Ok... Let me start off by telling you all what hardware I have.

For about 3-4 years, ive been usin a 166mhz with a 4mb video card (S3 Trio Virge), just a month ago, my friend, sent me a new mother board, new processor, and 320mb ram. Here are the stats

A-Bit K-A7 Mother board (slot A)
AMD athlon 800mhz processor
320mb PC100 ram, but one stick is pc133. (3 sticks of pc100, 1 stick of pc133)
A 15 inch, azura monitor, digital options, (energy star monitor)

so what i did was i bought a whole new atx case, put in the mobo, proc, ram, and i used my existing hd's, (15 gig, 10 gig, 1.5 gig ) and my EXISTING vid card.. Everything was fine.. i was running win98. Win 98 detected my new hard ware, everything ran great. I was very happy

For a month straight, ive had no problems.. Just last night, i experienced a nightmare.

Basically, i as sitting on my computer, and all the sudden my screen went blank.... And the monitor light went orange (Just like if you leave ur monitor on, it shuts off on its own, and light turns orange.. like that)

I was confused as to what happend, so i turned off my monitor, turned it back on, still, i saw a black screen. So i shut down my computer.. turned it back up, and I saw the bootup screen, it went back to windows, everything was fine.. Then all the sudden, my screen basically, DISAPPEARED for a QUICK millasecond, and then reappeared, kinda like a ZAP. But it reappeared, so i as confused. But i decided to forget about it since my screen came back. I left, came back, everything was fine, I used my computer for the next 2 hrs at that time, then all the sudden, my screen JUST went black/blank... light turned orange... PICTURE was out totally....

So i shut down, i went to turn it back on, but this time, the digital screen popped up saying, NO SIGNAL on my monitor..

Basically it was trying to tell me it wasnt cononected... If i were to unplug my monitor right now, on the screen it would say no signal, thats what it was.. But you see, the monitor was plugged into the video card, i had not touched anything... So what i did was, i jiggled/wiggled the cord, into the vid card, and i turned my comp back on, and still, no PICTURE>. no nothing....... i took out my vid card, reseated it back in, plugged cable back in firmly, but still, no picture no nothing...

after an hour or two of messing with it. it finally showed up.. BUT the only thing i saw on my screen was the "S3 TRIO VIRE VIDEO BIOS... version number here..)

then the screen went out again......

i reseated the card in a diff pci slot, that didnt help...

No matter what i did, it would not help at all.

i unplugged al the hard drives
i unpugged the cdrom, took out EVERY CARD..

ALL that was in the computer, was the mother borad, chip, ram, and vid card, and it still did not work..

SOMETIMES, when i jigle it alot, or really move it around, i can get picture, is ee the bootup screen, and i can GET TO WINDOWS, but by the time i get wndows, the screen went out again....

what i did was, i later swapped my vid card (4mb s3 virge) with a brand new GEFORCE 2, 32mb AGP (which i had bought today)

now take note, that we are now going from PCI to agp, and when I put it in, soon as i turned onmy computer, IT WORKED, IT BOOTED UP, I WAS happy, i had my screen agin.

it was getting to windows, then al the sudden, BOOM... same problem..

Now you see, yo u would think its windows, but its not..... sometimes, we would just sit in the BIOS just SIT there, and the screen would go out..... you see, we dont even have to do anything, for the screen to go out.. we tried 4 video cards... all 4 had the same problem..

- So we know its not the video card
- We know, the ram doenst conflict, becuase, we took it all out, and we put just one stick in, because i have not all one type of ram.
- We know its not the hard drives, because we would unpug it all, and sit in the bios, with the 32mb agp card, and it would go out on its own..

We have tried pluggging the power cords, for my tOWER and my monitor, into diff outlets (into the walls) and that didnt work

We have tried, step by step, going from having ALL THE HARDWARE in, to having only the required hardware

e.g.

starting off with everything MINUS the sound card
then everything - snd card - hds
then minus snd card + hds + ram (but with one stick in)
minus snd card + hds + ram + cdrom
to the core components

Oh, and we even switched MONITORS>.. SAME DEAL

I was kind of relieved that it wasnt my monitor, i dont have money to spend on a nother monitor.

We even switched the POWER cord, for the monitor, with another.

basically, we believe it Has to be something to do with the mother boarad
We have changed alot of things, nothing works..... NO matter what we do, the results we get are, the computer wont boot up with any screen/picture on the monitor, or EVEN if we get picture/or a screen.... IT GOES Out very soon/quickly, within a couple seconds.

I really would hate to go out and buy a new mother board, seeing as i live in canada, and some things are expensive..

please, i am desperate, somene out there help me. I have some very important things to do online, and now i can't do anything becaue of this problem. I don't know if i could find a "cheap" slot A mother board for an amd athlon processor in windsor.., or if i can find one at all. Ive been on a 166mhz for many yearse, just when things get good for me i get this problem.

can anyone come up with a solution? we will take suggestions also, because anything will help

thanks

That's too bad, some motherboards are just junk before they are even shipped. Try http://www.pricewatch.com , I'm sure you will be able to find a cheap slot A there. (Out of curiousity, you did make sure that your power supply was giving the right amount of current and connected correctly to the board right? )

It very likely could be a power supply, cause Athlon classics really suck power....

The problem you are having is that your mobo isn't posting (Post = power on self test)

Sounds to me like a power supply problem, uprate your power supply to at LEAST 300watt if using AMD processors,


it can also be a Bios problem basically AMD changed some voltage settings for their chips and A-Bit didn't catch this and thus half the early mobos from Abit that went out wouldn't post correctly. I had this probelm with a kt7 RAID mobo from Abit and after 2 boards changed to MSI which works fine :o)

Old video cards are not a good idea either with newer hardware, they can cause power conflicts

Mike@ultraspeed.co.uk

I had the same problem before... Just get another power supply. I assume that the power supply that you got with your atx case weren't enough.

Hi, could anyone please explain, what you mean by post card? What is a post card? Is this something i put in my computer? i have never heard of one, but if it can help me, where can i get one.

becuase someone said this to me
Can you get your hands on a post card. If you could maybe that could give you a hint as to what is wrong. Make sure that nothing is shorting out. For instance a small case with a large mobo and a cd rom touching the edge. Potential short.

A POST card, is a ISA card that will report numerical codes that correspond to messages in the documentation that comes with the card.

Basically, it will give you some more indepth information as to what is going on at POST.

Originally posted by Orpheus1539
(Out of curiousity, you did make sure that your power supply was giving the right amount of current and connected correctly to the board right? )

yes

we switched mobos

it seems fine now
it was the mobo