Hi, I'm Samuel.
I'm posting here since I am suffering from a very similar problem, as I found here during a Google search.
If you compare the OP's input at

(I can't post a link if I haven't posted five times already? What's up with this?)
forged url:
tripple-w [dot] linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?
and the GET part ripped out: "s=&threadid=28987"

with mine, you'll see the resemblance.
I am sorry to bother a linux forum with this, but I'm hoping the original poster (=OP) will see this.

I'm running on AMD Athlon 800MHz, on a KT7-RAID motherboard.
I was running Win2000 on it at the time of the incident, but this is not an OS problem, as you will clearly see.

I had the computer booted up one day, and all of a sudden, after using it for say five minutes, the monitor went blank, halting. I rebooted into a black screen with the marker blinking in the upper left corner.
I later noticed my CDRW unit was booting with it's green light on all the time, just as it would do if I had turned the IDE cable upside down. I pulled the IDE cable and the power supply cable to it, and rebooted the computer.
This time, it booted up just fine. After a few minutes, the screen went blank again. Black screen on reboot again. This time, my *CD unit* had it's light on during boot-up. I pulled it out and rebooted. I entered CMOS setup, but the screen went blank again, after a few minutes - in BIOS (so this is not a windoze problem).
After that incident, I couldn't even get the greeting beap out of the box.
I swapped my G-Force 440 MX with some matrox piece of junk I had laying around, and rebooted. No change.
I swapped my RAM, still no change. I started pulling every single IDE and EIDE cable out, one by one. I continued pulling out every PCI card too.
I even pulled the matrox graphics card - just to hear the graphics card error beep on start up, but it didn't sound at all. All that was connected was the CPU fans, which was doing their job as always.
I swapped CPU just a while ago, to a Duron 800MHz (instead of Athlon). There *should* be no problem with that CPU. The CPU boots up fine, just until after the memory has been tested, then it comes to a halt. It won't enter CMOS setup either.
So I started pulling the cards out again, changing the memory and graphics card (btw, my G-Force card was working again). I pulled out my CDRW which was not being a problem this time, I pulled out all other cables too. It still won't get further than declaring my memory OK.
I pulled out the CMOS battery, as a last, desperate attempt on getting the computer to boot up, at least to a boot failure screen. No luck.

I have only the motherboard and the power supply left to try and switch, but I won't be able to do that in a while. Is the OP around? Did you get it to work with the new power supply?

Thanks for reading through this, and thank you for any helpful advice you may have.

I have fixed many computers over the years, and I can tell that power supply have been the problem in many of them.

I can see that you have changed (or removed) everyting to test for the possible problem, and since you haven't found it, the very last alternative is what you've said, change the power supply.

If it doesn't seems to be the problem, then it's gonna be the motherboard.
If you've changed the cpu to it's "original" one and it didn't do it, try to get another processor to test; if it doesn't work, then that's it man, the motherboard went to heaven.... it is dead.

Sorry.

Something else... if you have to buy a new motherboard and plan to use the same Duron 800mhz, just be sure that the fans can give it enough cooling to it.

Hope to be helpfull.

You have been helpful, thank you.

I will try to switch the power supply first, then.

But why is my Duron 800MHz CPU getting farther durnig boot, than Athlon my 800MHz is? It's the Athlon CPU that was used during the initial hang.

Can, by any chance, a defective power supply trash a CPU?

Don't know for sure why is your Duron getting farther, maybe the architecture in the cpu about energy is diferent than that in the Athlon.

And I've never seen a defective power supply trash a cpu. If the problem in your system lies in a power supply damaged, just replace it and the system must be working great again without any kind of configuration.

If you can or already could fix your system, please let us know where were the problem ¿ok?

I visited my local computer hardware store, and got my hands on a Soltek MB (SL75DRV5, soltek.de).
I put my original Athlon CPU in it, configured it accordingly, and it works like a charm.
My guess now, is that the northbridge chipset went bye-bye for overheating it.
I'm putting a cooler fan on it, on my new MB.

Thanks again for all help.
The only drawback now is that I'll have to replace my borrowed DDR memory, because I can't reuse my 600MB+ SDRAM on this MB.
And the fun part is, the new computer I bought is allready shipped. So I guess my wife is getting a computer upgrade sooner than expected.