[mythtv-users] OT: dead motherboard or video card?

Greg Woods greg at gregandeva.net
Wed Jun 16 16:34:57 UTC 2010


On Wed, 2010-06-16 at 08:16 -0600, Brian Wood wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 16, 2010 08:09:32 am bhaskins at chartermi.net wrote:
> > Get a live cd of any recent popular distro, boot up from that and
> > compare that to what you now have.
> 
> Probably the best way to go, short of replacing the mobo.

I tried booting from the F13 install DVD. I see the initial grub screen,
but shortly after that, the monitor puts up a warning that it cannot
display and I never see anaconda, just a black screen. That never
happened before either.

> 
> The problem may be with the replacement power supply. If it has insufficient capacity, odd things can happen. Video cards 
> draw a lot of current.

It is larger than the old one (650W vs. 450W). So while I can't rule out
a brand-new power supply somehow being defective, it seems unlikely and
I'm pretty sure it has plenty of capacity.

> 
> If it were me, I'd try a different PSU, if you have one available. You might also try removing anything not actually needed 
> to boot, thus reducing the power requirement, and add things back one by one after you are up and running.

I might try this; I could unplug all the SATA/recording drives and try
to boot from the IDE DVD again.

I also had my hardware friend suggest trying the onboard video chip;
frankly, I had forgotten that it had one (it's not VDPAU-capable so I
had to disable it in the BIOS and use a PCI-E video card).

Come to think of it, the chip being found by lspci might be the onboard
one (also Nvidia). It may be that the PCI-E slot simply doesn't work any
more. I'll try re-enabling the onboard chip and see what happens.


> Also remember that any time you open the case and put your hands inside you run the risk of loosening a cable or 
> connector, or doing other unintended things. I'm not denigrating your technical ability, I speak from sad experience.

That is a valid point, but I have carefully checked everything. All the
drives are found by the BIOS. I'm not sure what kind of connection could
be wrong that would cause only the video card to malfunction; it does
not have a power connection other than from the PCI-E bus.

--Greg




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