More Emachine issues

[raichlea]

I read most of the sticky but saw mostly arguments about whether or not emachine PSU's were a problem. They are.


Ok, I am trying to repair an Emachine T1742 and it's driving me nuts.

Basically the PSU died which is apparently a common issue with these beasts.

I replaced it, but it seems to be having some residual problems. It initially had a 250W power supply but now has a working 400W.

Now, no USB ports work. I have checked all the connectors and updated all of the motherboard drivers in Windows to no avail. I also uninstalled and reinstalled all the USB devices in the device manager. There are no exclamation points or question marks in the device manager. I checked the IRQ assignments and there don't seem to be any conflicts.

If I plug a mouse in, it appears to find it, the little "new hardware" icon appears in the taskbar and then goes away without the mouse every working or anything obvious being installed. The mouse IS receiving power and the laser is on. I also tested with a PS/2 keyboard and USB keyboard and it only works with the PS/2.

I have tested all 4 of the back ports and the 2 front ones.

After reading a bunch of posts from people with similar problems, I would like to try flashing the bios. This is apparently really hard to do with an emachine. Eventually I discovered that it's a Trigem Imperial mobo and found the appropriate bios update
on
e4allupgraders.info/dir1/support/oem_bios.shtml

However, it's a Phoenix Bios and the provided PHX_winphlash.zip utility doesn't accept the .bin format which is what the above file is...

What can I use to backup and flash this BIOS?

Thanks!

 

[raybay]

In nearly all cases, the motherboard issues and failures cause the power supply to fail... not the other way around. Our guess is you will never get the board working again. We have done well over 500 of them... with similar results.
The problems you are having now will rapidly get worse until you have a dead board. You will also ruin that new power supply, as well.
The Tri-Gem board is a licensed copy of an Intel board. You can use the Intel BIOS, but you have to ascertain which board Tri-Gem copied.
But I suspect the board will be too far gone for any constructive change to occur.
Good luck to you.
Please let us know if you learn how to fix it, and that we are wrong on that model.

 

[raichlea]

Well, before I completely give up on it, I would like to try flashing.. If it gets even 1 year more out of the computer, it's worth it. Any idea how I would find out which Intel Bios to use?

 

[raybay]

You have to take the numbers (all of them) off the eMachines board, then compare them with the Intel. It is there but difficult. We use photographs of the boards... as they are practically identical.

 

[Tedster]

https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic62782.html