[techtalk] blank screen at boot

[Shelly L. Hokanson]

hi marie -

here's a potluck list of things that come to mind :

- make sure your mainboard is mounted correctly with no parts of it touching
the back plate. (metal - on - metal = bad  heheh)
- as a test, unplug your IDE cables, floppy cable, all cards except video,
and your led's. try to boot. even a backwards led can keep the machine from
booting (not very common but some boards are sensitive about that). if you
are able to boot at this point, add back one thing at a time to find out
which device is your culprit.
- if you have access to another memory chip or cpu, you may want to try
them. if either is bad you'd obviously be unable to boot (though at home
it's hard cuz most people don't have access to a bunch of new parts!)
- does your aopen board have a "clear cmos" jumper? (most do). find it and
make sure it's in the "normal" position and not "clear."
- does your motherboard have jumpers for the cpu settings etc? or is it a
pnp bios (where the cpu setup is done in the bios)? make sure your cpu
voltage is set correctly if it's not pnp (as well as the bus speed - i think
the cel 333 is still at 66mhz, and multiplier - probably 5.0. your mainboard
manual should have a chart you can check).
- if your board has both socket 370 and slot 1, there may be a jumper to
choose which you're using.  also, (though i don't recall if the cel 333's
come in socket 370 or not) if your board and chip are socket 370, make sure
it's not the FC-ppga (flip -chip, the newer socket - doesn't always accept
the older non-flip chip socket chips like the older celerons).

okay i'm out of ideas!!  =)  i hope one of those helped - note that those
are in no particular order =)    i find it's uusally easiest to just rip off
all the connectors first and see if it boots with just mem-cpu-vid-keyboard.
90% of the time that will give you a bunch of clues as to what's failing.

any questions, let me know!

shelly

techchron.com beta
http://members.home.net/guppy3/techchron/index.html


----- Original Message -----
From: Marie Fischer <fmarie at eau.ee>
To: <techtalk at linuxchix.org>
Sent: Monday, May 08, 2000 6:53 AM
Subject: [techtalk] blank screen at boot


> this is not a linux-specigic question, but maybe somebody can help: after
> putting together my new box (aopen ax67c m/b, celeron 333, 64 mb sdram,
> ati rage graphics, atx case) and turning it on, it does nothing - the
> screen stays black, keyboard LEDs don't react. However, the cpu fan works
> and the hdd seems to go round, too. Any ideas?
>
> --
> marie
>
>
>
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