Promise raid, help needed

[The JoJo]

For the past five hours I've been trying to get a small SOHO server to boot. After a normal shutdown, the computer starts up, HDs spinning, fans spinning, led on motherboard green, but no keyboard, no picture. No POST. No beeps. No keyboard lights.

The computer is a A7V266-e, with 2*256 memory, 4*80gb. 2*80 is on the Promise ide/raid controller with raid 1. This is the system disk, with important data on it (I verified a backup a few days ago). The second 2*80 is using Win2k Server software raid 1. Misc stuff on it.
I've changed everything but the mobo (except the memory, tried one stick at a time in all different slots). I've had every piece out of the case. No go, same as above (spinning but nothing happens). No beeps either, even without gpu or memory.

With what kind of a configuration could I get one of the system raid disks working in another motherboard? Do I need to have the exact same Promise chip on a new motherboard?
Does anyone have any experience from a situation similar to this?

 

[blakerwry]

from my experience the promise fast track RAID controllers are inter compatible... you can use a fasttrack 66 created array on a FT 100 and vise versa (I've only tried with RAID 0).

I'm thinking bum PSU, CPU or mobo.. Be sure and label your disks by channel that they are attached to the controller so you dont accidentally much things up.

 

[blakerwry]

should that be intra compatible?

 

[Mercutio]

Intra = Within.

Something that's Intra-compatible would be compatible with itself. You probably learned all about intra-compatibility with yourself at age 12 or so.

I think The JoJo has a bad motherboard, but I don't want to say that out loud.

 

[blakerwry]

that's what I was thinking, but they usually dont just up and die after normal use... it seems they either work at 1st site or they don't... unless of course there is a power surge, fire, explosion, or bulging capacitor..

 

[Mercutio]

You haven't seen enough bad motherboards.

 

[timwhit]

You haven't seen enough bad motherboards.

Motherboards will die for almost any reason. When I was working as a tech we would get computers in with dead motherboards everyday. There usually wasn't some great reason why it had died. They just die all the time for no apparent reason. Sometimes the customer would say that it was a power surge because the VCR also broke. But, most of the time they just up and break.

 

[The JoJo]

It's gotta be the mobo, that's the only part I haven't been able to change. I've even tested the powerswitch.

Gotta try changing the mobo today, and hope that the data will still be there in working condition.

 

[The JoJo]

A friend of mine and I put the HD's in another computer and managed to copy all the stuff normally to other HDs.
We then built a new computer to stick the HDs in. Everything working ok.

I'm glad the disks didnt' have any proprietary stuff on them which would have prevented their moving to another computer without RAID or promise, and the subsequent copying of data.

Thanks everyone!