my main question is..
i dont have any wood so can i breadboard with a cardboard box instead? like sit the mobo ontop of the box it came in close to the egde so that the vid card can hang off.. and then sit that box with mobo ontop of it inside of another box.. that way i can put the psu and drives in there too.. so basically a small box with a motherboard ontop of it which is about 4 inches thick inside of a box thats about 1/2 inch thick.. basicly the small box will be like 1 level high and the big box it sits in will be like the ground level containing the psu and optical / hard drives... i do have some anti-static wrap laying around but im interested in cardboard this way my system stays safe because i have a little baby nephew who is pure terror, so if its in a box i can just close up the top and maybe cut some square wholes in it and put some case fans in it until i get some moolah to buy a new namebrand chassis.
i have read the breadboarding thread and i see that the op has used everything from a book to nylon to wood or some anti-static wrap.. i see no mention of cardboard so this is my main question and thats why im asking.. because the breadboarding thread had no mention of cardboard..
my other questions and main reasons i need to breadboard in the first place:
ok here is my situation. super long post. so bear with me. i appologize but im trying to be as detailed as possible. and trying to kill as many birds with one stone as possible..
the past:
i had a system with a core2duo e7200 an ecs 7050vt mobo which is a nforce 610i i chipset i think.. i had 2x 1gb of pqi ddr2 557mhz ram installed a geforce 8800gts 320 mb video card.. and my monitor is a samsung 19 inch 935bw i think.. power supply is athena power 550w psu which is sli ready but doesnt have 2x pci-e power connecters it just had one. i never ran sli anyways. i have 2 sata hd's and 2 ide dvd-rw drives. before i even go on about the 680i lt i just wanna state that i did have probems with my old setup.. but all i had to do was make sure all the wires coming from the psu were tightly plugged into the corresponding components or basicly i had to wiggle wires or just bang on the side of my case twice and it would power up and post etc.. clearly a short circuit was somewhere but i never could determine from where.. i ran my system like that for 2 or 3 years and only really had problems when i moved my case... also.. i couldnt run 2x dvd rw drives if i tried to run 2 the wiggling stuff i did as a remedy wouldnt work. so maybe aside short circuit somewhere / there was possible an overloading issue with the psu since i couldnt run all my components and had to disconnect one dvd-rw drive..
the present:
ok now for the current situation.. i wanted to upgrade a little of the old system.. so i went to frys and grabbed me up a palit geforce gts 1024mb platinum edition video card, and i grabbed 2x 2gb sticks of patriot ddr2 800mhz nvidia sli certified ram sticks and thats pretty much it.. i installed it into my old mobo and had my short problem on first boot.. so i did the wiggle the wires method and got the old system to boot and post. got into windows 7 ultimate 64-bit and did a few driver updates and everything.. since im disabled i had my whole tower laying in the bed with me.. so i shutdown the system and had my bro n law move the tower out of bed with me and sit it on my computer cart, since everything was working and i didnt want to sleep with my pc.. once he did that i havent been able to get the old system up and running since..
if a system goes bad its usually the motherboard first so this prompted me to buy a xfx 680i lt motherboard from geeks.com it was a refurbished part thats costed only around 30 bucks plus my old board didnt support dual channel so i purchased it.. i understand what refurbished is very well.. i dont know if geeks.com inhouse refurbishes boards or sends them off to the manufacturer.. but my guess would be they send them off to xfx for refurbishing...
anyways i got my board the next day and ended up having the no post / video issue.. never got the xfx board to boot once.. cpu fan and all case fans work and spin up. as well as when i plug in my psu and flip the switch from O to I the blue light comes on.. when i hit the power button on the case everything fires up all case fans and cpu fans and i get the blue / green / amber leds on.. but no video ever comes out of the card. since i have 2 cards on hand.. my old 8800 gts and my new gts 450 i tried swapping them out for each other with no luck.. im 100% positive both cards work.. as a note this motherboard has no connecter for a case speaker whatsoever so no beeps for me.. and i havent been able to find out what the blue/green/amber leds mean.. but if i had to guess id say the blue one since it comes on when i flip the psu switch to on means that the board is receiving power.. the amber / green leds could either be cpu / gpu or cpu /ram lights.. no idea.. on that.. i dont think the motherboard is bad though since it is a freshly refurbished part and i doubt geeks.com would sale me a non working product atleast i hope they wouldnt so for now lets say the new board is good.. heck the old board might even still be good..
i have tried installing just one ram stick in the dimm 0 slot.. no luck.. i never tried installing an individual stick in any other slot than dimm 0.. also i even tried 1 stick of my old pqi 1gb ddr2 557 ram.. no luck..tried swapping vid cards tried booting with minimal components cpu/gpu/ram and cpu/gpu/ram/hdd no luck..
