First post, by Baoran
I have a radeon x850 card that doesn't seem to work. It claims that the power cable isn't connected even when it isn't on the screen. When the computer is turned on and message is on the screen I decide to check the voltages from the pins of the power supply connector on the video card board. I get a spark and the power supply turns off. I don't understand how that is possible. The multimeter is set at 20V range and I touch with the black lead to one of the middle ground pins and the with the red lead I touch the pin that 12V goes to. I have done that multiple times before and measuring voltage has never caused sparks before.
The power supply didn't turn on after I removed the video card and I installed the normal video card to the system, but perhaps 10 minutes later the power supply turned back on, so perhaps there is some kind of timer after short circuit protection has been tripped or something?
Anyway, I don't know if there is any way I could try to fix the card or what could have caused the short circuit there. It is not like I was trying to measure current or anything like that and never head trouble measuring voltages with that multimeter before.
If anyone has any thoughts about this, I would really want to know what happened...