PS/2 ports not working, are they dead?

I'm new to all this and was wondering if anyone could help me. My old motherboard died so I purchased a used one...it's a PC Chips M599LMR. I installed it and started my computer; first off, I have a Cyrix MII-333 processor and the new MoBo recognised it at 150MHz then it said the CMOS battery was low and gave me a "Keybord Error' message then it froze. I made sure the keyboard was well plugged into the PS/2 port, and replaced the battery. Again, it gave me the same thing. I plugged in a USB keyboard this time, started the computer and hit the DEL key to edit the CMOS. I fixed a few things there (date, time, CPU speed), saved it and exit...computer restarted into Win98 where I got an error message staing that the PS/2 mouse wasn't plugged in (even though it was). So I think the PS/2 ports are dead...am I right? Or do I have to set something for them to be recognised? I also think (unless I'm being paranoid), that this MoBo (MoFo? : ) screwed up my hard drive and killed my floppy drive (click of death). I read the specs on this MoBo and it seemed like a great one..but this used one seems to be junk. So are my PS/2 ports dead? Should I return it? Thanks for reading.

welcome to the forums, Dace!

Yah, it sounds to me like your PS2 ports are just dead. Unless they are turned off in BIOS, there's nothing to them- they just work. So either all your PS2 devices are dead (unlikely) or the ports are.

heh... and it's gotta be MoFo

This is a really dumb question, but, are the mouse and keyboard plugs in the right holes? I only ask because I sometimes reverse them and get similar errors.

BTW.. The PCchips boards are known for giving the CMOS Batt Low error when they are new (Sometimes even when they are a few months old). You can change out the Batt. for only a few bucks.. Go to your local radio shack (rat shack) and show them what you need.

Good luck and welcome to the Forums..... Welcome to your new addiction...

Unfortunately, cyrix CPUs and PC Chips boards are rather a bad combination. Both will run fine when the other part of the combo is a better make but put them together and the problems can be endless.

Some of the problems are down to the voltage regs being marginal on some of those boards and not liking the hefty draw of a cyrix core at 2.9V. Thought that board should have better voltage regs than most since it's a super 7 I think.

The hdd problem can happen when a board that supports 27G plus drives uses a drive that was formatted on a machine that doesn't. There are quite a few differences in various levels of support in IDE controllers and although most of the time a drive from one machine works in another, it's not something that is guaranteed, any drive problems should be resolved by a complete format on the machine you're using it on. Doesn't help if you've got data on there I know, but for reliability in future it's what you sometimes have to do.

The PS/2 ports may have had a fuse blow, if you get no lights on your keyboard when it is plugged in, then the 5V power fuse has blown, it's probably a little grey component on the board marked "fuse 1" or FS1 or something, those things are a PITA and I usually just wrap them with wire.

regards,

Road Warrior

Thanx everyone for the warm welcome; glad I found this forum . So Cyrix and PC Chips are a bad combo, no prob, I'll replace it with a K6-2 533MHz processor I happen to have. The only reason I need the PS/2 ports is because I can't install Win2K (maybe it's a smart MoBo ). When I try installing Win98, after I run Setup, I get a message saying that the Packets are corrupted or something like that...anyone know what that means? And when I try installing Win2k, my USB keyboard stops working when I get to the "Hit Enter to install Win2K" window Even though I enabled USB in DOS.