MOBO problems

this is for a friend he cant use his computer for anything

first i dont know what brand the mobo is i scoured it with a magnifying glass and a flashlight the only hint i got was there were three group switches on the board with EDGE on it
as far as he knows its a compaq pc.
it has only one ps/1 port problem one
and pci cards for usb, mouse both serial and ps/2, a ati 32mb video card, and a soundblaster 16 bit
processor AMD k6 500mhz i have no idea what fsb this has or what the mobo can handle aand he didnt know either (essentialy he found it in his dads closet.

second problem CMOS cant be found going to default hit enter, cant do it because the keyboard wont work and i went through 5 keyboards to come to that conclusion i tested them all my laptop worked fine.
possible causes he thought it was done because the har drives and cd werent working (i fixed that ) but he pulled out the battery then put it back in right smack dab in the middle of the board i dont know if he played with any other power switches but i tried readjusting the group switches which were like this
ON EDGE
----------- i flipped them all to on and then put them back to place

so any suggestions for the PS/1 port
and what the heck is cmos i been researching it didnt find squat

thanks in advance

 

Hi Tuxp
Your not giving us much to go on, does the machine actually boot up and is there an OS installed on the drive. Do you get anything on your monitor, do the fans spin up
The CMOS is the user defined settings in the bios, on a Compaq Machine they are usually very limited but to access them you need to press the DELETE key when first powering up (or try F1-F2-f10 etc)
Removing the battery and leaving it out for a couple of minutes usually resets it to factory settings
If the port is the problem do you have a USB keyboard to try in there

Usually Compaq's have the model number on the side, if you can find that you can look up the hardware at the manufacturers website

Let us have some more info and well see what we can do

 

first off there is no working port for the keyboard the keyboard will not work anywhere on the computer there is a ps/1 keyboard slot but its fried as far as i can tell
monitor screen shoes this is what i get though

AMD k6
33165 kb memory
primary hard drive found
secondary hard drive none
floppy found
cd found


CMOS cant be found going to default hit enter,

no os going to use knoppix live cd until i get everything figured out
again he isnt sure if its a compaq
i need to fix this keyboard first to do anything any suggestions
so the monitor works
hard drives work
cd works
fan works
lights are on
not the floppy

i hope this is enough info
need any more just ask
thanks general lee

 

I take it you have no USB keyboard to try. cos if the PS1 slot is fried then there aint a lot we can do, are you 100% certain it aint working although they may not register if youve only got PCI ports
If the board is really old it might have the old keyboard type connector

Could be the mobo has gone bad if theres no CMOS, if the BIOS chip is corrupted, it may not be giving the instructions to the mobo concerning the PS1 port

Have you tried removing the battery for a longer period some need to be left overnight to reset, some boards have a jumper to reset the CMOS so it would really help if we knew what Make the mobo is usually theres some writing in between the pci slots

 

i cant tell if the ps1 slot is fried but i came to that conclusion seeing as 2 ps/1 keyboards didnt respond then after i tried two ps/2 adapters with 3 different ps/2 keyboards ill tell him bout the battery okay thanks again

also the ps1 port is the only one directly built into the mobo