Newb Building first comp, few questions

[djb23]

How can you tell which part of a connector has the Negative lead? The connectors are the ones hooking up the case power button to the mobo. No red=positive black=negative here, the wires are green and white. On the connector itself, there is an arrow and an "S" demarcating something...mean anything?

Also, my PS won't turn on when I just plug it in and flip the switch. Do I need to connect anything in specific to the mobo to get it to turn on? (It's an Enermax, fyi)

I'm a professional programmer, so I know computers, but not the nitty gritty specifics like what the general standards for colorations are on wires. The mobo is an ECS SiS 735 board. Hope we can get the bugger running.

Thanks for any help.

[Diggrr]

On those connectors, the white wire is usually negative, the colored wire is positive. The s means nothing to us that I know of.
For a power switch and reset switch, there is no pos/negative, it's just a switch that passes current in either direction, so there's no specific way to plug it in as long as it's on the correct pins.

To start an ATX power supply without a motherboard hooked to it, you need to short the green wire to any of the black wires at the motherboard connector. I just use a small piece of wire bent into a U shape. This replaces the circuit of the motherboard that tells it when to turn on/off.

There, how's that?

[stool]

Like this;

http://www.burningissues.net/how_to/power/images/plug.gif

[djb23]

Ahhhhh. Thanks for the information.

I went home and tried everything, and now I get power running on the mobo, but the monitor says noting is coming our of the video card. I popped in the Video Card and RAM from my main computer, and still no signal.

I assume the CPU or mobo is dead. Gonna RMA the part to newegg this morning. The CPU "looks" ok, but you can never tell. Especially since I don't have a working 462 computer I can plug a Duron into.

Hopefully I can get this guy running so the next comp I build I will be able to test things out on this rig. (It takes SD and DDR RAM so I can also test either kind of RAM :))

Thanks again guys.

[Doc_Skurlock]

sounds like you're having the same problem I'm having. I can't get my monitor to show anything at all. There are no beeps and the monitor does not turn on. I wonder what I can do about that?

[Mr. Chambers]

before sending your parts back, try taking everything out of your case, and laying it on some cardboard/plastic/etc. and starting her up that way, you can hook everything up as normal, then start it by shorting out the 2 pins on your motherboard where you would plug in your cases power button to.. (touch them at same time with a screwdriver head or something conductive)

i have seen many times where a bad ground caused the computer to not fire up. just a thought.