Need help replacing a motherboard

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Shadowhawk
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Need help replacing a motherboard

Post by Shadowhawk »

I've been beating my head against this one for entirely too long.
So a client brings me her computer since it's not acting right. Nothing comes up on the screen. The first time I boot it, I hear a series of beeps (short longlong), which seems to indicate a video problem. I hear the computer POST and boot in the background, though, so it doesn't seem like there's anything else wrong; just a dead video card. Of course, I don't have an PCIe cards or PCIe motherboards to test, so I just bite the bullet and buy a PCIe video card to replace it. The original is some GeForce FX5500 card that I can't find any branding on and the computer assembler (Medion) wants $150 to replace it. Ha!
The new card doesn't work, however. There aren't any beep codes this time; it just sits there. So I pull everything out and discover 4 leaking capacitors next to the CPU socket hidden under the HSF. Great. Medion wants $265 to replace this board, and they won't sell it to me anyway (has to be factory replaced) Again, ha!
So I start trying to find replacements. It's an MSI OEM board (MS-7046, which MSI doesn't even show on their page).
Apparently the client actually uses some of the special features of this motherboard: primarily, audio and video in on the front panel. This front panel has: 5-in-1 card reader, headphone jack, microphone jack, stereo 1/8" input jack, RCA audio in jacks, RCA video in, S-Video in, 2x USB, 1x Firewire (normal size), 1x Firewire (mini).
It's a P4 board with Socket T (LGA775), 4 PC3200 slots, 1 PCIe x16 slot, 3x PCI slots, 4 SATA connectors (not sure of their speed). Onboard Firewire header, 2x USB headers, an audio input header, a video input header, and something labeled JL_IN1 which may not have been used. There's also a 8-pin header labeled SATA5. The back panel has 4x USB, 1x Firewire, 1x 100Mbps net, Digital coax in, digital coax out, and surround-sound (I'm assuming 5.1) audio.
Oh, and the case only has room for expansion cards. I think even the FX5500 has some sort of video in header, but I'm not sure if it's S-Video or RCA (I don't know if the card's actually dead or not, since the motherboard's obviously bad).

I simply cannot find ANY board that has anything remotely like this configuration. Hell, I can't even find any boards that have onboard audio and video input headers; retailer search features don't have options or fields for it and generalized searches fill up with chaff.

So, I ask you, SDnet, if anyone knows of any 'multimedia motherboards' that at least have audio/video in, LGA775, 2+ PC3200 slots, 2 PCI slots, and SATA (the rest I could probably work around).
Shadowhawk
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