Thank you for the very detailed and quite informative response to my
original post. I am still struggling with this situation and have tried a
different PCI video card to no avail. I searched my 'spare parts' locker in
the hopes of finding an old ISA video card but no luck. Your suggestion of a
different monitor gives me one more thing to try. Do you think that an AGP
card would have any chance at success? I have been considering going in that
direction.
The one thing that has me puzzled is that the current hardware had been
working fine for the past 6 months. That's why I am at a loss to explain why
simply moving the video card could have started this chain of events. I did
suspect that my video card was not properly seated but have checked and
rechecked that several times.
Thanks for your response. This list has proved invaluable in
solving/preventing problems with the systems that I have built over the past
few years. I am a real novice learning as I go but it is sure fun.
Bill Beane
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Tom Turak
> Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2001 11:12 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] CMOS setup problem
>
>
> First, there are dos ( and maybe windows, the difference is 16
> bit or 32 bit
> programs) programs that will read and write the cmos memory, or
> 'registers'
> as they may sometimes be referred to. You can search for them on
> the web, I
> think by chipset and bios. All the different cmos memory may not be
> supported, the program I used in the past was written for a specific BIOS,
> to enable the non-Intel feature-sets of AMD and Cyrix cpus, which
> some BIOS
> disabled by default. What it comes down to is you will have to
> do your own
> searching, with no assurances of succeeding, then you still have to learn
> how to use it. It might not be obvious what to change since the programs
> I'm familiar with use a command-line interface, same as dos. Don't be
> surprised if all you find are programs that change the 'shadow'
> bios loaded
> into RAM, and not the actual non-volatile rom where the settings
> are stored.
> You have to run such programs every boot.
>
> Second, it appears that either
> A) your video card and your keyboard are not compatible with your bios
> default settings. Loading defaults may have started this. Or
> B) your monitor is no longer supporting multi-scan / auto sync frequencies
> for vertical and horizontal. The bios is putting the display into a mode
> that the monitor won't adjust to. CMOS used to be in basic vga/ega text
> mode, like the white text on black background that the boot messages and
> memory test use, only with a blue background. Yours sounds like it is
> running in a graphics mode, since it condenses down to a single blue band.
>
> The fix in either case is to find a monitor, or monitor graphics card
> combination, that will display the graphics mode the bios is trying to use
> to display the cmos setup screens. If you are not using a pci video card,
> you might want to consider borrowing one that is pretty generic, like a
> trident, s3, or cirrus logic chipset based card. I would try putting your
> basic, pc compatible monitor on it first.
>
> With all the spares a shop would have to offer, this seems like a classic
> example of putting one to use. A competent
> technician would at least be able to see the cmos in seconds. Whether he
> can get your current hardware to work again, I can't predict. On the down
> side, I own a 15" monitor, recent purchase and major brand, that can't
> display the windows basic vga mode of 640x480 with 256 colors.
> The display
> area collapses down to an unreadable band using about a 3rd of the screen.
> It works fine in other modes, so its possible you have a hardware problem
> something like mine.
> Tom Turak
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