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I must be missing something fundamental. My mobo died (smoke coming out). My best guess is it shorted when I jammed some wiring inside a bay, but I'm not certain.

I purchased a new mobo - Soltek 75FRV. I am using XP 1800+, Volcano 9 HSF, 512 PC 2100 RAM, Antec True Power 430 PSU and 60GB Maxtor hdd. Only the HSF was bought at the same time as the mainboard because my old one required attachment from under the board with 4 screws and this mobo didn't come with the holes.

I powered up and all fans (including heatsink fan), lights and switches work properly. Then I brought the machine into my office and attached the monitor and connected the hard drive. The monitor works because the LED lights up and I see the test pattern. But there is no bootup, the case speaker doesn't beep, nothing. I turned over the IDE cables in all possible combinations, but that wasn't it. I then tried another hdd with the same result.

Suggestions please!!

First of all is this the same power supply as was used on the old mobo? Anything that caused smoke is almost certainly a short circuit and that couldn't have done the power supply any good. You got a spare you can try?

Have you tried reseting the CMOS?

Assuming the PSU is good if the fans spin up then I would say it's one of the following (in order from most likely to least):

- Poorly seated ram
- Poorly seated CPU
- Incorrect jumper setting or header (I've seen people attach an indicator LED to the reset switch header for instance)
- Short circuit
- Bad mobo


Try pulling all cards except the video, disconnect ALL ribbons and all switch and light header connectors EXCEPT the power switch. See if that works.

Double check and make sure nothing is shorting out a trace on the mobo (stray wire or metal on the mobo, incorrectly placed metal standoff under the mobo, screw lodged under the mobo.

Failing that pull the mobo out of the case and test it on the bench with nothing connected but the PSU and the vid card. Use a screw driver to short the power header pins briefly to start it up. Make sure to sit the mobo on top of something non-conductive (I like to use the box it came in).

Hope this helps...