VGA fried?

[inflater]

Hello,
just found a old ATI Rage 128 pro/ultra and tried to plug it in to the old mobo. The graphics card will initialize, along with POST: only one beep that means everything's OK. But no, there is no image on the screen... But the graphics card is initialized (the monitor shows 720x400 in the BIOS POST lets say), the PC blind boots, but there isn't anything on the screen. I tried to hold ESC in the BIOS setup utility. That will make the whole screen refreshing infinite times until you would depress the button and I saw some very thin blue lines blinking randomly for a 0,25 a second. I tried to boot Win95, no luck, but i saw some white lines/squares blinking (very occasionally and random) too. My guess is that the graphics card is bad, i tried to pop in other model: and that worked.

This happened to me even in the morning with the "now-damaged" card: I saw nothing on the screen, and just after this black screen there was a colorful garbage so I turned off and on the PC and it worked. The PC isn't overclocked though.

Just curious, what may be the problem? Is the VGA badly inserted or such? I tried to reattach it 2 times and nothing... hmm should I use hammer? Nah. Should I reflash BIOS if I could find one?

[DeletedAccount]

The problems may be many . You should take the following precautions

1) Always use a wrist grounding strap

2) Be gentle , but firm when handling PC hardware

3) Tighen the screws from card to case firmly so that the card dosent
shake easily.

4) The problem may be
1) Your card is faulty (didnt you get the warrenty card )

2) incompitiable monitor

[inflater]

Thanks for your reply SandeepMathew, i think the card is really faulty. The monitor is okay and i've got the card and all components for free, but it worked yesterday and today morning... And it's old (ATI Rage 128 Ultra)

[Combuster]

given the symptoms I agree that the card itself is past its expiring date.

[01000101]

you can see the bios POST through that card, but once you start to get into windows it goes blank/haywire?

if so, maybe drivers? did you try a diff PCI slot?

[inflater]

you can see the bios POST through that card

Nope. The screen is initialized at a specific resolution, but there is no image.

but once you start to get into windows it goes blank/haywire?

It's blank all the time, even if i would go into Windows, but sometimes I can see for a 0,1 seconds white squares flash once (i tried to touch the graphics card heetsink and it wasn't even a bit warm...) I've tried to push the heetsink it a bit and that was the time when the squares/lines/whatever were flashing (altough the heetsink was attached normal).

Anyways I threw out the card. I have to agree that time kissed it goodbye

[DeletedAccount]

Some metals (or alloys ) develop an oxide coating around them as time passes . This can be cleaned by rubbing the contacts with a clean rubber eraser . This works most of the time . I have fixed many cards ,SIMM's DIMM's etc this way . Also try removing dust. You see i still own a 500mhz AMD k6-2 with 64 mb of ram . It is working fine even now , sometimes i have to make some adjustments here are there to get it to work . . It was initially a cyrix PR-233 with 32MB ram and 2 GB HDD... but i later upgraded it . She is my first love and my first PC . She has served me faithfully over the years . Also try replacing the faulty capacitors etc ... , But it takes a long time and your chances of fixing it is close to zero .

Regards

Sandeep Mathew

[inflater]

I have got the faulty card from my "museum of dead components" - in other words, trash, back to the PC and i saw again nothing. I tried to push the heatsink a bit and I started to see garbage again... white backgroud with graphics fonts E and some weird Greek one. So I pushed the card really harder, turned off the system and what? It works

[AJ]

I would still not be inclined to rely on it for mission-critical use, but glad you got it working

Cheers,
Adam