few things

alright first off i just got a new headless computer from my brother who salvaged a box from the company he was working at before they canned him for being late. anyways, it has a cpu, two fans a motherboard, a cd drive and i just bought a brand new 400 watt power supply. it's not even bothering to turn on which is really annoying, i need to know if that's because it has no RAM at all or if it's because the motherboard is messed up.

secondly i need to find out a way to find out the serial model of the motherboard without turning it on because a guy at the local repair shop is saying that before he can give me the right ram he needs to know what type of mother board it is. i tried looking for the fcc code but have only the slightest idea what I'm looking for (i know it starts with a letter followed by two more digits a dash and then the rest of the numbers&letters), and when i looked for anything else i just found big bright silk printed words saying "compaq".

what i do know is that the motherboard is made by compaq in what i think is 2001-2002,i know it takes regular ddr ram but he's saying there are three different speed settings so if you know anything about this please help.

while waiting for replies i'll be hooking up my monitor onto the decapitated one to see if that changes anything. i'll post any results.

edit:tried to use my working computer's monitor, did nothing, also there was a slot for a cr2032 watch battery, i replaced that and it didn't do anything to help. i'm going to press on and keep trying what i know to do.

Well, if it uses DDR, then any DDR400 would work, and even DDR266 or 333 should probably be sufficient. Higher speed RAM will run at whatever lower speed the motherboard supports. But if it's from 2001-02, you might want to make sure it doesn't use PC133 instead... easiest way to tell that is to look at the RAM slots, PC133 has two key notches, one towards the center and one towards the end. DDR only has one notch.

I would say, though, that you would probably be better off not going through that repair shop for parts, if he can't even figure out the sort of RAM is needed without an exact model number. That's just not a good sign.

For Compaq boards, they don't always use what's recognizable as a model number, per se. Often it's in the form of "PWA-[some word]", although some have a code near or between the PCI slots like 'MS-[number]'.

yeah i've gone through this particular repair shop several times and they really don't have any idea what they are talking about half the time, thaqnkyou for the help, once again i'm also trying to find out if not having ram would cause it to not start.

edit: alright, that's not the problem, i picked up some DDR333 and that didn't help, i'm doing some research and i'm thinking that it either doesn't have a boot loader or a bios, this leaves me in a position where yet again i need to find the mother board make before i can progress to anything. wish me luck. i will not stop until i finish this project!

Well, you should look at the bottom pci or isa slot and see if there is a sticky tape on the side of the slot, which will be the model number string...usualy the whole string is not the part number..only part of it.
If it is a Compaq board I can tell you that it will never overclock unless you either edit the bios or use a windows based overclocking program like SetFSB or SoftFSB.
Also it might help to know what processor socket it has. If it is a socket 7 or below then it would make a better frisbee than a viable computer board.
Compaq's (in my experience) will do what they say it will do, and nothing more...good computers for what they are designed for but that's it....not much upgrade possibilities and propriatary hardware sometimes they take special ram..in some cases I have seen the ram soldered to the board.
If you can find the ID string I mentioned, you should be able to ID it by going to www.motherboards.org and click on the tools tab and click on "mobo tools"....for your situation, you will want to use option 3 to get your model ID'ed
Hope this helps,
Doc

Edit: OOPS! almost forgot to say Welcome to the forums!