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IBM PS/2 P70 issues

C

CompuNurd

Member
Joined
Jun 1, 2014
Messages
35
Location
Texas
I got an IBM P70 386 system for $15 at an electronics shop. The guy said the screen didn't work, so I figured it couldn't be too difficult to fix. I got back and fired it up, and it worked perfectly. Today, I cleaned it up by wiping the outside and scrubbed the keyboard, now it turns on, all you hear is some buzzing, and nothing happens on screen. The buzzing just changes pitch a few times like something is trying to read (hard drive) then it stops.

It did this before the screen came on (when it worked) and a similar sound was coming from the hard drive when there was activity. It sounds like it is coming from the hard drive, but why would it cause the screen not to come on or do anything?
 
Does the P70 work if you hook it up to a external monitor? It was possible with the P70 line to put the computer into a video mode that would not work with the plasma display.

Of course, if the plasma display has failed or only works intermittently, you would see the same result. System boots, gets to the end of the boot cycle and stops reading the hard drive, and waits with nothing showing up.
 
I had a problem with the display before. I my case it turned out that one of the capacitors on the graphics card was faulty. I replaced it with a good one and everything worked after that.
 
Well, the issue here is it doesn't seem to boot to anything, just sit there and do nothing. I would see the hard drive lights and hear more activity if it was booting, since I have seen it boot before.
 
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