It really helps to know when it is time to give it up and with one of these little toys it is a little easier.
A piece of hardware with a purpose from Budget Gadgets. The USB PCI PC Analyzer Diagnoses Card Tester seems to be just the thing to use before scrapping anything, or should I say save headaches before scrapping.
I have tested this on many assumed dead boards and it worked well as it let me know I was correct and they were dead with a 00 code (int 19 error). You would think that I could get a little more specific than that but why? I have stripped these boards, tabled them, put in known working components with good PSU’s, same error so why waste time.
Testing on a working board is a different story though, way too fast, but don’t worry it will stop on the error as the POST will hang. I did do a forced error, memory, just to test things out and got the correct code for my MB BIOS rev.
Click here for video of a good boot.
There are lights to indicate proper voltage +12, -12 and+3 as well as FRAME (It is cycle frame signal of PCI slot. The LED should be on, As long as the Power is on after you plug the card in the PCI slot on the mainboard. The LED light up when the FRAME signal is present. If there is no FRAME signal. This LED will not light up.) and CLK (As long as the main board is power on after you plug in the card into either PCI slot or ISA slot, the LED is on to determine bus clock signal is present.)
The only issue is getting the proper codes for your board and if it is a customer board prepare to do up to an hour of searching for the proper codes. BIOS CENTRAL seemed a good site, though there is a lot to go through to get the proper information.
If you like this little tool it is available here: PCI POST card for $7.42 USD. In my opinion it is well worth it.
A coupon code that can be used site wide AM5OFF21 will save you 5% as well.
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That is a pretty nifty little thing there. 1 question though. Does it register an error code if …. say you were doing something like gaming or video editing or something and your computer locks up on you. Will it give you an error code there or only through the boot up process?
P.S. I know its a post code reader, but i was just curious if it happened to work while the system was already on
…just so my first comment doesn’t look totally ridiculous
I plan on doing some more testing with it and will update this BLOG when done. There are so many things to try, just wish I had not thrown out all my old components.
Fyi Archer, you can embed the video directly into this post if you wish to do so. Should be available as one of the “insert” options, like an image.