ok one important thing id like to note is my dvi cable one of pins well not the pins.. but the flat gold pin in the end of the connecter ended up coming out somehow.. i pushed it back in with a pair of pliers.. but.. id also like to note that if i turn my monitor on while the cable is connected to the video card with the system powered down.. nothing comes on screen.. but if i disconnect the cable from the video card still with system powered down then the monitor immediately lets me know on screen that it isnt receiving no signal.. that gives me the impression that the cable is fine because thats how its supposed to work.. as we speak my mom is headed to staples to buy me a regular vga cable.. to rule out my dvi cable being the issue..
i have no extra cpu to swap my e7200 out for so hopefully it isnt my cpu because ive never overclocked it and its not that old.. ive had it since like 2007 or 2008.. any opinions on if u guys think my cpu might be burned up would be appreciated also..
it could be the power supply though.. but i kind of doubt it because it powers everything up fine.. just not 2x ide drives.. but i think that is just due to me reaching the full load capacity.. in my old setup 2x sata drives and 1x dvd rw ide drive worked fine with my gts 8800 and all my old stuff.but if i added a second optical drive, no go.
i have an extra psu i can use also to rule that out as the problem..
got the vga cable havent tested yet.. waiting to see about this breadboarding stuff.. but im almost 100% its a shorting issue due to the cheap case im using. on some of the motherboard standoffs the screws wont even go fully in.. so in some areas if i pull up on the motherboard it moves and it shouldnt do that.. i was very stupid to run my old system for so long with it shorting and not wanting to boot intermittently.. it never once blue screened on me or crashed or anything like that. booting up and getting no video was just always the issue.. i just hope my cpu didnt get damaged cuz i have no money for a new one atm..
one last last bit i swear.. as far as the 680i lt motherboard goes.. im gonna try my old board first anyways but.. i hear 680i lt has problems with certain series of intel cpu and needs a bios update to work with them properly.. i have an e7200 and althought xfx's website says its compatible.. i have read otherwise.. i only have one cpu so if that was the case im wondering if anyone ever had a xfx 680i lt with e7200 and if they had problems.. also how i would even get a bios update on it. if it might possibly need a bios update to support the processor. so any input on this will be greatly appreciated as well..
sorry for the long post and thanks. and i hope my post is in line with proper posting procedures.. as i have read all the sticky posts.. i just included the extra stuff so that when my breadboard question is answered.. if i have other problems i wont need to post another thread so on and so forth..
i dont have any wood so can i breadboard with a cardboard box instead? like sit the mobo ontop of the box it came in close to the egde so that the vid card can hang off.. and then sit that box with mobo ontop of it inside of another box.. that way i can put the psu and drives in there too.. so basically a small box with a motherboard ontop of it which is about 4 inches thick inside of a box thats about 1/2 inch thick.. basicly the small box will be like 1 level high and the big box it sits in will be like the ground level containing the psu and optical / hard drives... i do have some anti-static wrap laying around but im interested in cardboard this way my system stays safe because i have a little baby nephew who is pure terror, so if its in a box i can just close up the top and maybe cut some square wholes in it and put some case fans in it until i get some moolah to buy a new namebrand chassis.
i have read the breadboarding thread and i see that the op has used everything from a book to nylon to wood or some anti-static wrap.. i see no mention of cardboard so this is my main question and thats why im asking.. because the breadboarding thread had no mention of cardboard..
my other questions and main reasons i need to breadboard in the first place:
ok here is my situation. super long post. so bear with me. i appologize but im trying to be as detailed as possible. and trying to kill as many birds with one stone as possible..
the past:
i had a system with a core2duo e7200 an ecs 7050vt mobo which is a nforce 610i i chipset i think.. i had 2x 1gb of pqi ddr2 557mhz ram installed a geforce 8800gts 320 mb video card.. and my monitor is a samsung 19 inch 935bw i think.. power supply is athena power 550w psu which is sli ready but doesnt have 2x pci-e power connecters it just had one. i never ran sli anyways. i have 2 sata hd's and 2 ide dvd-rw drives. before i even go on about the 680i lt i just wanna state that i did have probems with my old setup.. but all i had to do was make sure all the wires coming from the psu were tightly plugged into the corresponding components or basicly i had to wiggle wires or just bang on the side of my case twice and it would power up and post etc.. clearly a short circuit was somewhere but i never could determine from where.. i ran my system like that for 2 or 3 years and only really had problems when i moved my case... also.. i couldnt run 2x dvd rw drives if i tried to run 2 the wiggling stuff i did as a remedy wouldnt work. so maybe aside short circuit somewhere / there was possible an overloading issue with the psu since i couldnt run all my components and had to disconnect one dvd-rw drive..
