Power on problem

[climb4]

Had some old parts laying around and a friend that needed a cheap computer so I started putting together a P4, 1.4GHz socket 423 system. Using a HP, P4T motherboard I plugged in the CPU, memory and power supply. I flipped the switch on the PS and the system fired right up?WITHOUT the power on pins shorted in any way. I was surprised. Continued tries had the same results. Well I thought I would work through it and went ahead and started loading XP and all went well. Then I got to loading drivers for the sound card, vid card, etc. and soon discovered the system would not power off without hitting the power supply. It WOULD restart but no power off. I loaded the modem drivers and went to restart the system and this time it did a complete shut down without me having to turn the power supply off. I thought alright! Well the system would not power back on for anything. Swapped power supplies and still no power. Motherboard is a piece of crap. Hehehe

I go buy a boxed D850GB motherboard install it into the system, PS, processor, memory, flip the power supply on and once again the systems powers right on. This time I have no post. WTH!!! I start swapping parts and I get one post out of 20 or so tries and the monitor displays random characters along with the normal bios information. DA me forgot to attach a keyboard so I turned the system off to attach it. Never got another post after that.

In short?
System powers on EVERYTIME buy just hitting the switch on the PS using two different motherboards and two different power supplies. System only powered off one time on it?s own and then never came back on that motherboard.
Second motherboard I get no post. If I pull the RDRAM I get three long beeps. Have used two different sets of RDRAM with the same results.
The one post I did get had random characters in the display.
It?s probably either the processor or the memory. What?s your guess?

 

[Zepper]

Are you absolutely sure you are plugging the wires to the front panel switches and LEDs to the proper header pins?
.bh.

 

[climb4]

I never connected ANY of the header pins. The system comes on just by switching on the power supply. Nothing should happen when switching on the power supply alone... you should have to short the power on header pins for the system to power on.

Another thing I noticed is that the system won't power on unless the processor socket is populated. I have also tried a bunch of different combinations with the RDRAM as well.

I am hedging toward a defective processor causing my ills. I would have thought the power supply but I have a antec 450w to test with and it does the same thing with both power supplies.

Thanks for asking. never know when I can miss the obvious.

 

[climb4]

^bump

 

[huesmann]

Well, what happens when you plug the pins in?

 

[climb4]

No effect at all. All of the correct lights come on but the switch has no effect at all. I tried shorting the pins with a screwdriver and still no effect.

Has anybody heard of a processor causing a problem like this? or memory? I think the strange characters
that showed up on the diplay on the last post may be a clue... even though I don't!

 

[climb4]

^one more round