ATI 7500 doesnt even work during post...help?

[Cyan]

All:

On my wifes pc I am running the following:

Intel SE440BX2 motherboard
356mb sdram
Pentium 2 400mhz CPU

I have been running a 32meg Voodoo4 Video Card in this machine, which has recently died.

I temporarily put in a voodoo3 16 meg card untill I bought a new video card.

The ATI 7500 AGP w/ 64mb DDR Ram card came in yesterday.  Pulled out the old card and popped in the new card...Bios does not detect the Video Card (no screen at all on monitor) I dont even see the memory check screen.

Just for kicks and to insure the card wasnt bad, I pulled out a ATI AGP 7200 64mb SDRAM card and popped it into the board...same thing no screen....no memory check.  

On both boots I can listen and I hear 2 beeps during post that where not there before....currently looking for my code book.  But I do hear everythign churning along and obviously running windows in the background if I let it run long enough.

TO insure the MB wasnt bad I put the voodoo3 back in and all works fine.

Any ideas?  Is it a bios flash issue?  I have checked Iintels site out on the MB with no luck.  I have also checked ATI's site with no luck.

I know I am missing something stupid.  FYI - The card iscompatible with both 2x and 4x agp and 1.0 and 2.0 generation.

Please help. !

[Dinger]

I know this won't help much, but those beeps are probably signifying VGA failure in the POST. (If VGA fails, it will not post).
both these Radeons work on othe rmachines?
I dunno.  I'd start by fiddling with the BIOS.  You know, play with stuff like AGP aperture and video ram caching, and pray for a home run.

[Cyan]

Thanks for the help.

The bios is a typical Intel bios BLECH a real dumb dumb interface.

Very limited options on the AGP settings..but will continue to play.

Both cards do work perfectly in my machine.

Any other ideas?

[Ike 2K#]

get a new processor (optional)

but your systems is good enough for another 3 years

[Dinger]

I used to have a 440BX2.  Hmmm... if we keep posting, maybe someone who knows will come up with the answer.
It sounds like a royal pain in the ass, since to change bios settings, you gotta swap out vid cards.

Okay, here's an idea:
put the Radeon in there and jump your MB's bios.  That should put it in factory default mode, and give you a pretty good shot at making it work.
After that, it's fall back to failsafe defaults.

[Lazerus1]

I had a similar problem about a year ago. Never did get it fixed, until I was forced to format due to another problem. On rebooting the computer after the format, there was a 'new hardware' box and it told me that it had detected a PCI slot. After letting it run through the installation process I tried the new vid card again, and presto, it worked fine. I'm not sure if this will help at all, but it sounds exactly like what was happening to me, down to the 2 beeps.

Good luck

[blackfalcon4]

Put in working vid card, go to cmos setup and write down what settings you have, ( there's utilities for this to print it, but can't remember any offhand). Boot up and remove any of the old vid drivers, and change display in device manager to standard vga, shut down after vga driver install.

With power off reset your cmos w/jumper or if it don't have 1 just pull the battery for 20 secs.

Restart w/new vid card, hopefully should work, go to setup and put back your old settings.

Make sure assign an irq for vid is enabled, vga pallette snooping is disabled, and any cacheing for video is disabled.


  Hope it helps, good luck

[beet1e]

Pulled out the old card and popped in the new card

A fatal error!  This is exactly what you're not supposed to do. Please read the page at the link below.

http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/forte/videocrd.html

"The first step is to remove your driver control software. Do not, do not, do not just power down and rip out your old card. You'll regret it bigtime. Start by opening the "Add/Remove Programs" applet in control panel and scroll through the list of installed programs for anything that refers to your present display device. What you're looking for is a display driver control interface program like Diamond's "InControl Tools", Creative's "Blaster Control" or 3Dfx's "3dfx Tools". I'm sure other manufacturers have similar programs. Select the program in the list and hit the "ADD/REMOVE" button. If it asks you to reboot at this point, do so. Don't be surprised if when it comes back up, it looks just the same as before. You haven't removed any drivers yet; just their control software."

The article continues - better read all of it.