GFX card problem

Chunks

Hi,

Lastnight a friend of mine asked me if I could retrieve some information from an old computer for them. Seeing as it was a crappy machine with a brutal windows 98 OS (which hadn't a clue what or how to use USB connections) the only other option to me was to remove the hard drive and put it in an external case. However, I didn't realise that the case wouldn't work with this old school HD (an IDE? or is it ATA, which is older? I always get them mixed up)

So I opened up my machine and set it as a slave and turned my machine on. When I turned the machine on I got a disk read error, so I figured I hadn't set the pins in the right configuration to be a slave. I took the HD back out and set it as a slave again, put it back in my machine and turned it on.....

....All of a sudden the machine started beeping and a red line came up on screen telling me that my Radeon 9800PRO gfx card wasn't connected to the power supply correctly! I took the card out and checked all connections, put it back in but the message still kept coming up.

Anybody know what I did wrong, need to do?

Thanks in advance

8T8

Yeah that's an IDE hard drive the terms can be confusing as it can be branded several different ways.

Anyway on to the problem at hand you put the old HD into your PC and it's now knocked your own PC out of commission.

First thing I would attempt is remove the old HD, and re-seat the components for your own PC that includes the graphics card & RAM by re-seat I basically mean take them out and put them back in again.

Now after that clear the CMOS and see if the system boots again ?

Chunks

CMOS? How?

fenris

Forgive the obvious question, have you plugged the power connector into the 9800pro?

Chunks

Yes, I never touched the card so I didnt see any reason why it should not be plugged in, but I checked it nonetheless and it's plugged in there doing it's job.

8T8

Your motherboard has a jumper on it (consult the manual to find it though it is usually not too far from the CMOS/Bios battery) that will clear the settings in the bios.

Hopefully once it has been reset it will boot the system again, bear in mind you will have to setup the bios again or not if you never changed anything past the default settings.

Chunks

8T8 wrote:

Your motherboard has a jumper on it (consult the manual to find it though it is usually not too far from the CMOS/Bios battery) that will clear the settings in the bios.

Hopefully once it has been reset it will boot the system again, bear in mind you will have to setup the bios again or not if you never changed anything past the default settings.

That sounds a bit dodgy to do...... is it?

8T8

No it's a normal thing to do,
1) Unplug power from computer
2) Find CMOS jumper move from pins (example->) 1-2 to 2-3
3) Put jumper back onto pins 1-2
4) Plug back in power
5) Turn on computer

If you know the make & model of your motherboard I can point out the location to you.

fenris

It is possible that the your power supply has gone faulty. Maybe the disk you plugged in was more shagged than you thought!

You could try putting a meter across the molex connector that you are using to power the 9800pro, or try disconnecting all power connections from everything except mobo and gfx card, then vary the connector going into the gfx card. Depending on the make of your PSU you may find that only one power rail is blown but there are enough functional rails to confirm that your PC is okay

L31mr0d

8T8 wrote:

Yeah that's an IDE hard drive the terms can be confusing as it can be branded several different ways.

[Pedant]
Actually both S-ATA and P-ATA are IDE technologies, the correct way to refer to the drive the OP has is a PATA drive, you can call it IDE but its a blanket generalisation of all ATA drives. Almost as irksome as people who say LCD Display or CD Disk :rolleyes:
[/Pedant]

This situation goes on to strengthen the old addage that no good deed goes unpunished Can you try the VGA in another computer? Perhaps your friends? Can you try his VGA in your PC? You need to figure out if the VGA is your problem or the mobo (ergo BIOS) Does your mobo have onboard gfx?

Joeface

N/a