meanings of beeps

I have an old compaq deskpro computer P2 running at something around 300Mhz that is giving me some odd beeps on boot. It has 2 hard drives, a CD drive, 64meg RAM, and a 3D rage graphics card, along with 2 extra ISA networc cards and is running red Hat 7.2.

L = long
S = short

when it is turned on i get LSSS and nothing appears to be happening the after a few seconds i get SS and still nothing happens.

this doesnt seem to happen every time though. sometimes it will boot and run fine. The fact that nothing appears on the screen would lead me to guess that it is the graphics card.

would this guess be correct? or is it likely to be something else?

ill try and get more info on the mobo if required but im not at home at the mo.

cheers

I'm not seeing those beep codes anywhere, could you verify what bios you have, and check that it is in fact "LSSS" rather than "LSS"? The two beeps probably mean "general error", which is less than helpful, but if the other code is LSS, then it does indicate a video problem. Try re-seating the card, and try a different card if possible.

you may well be right with the LSS but i cant confirm that as it wont beep at me anymore and just boots fine. So i have taken out the graphics card and put it back in again just to be sure and everything is working ok for now. cheers for the reply.

exactly the same problem here: old compaq deskpro computer P2 running ~ 300Mhz :1 hard drive, a CD drive, 64meg RAM.

Just installed WinXP and was able to work on it for a few days, but when I turned it on yesterday, nothing happened..

"L = long
S = short

when it is turned on i get LSSS and nothing appears to be happening the after a few seconds i get SS and still nothing happens.."

in my case, this happens every time - nothing happens on screen. I already tried: removing all cards except the video card, replacing the video card with a working video card, testing the monitor (monitor's fine)..

ill try and get more info but any help at this stage would be greatly appreciated..

thanks

First LSSS could be video, second SS probably "general error". If you've already tried a different working video card, I would guess its the motherboard. Try the hard drive and other components in a separate computer, which should allow you to recover data from the drive if needed. If everything works in a different computer, I think the mobo gave up the ghost.