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TV Card problems

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First post, by j'ordos

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Hi all, not sure if this is the right forum, but it IS an old PC.
I just got a cheap TV tuner card from someone, which I wanted to try on my p200MMX PC (the only one I have available ATM). After inserting the card and starting the PC however I only got a blank screen. The PC started (HD & fan activity) and the monitor got signal, but no image appeared and I think there also was no POST beep.
So I started pulling out PCI cards (a network and sound card) and putting the TV card on a different slot (the only one available was a shared PCI/ISA slot which I figured might cause problems) but the only thing that happened was that sometimes the monitor wouldn't get signal at all.
My main GFX card is a Ati 3D Rage II, also a PCI card. Maybe the Bios gets confused and insists on using the TV card as video output? There's no AGP or VLB slot on my motherboard (a DFI 586ITXD revB, intel 430TX chipset). The TV card has CTX918 V2 written on it, using a Phillips 7134 chipset and has a an integrated modem.
Anyone an idea? Also, would the PC even be able to handle TV input? (p200 MMX with 256MB ram)

Reply 1 of 7, by leileilol

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I remember Rage Pros being incompatible with WinTV tuners, and yours isn't WinTV (you'd have BT878 instead) so maybe that little tidbit could shed some light.

Did you try DScaler?

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long live PCem

Reply 2 of 7, by j'ordos

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I guess it's quite likely a hardware conflict, unfortunately I don't have another PCI graphics card so I can't test it. Is there anything else that could be done? (manually assigning IRQs in the BIOS for example)

Reply 3 of 7, by Jorpho

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Was this card previously working for the someone from whom you got it?

j'ordos wrote:

Also, would the PC even be able to handle TV input? (p200 MMX with 256MB ram)

If I'm not mistaken, TV input is handled independently of your system RAM or CPU. The tricky part would be if you actually wanted to record the input stream to disk.

Reply 4 of 7, by j'ordos

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No the TV card wasnt tested before I bought it. Could a defect in a PCI card cause a system to stop booting? Anyway next week I should be able to test it in a different, slightly newer system

Reply 5 of 7, by leileilol

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j'ordos wrote:

Could a defect in a PCI card cause a system to stop booting?

Yes. Even a halfway plugged rca wire into the TV card can do it

Reply 6 of 7, by j'ordos

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Ouch that's bad news! Tomorrow I can get my new pIII motherboard, I'll give it a go in that system and then I'll know soon enough wether or not I've been ripped off 😀

Reply 7 of 7, by j'ordos

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Using the pIII motherboard my PC booted with the TV card (using the same gfx card & other PCI cards). Haven't tried the card yet (need to find software for it) but at least that's good news 😀
On a completely unrelated note, does anyone know how/where I might be able to get an SBLINK cable? The pIII board supports it and I have a waveforce 192 yamaha card which also supports it, but I have no idea where one would be able to get such a cable or even what it looks like.