On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 6:19 PM, John R Pierce pierce@hogranch.com wrote:
Lanny Marcus wrote:
And, I believe, in the Dell Dimensions, we have 4 of them, they use Proprietary cases, motherboards and PSUs.
not since the 90s, anyways. at one time, Dell >dimensions used PSUs with two wires swapped on the power connector, but they >haven't done this in a long long time. Their P4 and newer tower systems >should hold any standard ATX board of the right general size (micro vs >mini vs full sized, depending on the specific chassis). Dell does passive heatsinks powered by 120mm case fans and >shrouds, this obviously won't work if the CPU on the replacement motherboard >is in a different place, but the shroud can be removed, the case fan >reversed to exhaust, and a conventional heatsink/fan cpu cooler used >instead.
John: Everything you wrote was very interesting to me! This box was shipped on 1/6/2005, according to the Dell web site. That may give me some other options. Hoping to take it in (about a 90 minute trip) to the man in Cali on the 5th or 6th of January. He spends his days fixing motherboards. He also can take a look at the PSU, which I suspect may also have issues. The city of Cali celebrates "Feria" (fair) between Xmas and New Years and a lot of places are closed or close at Noon. Thank you and Happy New Year to you and your family! Lanny