Need help getting a school server up...

[JudgeDredd]

I'm an aide for an A+ Computer Repair class at my school. Yesterday and Today, I have begun building the first of two nearly identical servers for our classroom. I finished it and the problem is no video comes up. Everything begins to boot up, hard drives spin up, processor fans spin up, but no video.

Specs:

Dual Athlon 1800+ MPs
Tyan Athlon Tiger MPX (link)
GeForce 2 MX
1 GB ECC Registered SD DDR (266 MHz) (2x 512 MB sticks)
48x Lite-On CD-RW
Adaptec 2100S SCSI RAID controller card (32-bit PCI) (Ultra160)
3x Seagate Cheetah 18 GB 15,000 RPM SCSI Hard Drives
Antec Mid-Tower Chassis w/ 400W Antec PSU
Sound Blaster Sound Card

We've tried the other GF 2 MX we had, some other generic AGP video card, and an ATI PCI video card, but no luck. Also have tried three different monitors. Used jumpers to switch FSB from 266 MHz to 200 MHz and back again and no luck there. Enabled a jumper to force 33 MHz PCI speed, no luck there either. When we had the PCI video card in, we took the Sound Card out so I don't think it's that.

I don't believe it's a lack of power, because I've tried booting the system without CD-Rom and Floppy connected, but still no go.

There could be one possible reason, but it seems like a long shot. When putting on one of the heatsinks, I had to use a screw driver to force the other end of the clip down to the socket, and although it slipped () I saw no visible damage to the board. ))

Tommorrow I'll probably switch the motherboard and see if that'll fix the problem. On a final note, I used an ESD wrist strap the whole time, so static is most likely out of the question.

Any help would be appreciated. Ask if you need to know more details.

 

[Ridenow]

I have that board and have not had much trouble with it.
I would try to boot it with just the video card, processors and memory. No other cards. If it does not have video and the video card works in another computer I would suspect the mobo is bad.

 

[Breadfan]

As long as there's not visible trace damage, it's unlikely the screwdriver slip caused any problems. I've slipped more than a few in my time, and have come out lucky so far (knock on wood).

Sounds to me like there is a short somewhere on the board...as Ridenow said, disconnect everything except PSU, cpu/hsf, memory, and video and see if it'll boot.

You might also want to go through the trouble of taking it out of the case and setting it on some foam or something to make sure you don't have anything in the case grounding the board incorrectly. A misplaced standoff screw can cause havoc, especially since once the board is in, you can't see the problem

Mike