Radeon 96K Pro problems.

[PrDeltoid]

Heres one that has me shaking my head and Im looking for a second opinion (or any other thing I may be missing).

I have a system with a BioStar M7VIQ mother board. Im trying to add a Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB video board in it. The problem is, it keeps displaying garbage characters when I boot the darn thing up. Like right way when it is going through the POST. It will eventually boot into Windows, but its a really messed up VGA, although the video board is detected and you can *sort of* see everything.

Here are the facts:

-the onboard Savage S3 has been disabled in the BIOS and the drivers for it have been removed. The BIOS has been configured accordingly for the AGP board (well, according to the Mobo manufactuer). The BIOS is the most up-to-date. This happend with the original and the now updated BIOS.

-I removed the KVM that was on the box and that didnt change a thing.

-The onboard video works fine.

I dont have another AGP card to test on this box, nor do I have another computer avalible to test this board in.

Am I missing something? Anyone run into this before?

I think the board is bad, but I wanted to pick some brains, so to speak, and get some other opinions/tips.

pr

[confus-ed]

Errr ummm ... nothing to check it with ... errmmm ... Power ? The 9600s don't require 'extra' power like the 9800s (& 9700s?) but they do cause problems with anything using pci slot 1 (you can't have anything in that at all) & they aren't stable if the power supply isn't up to the task or the cicuitry in the board struggles (which might be the case here) ...

I've looked at this boards specs & Compatability test results (pdf) (ftp://ftp.biostar-usa.com/manuals/M7VIQ/M7VIQreport.pdf) ... this doesn't seem to indicate any 'additional' agp card testing ... so a mail to biostar to confirm it can run on this board ?

BTW a few 'whacko' chars at pre boot isn't anything to be bothered about 'cold' but on a warm boot (via reset) there shouldn't be any ... & certainly not after post ....

Can you get it to work 'normally' by forcing it to be seen as 'standard' vga ? (does it show 'better' in safe mode?)

& since I'm confus-ed - 'I removed the KVM that was on the box and that didnt change a thing.' - what's this bit about ?

[NooNoo]

KVM switch allows you to have multiple pcs but only one keyboard and mouse.

[PrDeltoid]

Originally posted by confus-ed
Errr ummm ... nothing to check it with ... errmmm ... Power ? The 9600s don't require 'extra' power like the 9800s (& 9700s?) but they do cause problems with anything using pci slot 1 (you can't have anything in that at all) & they aren't stable if the power supply isn't up to the task or the cicuitry in the board struggles (which might be the case here) ...

I've looked at this boards specs & Compatability test results (pdf) (ftp://ftp.biostar-usa.com/manuals/M7VIQ/M7VIQreport.pdf) ... this doesn't seem to indicate any 'additional' agp card testing ... so a mail to biostar to confirm it can run on this board ?

BTW a few 'whacko' chars at pre boot isn't anything to be bothered about 'cold' but on a warm boot (via reset) there shouldn't be any ... & certainly not after post ....

Can you get it to work 'normally' by forcing it to be seen as 'standard' vga ? (does it show 'better' in safe mode?)

& since I'm confus-ed - 'I removed the KVM that was on the box and that didnt change a thing.' - what's this bit about ?

Well, There isnt anything in the 1st PCI slot, so that is out.

I checked the power supply. Its a 450Watt, so I dont *think* thats an issue.

Safe mode dosnt help because the garbage characters are coming up durring the initial part of the boot, durring the POST. If I go into the BIOS, you cant even read it, its so scrambled, but no, if it goes into safe mode its all messed up too. Little red virtical lines and such.

Im waiting for a responce from BIOStar, so hopefully that will help.

[Duke of Rezin]

Bad board. Get an RMA number and send it back.