New
#1411
Some fun (mutter, mutter, mumble, mumble).
I finally found the problem. When I plugged in the reset switch connector and turned the machine on, the leprechuns were back. I'm thinking, "Oh no (censored version), replacing that switch is going to be a bugger." Then, on an inexplicable impulse, I tried reversing the connector, then turning the machine back on. That fixed it. Go figure; I though there was no polarity on those switches. The connector certainly isn't marked polarized.
But then I noticed the fans on the GPU weren't spinning and the case speaker was was giving me a long beep followed by three short beeps, then after a long pause, a long beep followed by four short beeps, a short pause, then another short beep. According to the manual, the first beeps indicate no VGA. I'm thinking, "OK, the monitor isn't hooked up." The manual says that a long beep followed by four short beeps indicates a hardware failure (what was with the additional short beep?) so now I'm thinking, "Great! I killed the GPU card!" Before planning the funeral, I took a closer look and discovered the PCIe power cable was still disconnected. I had left it floating in the air by the socket and, from the angle I had been looking, it had looked like it was plugged in. I plugged it in, fired up the machine, and eventually got the single beep I was supposed to get. Whooo hooo! (Doing happy dance )
The next step is to wrestle the boat anchor (from the QE2, no less) back to my desk (actually, a night stand by the daek where my old desktop resided) so I can hook up the monitor and keyboard/mouse (the keyboard is hardwired to the USB and has a port I can plug in the receiver for my wireless mouse). I'm definitely going to wait until tomorrow to do that. It's late, I'm tired, and my arms and back are still less than happy with me. At least I'll sleep a whole sight better knowing the episode of the errent screw and bass-ackwards connector is finally over.