In short:
Is it better totest a known good cpu in an unknown mobo or the other way around>

The long:
I was just given pentium 3-800 that does not boot at all (with a ton of ram, a
usb 2.0 card, and some other stuff) because it was assumed that I could put it
to some useful purpose. 

When the PSU is given power a little lite comes on on the mobo. When the pwr
button is pressed the cpu fan turns  but no beeps and no video. I have tried
different PSU, Vid cards and used different ram (weel it has two stick and I
have swapped them out) so i do not think that they could be the issue.

I think that the motherboard is what is at issue but as I do have access to a P3
machine I can test to see what is at fault. I do not however want to blow
anything up... cause that would suck.

THX