might be causing shorts.
Tried all sorts of things like trying all the different USB ports, connecting a USB panel to one of the headers and tried the keyboard on those ports, checking the 4 RAM slots individually, checking with single stick of RAM, removing, reseating and repasting the Intel Core i5-650 CPU, a different working PSU - Corsair VX450, disconnecting all front panel and other USB headers, DVD drive etc, replacing the CMOS battery with a brand new one, resetting the BIOS by letting it run for a few minutes without the battery, changing the jumper settings for the CMOS reset, etc. Still no luck.
Ordered a native PS/2 keyboard and tried all of the above with it after it arrived a week later. No luck still.
One interesting observation is that the keyboard lights comes on on both the PS/2 and USB ports, albeit just for a split second and then not detected which makes me believe that the ports are being powered on and they themselves don't have any problem. What it could be is now beyond me.
Now waiting to take it to a service centre to check it at the chip level having invested the time on this and the money for the RAM.
Posting this here to share my experience if it might help anyone.
Please feel free to share your thoughts.
