Hard Drive failure

[tman]

what exactly does the -5 VDC do? And why wouldn't I need it?

[zagrot]

that depends on the motherboard's requirements. but if there was no lead at the 18 position with the origional power supply i guess it does not do anything.

[tman]

The motherboard has a #18 pin but the power supply has no corresponding wire. The missing wire matches the Dell pinout, do you think Dell purposly used the ATX colored wires, but used them for it's own purposes, just to confuse people like me and sell me a new PS and motherboard?

I can go to tigerdirect.com, spend 200 dollars, get a new case, a new motherboard, and an additional 1GB stick of memory, us my 512 I have, reuse my 2.66GHz processor, reuse optical drives, floppy and hard drives, use the new PS on order, and have a new computer pretty much.

[zagrot]

does your motherboard look like the ones in this picture?

http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/dellconverter.html

if not you should be safe with a standard ATX power supply, but if it does you will need an adapter. i don't think dell is so ruthless that they would use the wire color scheme to confuse people so if the old p/s's wire color matches up with the wire colors for the standard ATX p/s pinout you'll be reasonably safe. it seems that dell only used the non-standard p/s for the years between '98 and 2000. which brings me around to the #18 wire thing, i said that as a precaution you may wish to remove the wire from the plastic connector on the new power supply. i understand that the mobo has a pin at position 18, i was curious as to whether or not the mobo had circuit traces (the "little metal roads") leading from the #18 position to parts unknown on the motherboard. if it does you may wish to remove wire #18 (DO NOT cut it off!), but if there are no traces then you definately woun't have to remove wire 18. the only thing that we can conclude from comparing the new and old p/s is that there is no wire at #18 on the origional, that is if the wire colors are in the same positions on both. what would you do if this were a difficult-to-find auto part, but there was a part that was nearly the same, cheaper, and easier to find, except it had an extra wire? you would probably remove he extra wire, insulate it, and tuck it safely away. no you don't need to build another computer (unless the mobo is already toasted). so re-read theis post, compare the OLD p/s to the pinouts that you have (wire color and all), inspect the mobo if you feel up to looking at the back side of it, and if everything looks right give it a shot.

[tman]

Thanks zagrot, you're absolutely right about what I'd do if it were a car. I can't tell if there is a lead for that pin, I can't see a lead for any pin on that bank of terminals.

Only the P1 connector and one 2X2 connector plugs into the motherboard. The P1 plugs in near the HD headers and CD headers. The 2X2 (P2) plugs in between the processor and the ports that are visible from outside the case. That extra plug near the P1 is not on the PS's wiring harness.

I think I'll just plug in the ATX one and hope for the best. People on the Dell commmunity forums did that and it's been okay for them. I'll keep you guys updated.

[Neutrino]

Originally Posted by tman2093

Thanks zagrot, you're absolutely right about what I'd do if it were a car. I can't tell if there is a lead for that pin, I can't see a lead for any pin on that bank of terminals.

Only the P1 connector and one 2X2 connector plugs into the motherboard. The P1 plugs in near the HD headers and CD headers. The 2X2 (P2) plugs in between the processor and the ports that are visible from outside the case. That extra plug near the P1 is not on the PS's wiring harness.

I think I'll just plug in the ATX one and hope for the best. People on the Dell commmunity forums did that and it's been okay for them. I'll keep you guys updated.

Ok i'm a bit confused, what are the HD and CD headers? or are you refering to the IDE ports on the mobo?

your power suply is a 1st gen ATX correct? Then it should have a 20 pin and an aditional 4 pin. For stabilitys sake plug the 4 pin too since it provides a dedicated power source to the CPU.

BTW have you tested the mobo or any other components beside the HD to see if they are fried? Also remember that its not only the PSU that could have caused the problems, the mobo might be at fault due to some bad power regulators (albeit less likelly)

[tman]

Well, the computer would run after I put in my spare hard drive, behaving like I said in my first post. I ran it long enough to install winXP

And I plugged in the 4pin also, I didn't mention it because I thought it was understood that I'd plug it in too. Anyway, the new PS is in the unit, and I'll power down the Win2k machine after I post this.

Wish me luck folks!

[tman]

Good news, talking to you live from the windows XP machine with the new power supply. Thanks for all your help guys!