John,

What common hardware are you using on the bad systems ? ( pwr. supply,
RAM, cables, drives, cards, MONITOR, PROCESSOR,  etc.)

Have you tried connecting the speaker up to the motherboard? Sometimes,
a series of beeps will come out if the systems fails POST. (Power On
Self TEST) The number/pattern of these beeps can be used to help
troubleshoot the problem.

It sounds like all of the motherboards have worked at one time or
another. If that is the case, I doubt if any of them are bad. I think we
are missing something here.

Make sure that you haven't left the CMOS jumpers in a bad position also.

Please feel free to respond to me off-list and I will try to help you
work through this.

Thanks,
	Kevin O

John Bartlett wrote:
> 
> I'm restructuring my network at home, and currently have seven possible
> systems to work with... my problem is I've switched around many of the
> components that they all have in order to achieve my desired configuration.
> In the process I have encountered the problem of not being able to get video
> when booting up... Now let me just say that three of the MB's are brand new,
> all of which have given me the exact same problem at some point. One of the
> new ones works, the other two have the same problem, I've actually seen two
> of the new ones work, and two of the not brand new ones work, but now, only
> one of the seven will boot with video.  I have tried everything that I can
> think of, including swapping video card, memory, power supply, changing
> entire cases, disconnecting drives, reseating cpu, resetting cmos (which in
> the past has been the cure for this problem), and I've gotten to the point
> that I cannot even stand looking at all of these machines that I have, due
> to not being able to figure out the problem. Just to clarify, the exact
> problem is, when I boot, I get power, the cpu fan starts the HDD's spin
> (when connected) all the lights function, but I get absolutly NO video, not
> even enough to change settings in the BIOS. I've used ISA, PCI, and AGP
> video cards, to no avail. All of the hardware that I've tried to use, I've
> personally seen working in other systems.  So if anyone has any ideas what
> could be causing this type of problem, I would be eternally grateful for
> your help.
> 
> Thanks In Advance,
> 
>    Josh
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-- 
Kevin O'Connor

"Waving away a cloud of smoke, I look up, and am blinded by a bright,
white
light. It's God. No, not Richard Stallman, or Linus Torvalds, but God.
In
a booming voice, He says: "THIS IS A SIGN. USE LINUX, THE FREE UNIX
SYSTEM
FOR THE 386."
(Matt Welsh)