Weird ascii characters in BIOS - Leadtek Geforce 4 MX

[O-Dog]

Hi, built some comps last night, they seem ok but im having a few problems.

- Built 3 PCs from exactly the same components (but only bought 2 graphics cards - i already got one for one of em)

- Put the first graphics card (Geforce 4 mx) in one worked ok... but sometimes when powered up would get weird ascii characters flash about the screen and corrupt it (1 in 10 probability). Turning off and on would solve the problem.

- Put the second graphics card (Geforce 4 mx) in and it didnt work... totally screwed with ascii characters and weird stuff all over the screen. Rebooting didnt help. I tried clearing the CMOS, again that didnt help. Tried a Voodoo 3 AGP card in the second machine and it worked fine, no problems.

- Moved the second graphics card (Geforce 4 mx - from machine 2) and tried it in the 3rd machine, and it worked ok... didnt seem to have any problems

What is happening and why does it happen in one PC and not the other, despite the fact they are all exactly the same PCs!! Here is a list of main components:

AMD Athlon XP 1800
I-Will XP333-R (Socket A) (all Revision 2.1)
Leadtek WinFast A170 DDR T Geforce 4 MX (GX-000-LT)
Crucial 256MB DDR PC2100 CAS-2.5
Maxtor DiamondMax 40GB

FSB is on 100, 133 doesnt make any difference, im assuming it would have been reset on CMOS clear anyway.

Any help much appreciated... i have seen a similair problem with my friends computer a few months ago, although that too seemed to work after a reboot. Anmybody else had similair problems? Is my motherboard knackered? Graphics card screwed or is it a jumper setting?! Cheers

[Monaco]

hey O-Dog, welcome to the forums

I've had problems like that a few times- it seems like it is caused by a few things.

My GTS would do that sometimes, until I looked at it closely and found some crap on the leads to one of the memory chips. Cleaned it, and it has never happened again.

Freind of mine broke of some bits on his vid card (oops!) and now it gets blue lines and ASCII stuff on the screen all the time.

Finally, my Voodoo3 did that when I overclocked it too far- one time with the V3 I forgot to set the AGP divider right, and blammo weird ASCII stuff everywhere.

So I can't say for sure what it is. Give everything the doublecheck, and if it still happens try replacing the cards I guess.

Good luck!

[David]

Looks like the mobo to me. Check the AGP slot and the card and make sure they are in properly. If that fails try a different type of video card.

I dont think it is the vcards - I could be wrong though.

PF

[O-Dog]

PenguinFreak i already tried the voodoo 3 AGP and it works fine. this afternoon i took the board from machine #2 (which always had the problem.. even after reboot) and put it in machine #1... got the bios beeping at me a code which turns out the card couldnt be initialised... yet the other one works?? maybe a compatability issue? these boards are brand new out and might not have been tested yet