Help deciphering mainboard lights

I installed an older mainboard (purchased Feb 2022) in a newly purchased case, added new memory and a new ssd - but I’m having trouble getting it to boot and deliver a signal to my monitor (I’m booting with a bootable Ubuntu USB drive plugged in to a USB-A port).

I’ve connected it to power via one of the USB-C ports, and connected it to my monitor via an HDMI adapter plugged into another USB-C port.

I made a video of the boot process here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/wFqvuQDCY24X5vJp8

It shows a rather elaborate light display during the boot process which I assume is communicating something useful, but even after a minute it isn’t delivering a signal to the monitor.

I’d really appreciate any pointers in what’s going on.

I presume you’re using it without a battery. Just to check, did you put the mainboard into standalone mode? That’s needed for use without a battery.

I think old BIOS versions for some generation boards lacked the ablity to activate standalone mode in that way, so depending on which board you have, if it’s BIOS isn’t current then it might need to be updated first.

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