OAPs Dell Zapped By Lightning - Advice Please...

jonclancy

jonclancy

jonclancy

Associate
Joined
9 Dec 2007
Posts
47
Hi All,

A family friend had her Dell Dimension 1100 zapped during a lightning storm recently. The PC will not power up, although the psu measures OK on my multimeter and one small surface-mounted LED on the mobo lights up. It's a socket 478 mobo with a Celeron D 2.8 gig processor and 2 x 256 meg DDR 400 DIMMS, IDE HDD and CDROM.

The only supplier of replacement Dell mobos I could find online wanted £90 plus VAT, but they're showing out of stock anyway. Does anyone know of a drop-in replacement for the Dell Rev A.00, please? If I can't find a replacement, then perhaps this PC is beyond economic repair and we would be better off getting a barebones unit and installing the CDROM and HDD.

As she's an OAP, the budget is tight - say up to £200!! We can re-use the display, keyboard and mouse, HDD, CDROM etc. The Dell mobo has integrated graphics, and we were looking to bung a PCI board in anyway, as our friend would like to use Skype video, BBC iPlayer etc.

Your suggestions gratefully recieved folks!! We'll be ordering the stuff from Overclockers.

Cheers!

Jon
 
Do the fans spin up?

Dells have 4 LEDs on the back (usually) that will light up, the combination of ABCD refers to an error code, check the on-line manual for that model. Have you checked them?
 
If i was you id just invest in a new mobo and cpu, for £90 should could get a semi decent AMD Athlonx2 and a Mobo. Most likely within that £90 too..

Although check the above post first :)
 
Indeed, it's not worth salvaging much from it. The cheapest fix would be a second hand 478 board, i'm sure there are plenty around, and if you can get one with AGP (easy), stick in an old card for video.

If you're going new, it won't cost much to do the whole works really, and it'd be much faster.
 
Word of warning though. Dell used to use their own psu's with the wiring different for the mobo so it might not be the simple case of buying a generic 478 mobo.
 
Hi All,

Wow!! Thanks for the QUICK replies!! I haven't checked the LEDs on the back of the unit, but the fans do not spin up. Power switch pressed and nothing at all.

I'll have a look and report back.

Thanks again!

Jon
 
How about getting her a netbook instead. you could probably plug an external monitor and keyboard in to make it a bit easier to use.
 
Nice surge protector - I'll be having one of those as well...

We'll check the insurance to see if they cover it. I'll also suggest the netbook possibility, as they seem to do a decent job for the price. Need to check if one of those will do video - mate has one, so I'll ask him.

Thanks again!

Jon
 
Awesome value! Thanks for the link. I had a look at the component prices and it'll be possible to reduce the price down to £180 with a B Grade case. That's spending another couple of quid on the 500 gig HDD as well.

I'll suggest this and see what they think.

Cheers!

Jon
 
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