I have a ATX psu hooked up.. do I "short" the PS on the motherboard? (bottom right next to the IDE connector)

Yep...it should be connected to a push-button switch.

hmm..i'll check my psu.

It's not booting?

Try it with nothing plugged in but a serial cable, just the bare board and PSU connected no PCI or anything else like that, and tap a screwdriver or your car key across the PS terminal.

It should just work, but if not, then I would blame the PSU for now. What PSU is it?

Like tarbos says, the car keys should be replaced with a real push-button switch eventually. I usually rip them out of old PC cases :)

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Matt Sealey

yea...I tried with no vid card but the HD is plugged in. I dont mind removing the vid card, but I left the hd so I would know if it spinned up that its "powered on". I'll try again later today.

ok.. I think the mobo is bad.
I used a psu out of my PC that works.

I removed a power switch from a spare case I had, plugged that into the EFIKA, plugged the ATX connector and hit the power switch. The HD's in my pc spun up so I know that the switch works and the EFIKA is getting power. So I plugged in the 2.5" drive into the EFIKA and it didnt power up. So I thought maybe that drive is bad since I bought it on ebay a few days ago (IBM Travelstar 32gig). So I plug in a cheap PCI graphics card into the EFIKA (no 2.5" hd) and hit the power switch and nothing happens. The hd's in my spare PC do not spin up either(I have the hd's powered up by the PSU so I can see if hitting the switch does anything).

Since I am local, do you guys have time to check this out?

Maybe this tiny board doesn't drain enough power from your PSU and it cannot provide with stable enough output.
Try with a smaller PSU with several devices attached to it.
I would also try to charge the efika a little from the usb ports and pci to see if it changes.

its not the psu.
If you re-read my post you'll see I had a 2.5" hd hooked up along with whatever hd's are in my pc (2).

There are power outputs on the ATX connector that aren't used by the hardisk units, and maybe one of these can't supply with stable voltage because of the low charge.

Why don't you try to power on Efika without any devices connected as Neko advised? Just connect Efika to your PC with a serial cable, open terminal and check if Efika booted properly.

That way You will be sure that Efika isn't damaged.