Does emach. mobo need the emachine power supply?

[diogenes10]

My son has an emachine system.

(says model t4150 on the back.)(I think intel 1.5 ghz processor.)

Not enough room in the case.
I have a generic case with 300w power supply he was going to move things to.

Looking at the power supply to motherboard connector-all the wires coming out of the connectors appear to be the same color - 1 difference.

On the corner of the connector facing the front of the computer and next to the ribbon cable sockets there are two orange wires merged into the one connector hole on the emachine setup.

There is only 1 orange wire in the same spot on my generic 300 watt supply.

Is this some critical emachine design that will blow up the emachine motherboard if he plugs it into a non emachine power supply?

Thanks

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It's 10 O'Clock ( somewhere! ).
Are your registry and data backed up?

 

[garebo]

I will take a guess and say that you are ok, but its only a guess, so wait til someone comes up with a definitive yes.
The reason that i say this is that i havent heard of any emachines that age that have proprietary power supplies or motherboards.
But again, wait til you hear from someone who isnt just guessing.



Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[mainegeek]

diogenes10,
Can you remove the power supply from the emachine and swap it into the generic case along with the other stuff?

One of the 2 orange joined wires may be for power supply fan rotation monitoring. Used for monitoring rotation and speed and to warn you if the fan is failing/failed. If it is and you use the generic power supply then you may have to disable it in hardware monitoring with in the rom bios.

Might be a good idea to find out first. See if you can fit the emachine power supply to the generic case.

 

[diogenes10]

Hi,

Moving the power supply will be difficult.

The size and screw patterns don't match.

When we have the supply out where we can see it, it turns out to be a 200w supply.

enp-2120d on spec. page here:

http://www.enhanceusa.com/desktop_op.htm

The emachine came with a harddrive and a floppy.

If he bumps that to 2 harddrives, a cd writer, and a dvd drive, (plus maybe another case fan to subsitute for the special emachines airchannel off the cpu) I don't know how close to max capacity he's going to put that 200 watt supply which could put me back to figuring out a replacement anyway.

-------------------------------------
It's 10 O'Clock ( somewhere! ).
Are your registry and data backed up?

 

[garebo]

It may very well be your setup is matx as opposed to atx, which would explain the 200 watt power supply and the smaller size.

You would have to move everything but the power supply to the atx case, and use the power supply from the atx case. Almost all atx cases will suit matx motherboards and have exact holes for them.
You should be ok doing that.
I've done all the above, just not with an emachines.



Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[edfair]

The last one I converted was a straightforward swap into another case, so far as the motherboard was concerned.
Emachines was the complete machine division of FIC, First International Computers, another of the Taiwan M/B manufacturers and their boards are generally to standard AT or ATX design.

The I/O plate, CDROM, and floppy, however, may be another story. Depends on how they put that particular box together and what parts they used.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[garebo]

I've never seen a FIC board that wasnt standard, so it sure looks like you can just install the guts from your one case into the other. Just use the power supply that comes with the new case. Its 300 watts anyways so that will be a help as the atx unit is only 200 watts.

You might want to take the motherboard out of the original case and set it up and get it runnning with the new power supply before you install it in the new case. And check the bios to see if there is that fan temp setup as mentioned above.
Let us know how you make out.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[diogenes10]

Hi all.

My son tore both computers apart on the dining room table Saturday afternoon and moved everthing but the power supply into the atx case. I wasn't as supportive as I could have been but it was great to see him deciding he could do it and figuring out how to move things.

The i/o stuff matched up fine.
The atx case already had a floppy from the existing system-I think the e-machine one would have worked too, except it had no bezel on it.

He took it to a friends house to do a bunch of software reinstallation. For the moment they are using the matx supply just set in the case, but he is now really depressed because the system has stopped working because of a hard drive conflict.

He has a 160g western digital that I got for him and the 40g (I think seagate but there wasn't any identifying info on it) that came with the system. His friend got xp set back up on the WD 160 and they had a running system but then they tried to add in the 40g where my son had backed up his data and the system quit. The 40g drive has no OS so it won't boot from that and it will also no longer boot from the WD160. They were also apparently unable to boot it from the xp cd. I don't know if could figure it out with the hardware in front of me, but I know I can't do it remote. I don't know if it is a brand conflict, a jumper conflict, a bios setting issue, or something else. So now another issue to solve.

We'll go ahead and make the power supply change and then I'll see if he is going to bring the system back to me for some hardware help on the drives. If he does I may need to make a post in the harddrive forum for some additional help on that.

 

[garebo]

In the meantime, one quick possible remedy would be a bios re-set. You want to go to emachines website (didnt gateway buy emachines?) and get the exact routine for a bios re-set but usually its a matter of removing all sources of power, taking out battery, moving jumper over and then putting all back as it was.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[diogenes10]

Well, they used a different power supply and got the computer going but it hasn't been home for me to look at the bios - they are now having some kind of XP and network conflicts that prevent it from getting on a network and into steam.