Dotan Cohen is having trouble with his display.
I asked:
> I presume that both graphics cards are AGP or both PCI-E. You wouldn't
> have an old PCI graphics card that you could borrow? (It's not worth
> buying one to troubleshoot this).
Dotan replied:
> It's AGP, and I did try another card.
I was wondering if there was something weird about the AGP slot, that's
all. AGP is more complex than PCI (it's PCI with extra speed and extra
capabilities), so trying a PCI card might have worked.
It's also possible that the BIOS has convinced itself that there is a
PCI card there and so it doesn't need to initialise any AGP card.
(There's usually a setting in the BIOS for which one it should treat as
primary). Or that the motherboard isn't able to read the graphical BIOS
from a card in the AGP slot, so it doesn't know how to initialise an AGP
card.
Or it even might have convinced itself that it's got on-board graphics
and should be using them!
I wrote:
> Honestly, there's very little else to blame. It has to be the
> motherboard, BIOS, memory or processor, (or very possibly a marginal
> power supply) since there is nothing *else* involved in getting the BIOS
> up and displayed (apart from the graphics card).
Dotan replied:
> So the m/b could be at fault? I doubt that it could be the memory or
> processor, as they are not responsible for feeding the monitor. The
> BIOS it could be, though, as it is responsible for EnergyStar and the
> like.
You're correct that it's *unlikely* to be the memory or the processor.
But they're both involved in running the BIOS. It's highly unlikely but
possible that the CPU isn't running the BIOS correctly (if the machine
continues to boot, I'd suspect a weird bug that only manifests itself in
real mode). It's more likely that a part of the memory that the BIOS
uses is faulty, and so the BIOS isn't waking up the card correctly.
I wrote:
> One option might be to transfer the hard drive to another machine, boot
> it up, and install SSH, then transfer it back. Otherwise you're probably
> best off using the machine for parts.
Dotan replied:
> Good idea, and wholy possible. Assuming that Fedora will boot with
> radically different hardware (AMD instead of Intel processor, 1GB RAM
> vs 256MB, etc...)
I took either FC3 or FC4 from a dual Celeron with an Intel 440 BX
chipset to a single Athlon 64 with an NForce 4 chipset. It Just Worked
(except that it had to be told about the new network card). Windows 2000
refused to boot.
You may want to temporarily unplug any other hard drives on the AMD
machine, especially if you boot or mount filesystems by filesystem label
(or if both installs expect to be on /dev/hda, for example).
As a *really* last step, before throwing away the motherboard, reset the
CMOS settings (there's usually a jumper on the motherboard for this).
There's a slight possibility that this will convince the motherboard to
initialise the graphics card and get you back into business.
What will *probably* happen, though, is that the graphics will still
refuse to work, and now you can't see to navigate the BIOS. If you're
lucky it will detect the hard drive and boot from it still. If you're
unlucky, it will want you to reconfigure the BIOS -- blind. That's why
it's an absolute last step.
Hope this helps,
James.
--
E-mail: james@ | "I would like to apologise to the relatives of the fan
aprilcottage.co.uk | who gave me 29 books to sign in Odyssey 7, Manchester.
| I'm a little twitchy towards the end of a day of signing
| and did not mean to kill and eat him." -- Terry Pratchett
