Help with ATI Radeon 64

[TarLoraan]

Ok, here's the story. I have a Abit SE-6 MoBo with a PIII 933Mhz and an ATI Radeon 64. The system was together and working just fine. But then I decided to upgrade my computer....

I bought an IWill KA266-RAID MoBo, AMD 1.4GHz proc and 768MB of DDR memory and proceeded to assemble the new system. The Radeon would not work in the IWill MoBo. I contacted tech support from the company I bought the MoBo from and they directed me to reflash the BIOS. I did so and it did correct one other problem I was having but the Radeon still would not work. There is a known problem with the ATI video cards and the ALi DDR chipset but this BIOS flash and a BIOS setting is supposed to correct the problem.

Here are the symptoms... When booting the machine, all fans and such come on. The green light on the monitor lights up indicating that the monitor is receiving a video signal but the screen remains black. I can plug in an old TNT2 video card and it boots up just fine. The Radeon will work in one of my other PCs that currently has an ASUS GeForce2 in it.

Anyway, thinking that there was still a problem with the Radeon and the ALi chipset on the IWill MoBo, I RMA'ed the MoBo and ordered a Soyo Dragon. While waiting to receive my Soyo MoBo, I started to put my SE-6 MoBo back in. Well, now the ATI card is behaving exactly the same on the SE-6 MoBo. Screen stays black and the TNT2 card works just fine. The Radeon still works in the other PC.


HELP!!!! No suggestion will be overlooked!

[!-=sky=-!]

maybe the card is fried?

[TarLoraan]

I'm not discounting your suggestion, Sky. However, the card does boot up in a second machine I have. I suppose there could be something fried in it that only manifests itself with certain chipsets. The machine it works in is an Abit BX-133 RAID.

[GERRY136]

i was thinking u might need to use a different driver but i guess if u cant get a screen to come up that wont help.
then i thought u might have defects or scratches in ur driver installation disk but it works in the other pc so once again im rambling.

[bdf24]

I've never heard of any compatibility problems between the Radeon and the Ali Magic chipsets? I guess I never looked either. My Radeon's been working fine from day one with my Asus A7A 266.

[Thirus44]

I dont belive that its a driver problem. Unless no drivers are installed at all. Is the TnT card pci? If it is then you need to switch vedio to agp for the radeon in the bios.

[TarLoraan]

All,

I'm not even getting to the point where drivers are a factor. The monitor screen literally remains blank. The computer makes a single POST beep and that is it. I don't even get an opportunity to enter the BIOS.

[Robertem70]

Remove all cards form the mobo except video....it should now boot, then reinstall one card per boot until you run into the problem....that should be the culprit

[Bobby Manus]

Yea sounds like it could be an IRQ issue. Once you find what card is the problem, try puting it in different slots. Certin slots sahre IRQ's with features like USB and sometimes other pci slots. Usually after some rearanging of the cards you can get a setup to boot.

[TarLoraan]

I'm way ahead of you Bobby and Robert. The only card I have on the MoBo is the Radeon. That was, of course, the first thing I tried. But thanks for the great suggestion, guys. I wish this one was that simple.

[diehrd]

Look at the beep codes for that mother board.1 beep may be ram or something else.I never heard of a video card that would not boot at all unless it is 1 bad 2 not seated correctly.

The card needs no drivers to boot to windows,so I would guess the issue is some were else like processor,or ram.

[Thirus44]

Maybe its the AGP slot. Try a diffrent agp card and see what happens.

[TarLoraan]

Thirus44,

I can boot the machine with an old TNT2 card and a GeForce2 card. All three are AGP cards although the TNT2 card is AGP x1. The GeForce2 card is AGP x4.

diehrd,

One short beep means normal boot for this Mobo and it is the same POST I get no matter which of the three video cards I boot on. I agree with you that I've never seen this happen before unless the card isn't inserted correctly or the card is fried. I've re-inserted and double-checked the insertion a couple dozen times.

Thanks again guys for the great suggestions.

[diehrd]

Have you cleared the cmos before you attemped first boot.

Clearing it will defaut agp to its lowest setting.That is strange it will work on another system but not yours.I feel this is a mother board problem and not the RADEON card.RMA the mother board.

[Thirus44]

yeah its gotta be ur mobo.:(