At the request of someone on another board I did some more tests. Maybe these results can shed light on whats broken??
ok, I tried once more to see if I could pinpoint the issue. For test I have 2 PSUs, 2 memory dimms and 2 AGP vid cards (I dont think I have any PCI vid cards).
Test 1:
PSU #1
MEM dimm #1
Results:
Of coruse, without a vid card I can't see if it booted or not. All I can tell you from this test is there were no beeps and the system did not power itself off (at least not after the 2 or 3 minutes I allowed it to be powered up)
Test 2:
PSU #1
Mem Dimm #1
Vid Card #1
Results:
System powered off as soon as the fans started to spin.
Test 3:
PSU #1
Mem Dimm #1
Vid Card #2
System frozen at first screen that discribes the CPU speed and amount of memory. Attempted a second powercycle with these parts and this time it got past that and reported "CMOS checksum error - Defaults loaded". It said press F1 to continue, DEL to enter setup. Neither of these work, the system is again frozen. One more attempt.....this time I got the CMOS error again but DEL worked and got me into the BIOS utility. I was able to change some setting in the CMOS without the system freezing up. I saved my settings and as it was restarting the whole thing powered off. Turning it back on froze it at the first CPU/mem screen and about 2 seconds later it powered itself off.
Test 4:
PSU #2
Mem Dimm #1
Vid card #2
results:
System frozen at first screen that shows cpu/mem. powered off/on again and I got a loud beeping with the error:
BIOS ROM checksum error
Detecting floppy drive A media ...
Drive A error. System Halt.
Powered it on/off again this time it gave me the CMOS error (hit F1 or DEL) from test3 and allowed me to hit DEL to enter the BIOS. However, a couple of seconds after I got into the BIOS the whole thing is frozen again.
Test 5:
PSU #2
Vid card #2
mem dimm #2
results:
System frozen at first screen (CPU/mem info).
For gods sake, wtf is wrong with my computer????