WHY? (Was: What's the point of USB keyboards+mice)

When I was repairing My HP9836CU, I put the motherboard on top of the monitor (!). The standard layout of the machine makes it quite difficult to work on, especially the video boards, which are hidden under the left-hand disk drive. And you can guess where the first fault I looking for was... Anyway, I had everything out of the casme anyway. I put the monitor on the bench and put the motherboard ont top of it (fortunately the monitor has a flat, plastic top). The video cable would jjust rraach. I then cvonencted the video boards to their ribbon cable and to the coaxial cabl to the vido output conenctor. Fitted the CPU board nad one memroy board in the I/O backplane slot, components facign forwards (this works fien for testing, it avoids using the I/O backplane and having an memory board flopping arround with no guides to support it). THe PSU board when nto its backplane conenctor, I connected a home-made cable to the input card edge, the other end to my bench PSU. I didn't bother with the keyboard or disk drives to start with. Anyway,I could power up the machien like that and easily put the logic analyser o nteh graphics board. It didn;t take long to find the fualty IC. -tony