the present:
ok now for the current situation.. i wanted to upgrade a little of the old system.. so i went to frys and grabbed me up a palit geforce gts 1024mb platinum edition video card, and i grabbed 2x 2gb sticks of patriot ddr2 800mhz nvidia sli certified ram sticks and thats pretty much it.. i installed it into my old mobo and had my short problem on first boot.. so i did the wiggle the wires method and got the old system to boot and post. got into windows 7 ultimate 64-bit and did a few driver updates and everything.. since im disabled i had my whole tower laying in the bed with me.. so i shutdown the system and had my bro n law move the tower out of bed with me and sit it on my computer cart, since everything was working and i didnt want to sleep with my pc.. once he did that i havent been able to get the old system up and running since..
if a system goes bad its usually the motherboard first so this prompted me to buy a xfx 680i lt motherboard from geeks.com it was a refurbished part thats costed only around 30 bucks plus my old board didnt support dual channel so i purchased it.. i understand what refurbished is very well.. i dont know if geeks.com inhouse refurbishes boards or sends them off to the manufacturer.. but my guess would be they send them off to xfx for refurbishing...
anyways i got my board the next day and ended up having the no post / video issue.. never got the xfx board to boot once.. cpu fan and all case fans work and spin up. as well as when i plug in my psu and flip the switch from O to I the blue light comes on.. when i hit the power button on the case everything fires up all case fans and cpu fans and i get the blue / green / amber leds on.. but no video ever comes out of the card. since i have 2 cards on hand.. my old 8800 gts and my new gts 450 i tried swapping them out for each other with no luck.. im 100% positive both cards work.. as a note this motherboard has no connecter for a case speaker whatsoever so no beeps for me.. and i havent been able to find out what the blue/green/amber leds mean.. but if i had to guess id say the blue one since it comes on when i flip the psu switch to on means that the board is receiving power.. the amber / green leds could either be cpu / gpu or cpu /ram lights.. no idea.. on that.. i dont think the motherboard is bad though since it is a freshly refurbished part and i doubt geeks.com would sale me a non working product atleast i hope they wouldnt so for now lets say the new board is good.. heck the old board might even still be good..
i have tried installing just one ram stick in the dimm 0 slot.. no luck.. i never tried installing an individual stick in any other slot than dimm 0.. also i even tried 1 stick of my old pqi 1gb ddr2 557 ram.. no luck..tried swapping vid cards tried booting with minimal components cpu/gpu/ram and cpu/gpu/ram/hdd no luck..
ok one important thing id like to note is my dvi cable one of pins well not the pins.. but the flat gold pin in the end of the connecter ended up coming out somehow.. i pushed it back in with a pair of pliers.. but.. id also like to note that if i turn my monitor on while the cable is connected to the video card with the system powered down.. nothing comes on screen.. but if i disconnect the cable from the video card still with system powered down then the monitor immediately lets me know on screen that it isnt receiving no signal.. that gives me the impression that the cable is fine because thats how its supposed to work.. as we speak my mom is headed to staples to buy me a regular vga cable.. to rule out my dvi cable being the issue..
i have no extra cpu to swap my e7200 out for so hopefully it isnt my cpu because ive never overclocked it and its not that old.. ive had it since like 2007 or 2008.. any opinions on if u guys think my cpu might be burned up would be appreciated also..
it could be the power supply though.. but i kind of doubt it because it powers everything up fine.. just not 2x ide drives.. but i think that is just due to me reaching the full load capacity.. in my old setup 2x sata drives and 1x dvd rw ide drive worked fine with my gts 8800 and all my old stuff.but if i added a second optical drive, no go.
i have an extra psu i can use also to rule that out as the problem..
got the vga cable havent tested yet.. waiting to see about this breadboarding stuff.. but im almost 100% its a shorting issue due to the cheap case im using. on some of the motherboard standoffs the screws wont even go fully in.. so in some areas if i pull up on the motherboard it moves and it shouldnt do that.. i was very stupid to run my old system for so long with it shorting and not wanting to boot intermittently.. it never once blue screened on me or crashed or anything like that. booting up and getting no video was just always the issue.. i just hope my cpu didnt get damaged cuz i have no money for a new one atm..
one last last bit i swear.. as far as the 680i lt motherboard goes.. im gonna try my old board first anyways but.. i hear 680i lt has problems with certain series of intel cpu and needs a bios update to work with them properly.. i have an e7200 and althought xfx's website says its compatible.. i have read otherwise.. i only have one cpu so if that was the case im wondering if anyone ever had a xfx 680i lt with e7200 and if they had problems.. also how i would even get a bios update on it. if it might possibly need a bios update to support the processor. so any input on this will be greatly appreciated as well..
sorry for the long post and thanks. and i hope my post is in line with proper posting procedures.. as i have read all the sticky posts.. i just included the extra stuff so that when my breadboard question is answered.. if i have other problems i wont need to post another thread so on and so forth..