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abit kr7a doesn't work without a pci card

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First post, by Nemo1985

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Stuff with socket 462 platform get curioser and curioser.

I bought a (sold as) working abit kr7a, but when I tried it I had black screen only with the debug card showing: ----.
Then I decided to use a pci card instead of the working test agp card.
Boom it started booting fine! Then i switched back to agp card and black screen again!

So I did something not advisable: I booted with both agp and pci cards, I connected the agp to the monitor, pc booted fine after complaining of no video signal. Then with the pc turned on I took off the PCI card, pushed the reset switch and the pc rebooted and worked fine with agp only card installed.

I then tried another thing: scsi card on pci slot and the agp card connected: working again.
Turn off, removed the pci card and turned on: black screen.
Yes I tested different agp videocards.

I'm using the latest available beta bios for the board but an older bios made no difference.

Any help, please?

Reply 2 of 5, by Nemo1985

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Uhm thank you, i'm quite perplexed since the faq mentions the so called stability issue, but the problem is somewhat different here, the motherboard doesn't boot without a pci card installed.

Obviously the advanced feature (sba, fastwrite) are disabled, agp is 2x and agp texture size is at the 64mb default value.

Reply 3 of 5, by Cuttoon

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My Abit KR7A never gave my that kind of crap. What AGP card are you using?

Only thing that comes to mind is the "init display first" or similar option in the bios setup, that lets you chose between AGP and PCI as primary VGA, but don't think it's that.

I like jumpers.

Reply 4 of 5, by Repo Man11

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Nemo1985 wrote on 2022-04-29, 22:35:

Uhm thank you, i'm quite perplexed since the faq mentions the so called stability issue, but the problem is somewhat different here, the motherboard doesn't boot without a pci card installed.

Obviously the advanced feature (sba, fastwrite) are disabled, agp is 2x and agp texture size is at the 64mb default value.

Have you tried changing the AGP driving control as suggested? This is from the KR7 RAID FAQ, but it sounds very similar to your issue:

"Note modifying this setting changes the signal timing to the graphics card. If you get it wrong, the graphics card won't boot, and you'll be left with a black screen. The only way to remedy this is to temporarily use an old PCI graphics card, change the driving control setting, and then reboot. It has no effect on the performance of the graphics card but may improve stability."

https://web.archive.org/web/20010712134051/ht … g7kr7/video.htm

"I'd rather be rich than stupid" - Jack Handey

Reply 5 of 5, by Nemo1985

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I tried with manual EA, DA settings as values as driving strenght, no changes.
I switched from the Geforce 2 mx400 to a radeon 9000, no changes.
Apparently the quirk is: is there any pci card installed? Yes then the system boots.
No pci cards installed? The system shows no sign of life other than getting power and fans spinning.

My Abit KR7A never gave my that kind of crap. What AGP card are you using?

Only thing that comes to mind is the "init display first" or similar option in the bios setup, that lets you chose between AGP and PCI as primary VGA, but don't think it's that.

You are right, the init display first doesn't matter, or at least it matter only when I use both agp and pci card to decide where the video signal is sent.

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