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So I picked up a Compaq Presario 2500 laptop at a flea market. After rigging up a power supply (A real nice 20V 180W one. Perfect for the laptop, which calls for ~90W at 19V) and turning it on, to my slight surprise it doesn't post.

The laptop is one of those old "desktop replacement" things from the early 2000's and has a full desktop Pentium 4 in it (Northwood, socket 478).

The CPU gets hot, but it doesn't seem to be running because when I pull the ram, it doesn't give any beep codes.

I'm thinking the northbridge is at fault (ATI Radeon 16P345M) as this class of laptop was notorious for baking themselves to death (Dell Inspiron 5150 anyone?) and I have seen this kind of tom foolery before. Or maybe the bios EEPROM succumbed to bitrot. Who knows?

Well, I want to know! Unfortunately this thing doesn't have diagnostic leds or postcodes, or maybe it uses the keyboard indicators for that. I can't tell, because they all stay lit. (Except that one time, but that was a fluke.)

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    Have you taken it to a technician who can diagnose if there is a short or a broken IC?
    – Ramhound
    Commented Mar 28 at 13:48
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    Without post codes, your next simplest step is to visually inspect the components, then find a wiring diagram and use that to test the circuits that can be tested, and finally, hardware swaps. Given the age of the equipment, hardware swapping is likely to range from difficult-to-impossible, though.
    – music2myear
    Commented Mar 28 at 15:37
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    @ qwertykeyboard: See this answer to understand why a repair-shop is the best solution.
    – harrymc
    Commented Mar 28 at 17:55
  • Take it to a repair shop? The laptop is from 2003, and I payed $20 for it at a flea market, it's not worth the price in labor and parts to get it fixed professionally!
    – qwerty keyboard
    Commented Mar 30 at 20:39
  • I've inspected it. Tore the whole thing apart too. It was caked in filth, but even after cleaning it won't boot. I HAVE noticed that, while the CPU has 3 separate fans cooling it, the northbridge is just... There. It has no heatsink! I wouldn't be surprised if it baked itself to death over the years.
    – qwerty keyboard
    Commented Mar 30 at 20:41

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