Honestly, when I was working on my own first retro build, all I could do was purchase the cheapest compatible spare parts I could. It's remarkable how much that can help.

As for the beeps, do you know what brand of BIOS it's using? The beeps are generally standardized on a BIOS level, and you can look them up. I've used this table successfully before.

I'm window shopping for a 2004 build, liking on a Socket 754 platform. But I've been eyeballing Socket 939 as well. The centerpiece will definitely be a Geforce 6800 card, same as you. So I'll definitely be keeping an eye on how this works out for you.

The purchase cheap spare parts is indeed the likely strategy, but i am hoping to collect some feedback on what i should order first based on what others think its most likely.

As far as beeps go there are no beeps at all (Unless i hook the GPU up wrong on purpose, so the beeper itself works), i know its an AMI bios as seen in other video's and by analyzing the latest bios in notepad. But the motherboard manual specifies no beeps at all and the Deluxe version has spoken error messages. So the question here would be if it is meant to beep, if so we can perhaps rule a few things out.

With the Geforce 6800 you will definitely have to keep an eye on my progress since its a bit of a gamble card, mine turned out to be a NV48 and not the NV40 (The NV48 is a PCIe-To-AGP bridge, the NV40 is AGP) so we will have to see if that is going to work out for me in the end in Windows 98 as i plan to make this a 98/XP dual boot build from the era i love the most.

I'm confused, because you mention constant beeping when the GPU is deprived of power? But you say the motherboard has no beeps?

With respect to spare parts, I made sure I had a spare graphics card, ram and cpu on hand. Ran me about $30 for all of it. I've yet to see a motherboard cheap enough to consider a "spare" though. If you really want to try everything, swap out the CMOS battery and clear the CMOS too. If you have the vanilla A8V, it looks like the procedure for that is on page 2-18 of the manual here.

May also help to grab a PSU tester off Amazon just to make sure nothing is totally wonky there. Those are like $15.

I will clarify, the motherboard on its own provides no beeps as far as error messages go, but does have a functional beeper unless its the GPU itself providing the beep. Which i think is unlikely since the volume of the beep seems to indicate its the case's built in speaker and not a small beeper on a board.

So the GPU is capable of triggering the beeping behavior but only if it is not getting sufficient power, any other scenario triggers no beeps at all. And the motherboard manual mentions nothing of either LED flash codes or beep codes. Making me wonder if the motherboard would have produced beeps, or is being prohibited from producing beeps as i know is common in a RAM issue for example.

For retro parts i have to resort to out of the country shipping for most of them, so the costs for all 3 would likely be $30 in shipping alone which is why my first strategy was to find out more information.

So right now i have 4 different RAM modules to test with all of the same type, knowing for certain this ram is compatible should rule out the RAM.
If the RAM is indeed compatible that would leave the GPU, or CPU as likely suspects. In that case i'd need to know if the keyboard is supposed to respond to numlock and capslock presses if no GPU is installed (Rather than only flashing 3 lights on the beginning like it does now, indicating it is plugged in correctly).

Knowing the answers to those questions would help me know what to order first in my testing.

If possible, get a very low-end AGP card...something without a Fan since they tend to run cool and are usually bulletproof.

I know that you looked it up at the time, but since this board doesn't support Athlon 64 X2s without a moderately late BIOS update, I'd recommend getting an early Athlon 64 that's got "All" in the "Validated since BIOS" column.

https://www.asus.com/us/supportonly/A8V/HelpDesk_CPU/

Since you remember checking it out, I'm thinking GPU->Motherboard->CPU

Thanks for the help so far guys, i have also managed to translate a chinese version of a troubleshooting manual and it does indeed have functioning error code beeps although the manual does not say much more than that. I also found an official compatibility listing of the ram, indicating the ram is not going to be the issue since its listed as compatible and i tried 4 different modules.

Leaves us with the Motherboard, GPU and CPU as likely cases. The motherboard should be functional at least when it was sold to me, but did not have the last bios (One of the middle versions).

I have just bought a AMD ATHLON 64 3000+ - ADA3000DIK4BI to test with, ill keep you posted once it arrives.
If it still fails ill consider to buy a S3 Trio64 for testing as i think its quite a neat little early MS-Dos / 98 card and i can get them quite cheap.

Let me know in case that is a bad idea and i should get a AGP test card instead.

Only reason I'd get an AGP card is for the additional troubleshooting step of making sure the AGP slot on the mobo is functional, versus the PCI slot I'm assuming the S3 card uses. But if the S3 is cheap and available and an AGP spare isn't, needs must you know? I'm not sure how likely a malfunctioning AGP slot even is. I'm sure it's a thing that's happened someone. Step one is getting a POST regardless.

Good luck!

I'd recommend something like a GeForce2 MX or GeForce4 MX. They're compatible with practically everything and are dirt cheap.

henk717 wrote on 2020-12-10, 17:17:

- A constant loud beep with no interruptions, indicating the GPU is detected and faulty.

Please confirm that the loud beep comes from the speaker connected to the motherboard. In all cases where I encountered this beep, its source was the small beeper on the video card (to warn about external power not connected).
Other than that, it's really hard to diagnose your problem without some spare parts or a cheap POST diagnostics card.

Are any of the capacitors on the motherboard bulging at all?

Here is an update on the project answering everyone's questions.

Can you confirm the PC beeper was the one beeping and not the card itself?
Did further testing with the card and the speaker unplugged and its still beeping, so the beep is now confirmed to be the GPU and not the motherboard beeper.

Testing with another GPU
I didn't manage to find any Geforce cards local to me, but i did find a Trio64 in my local area so its the card i went with in the end despite it being PCI.
No difference with the Trio64, still no screen or beeps.
This also rules out the AGP slot itself, and it allows me to test the Trio64 in my other newer system if need be.

Are the capacitors buldging / in good shape?
They look fine to me, but here is a photo of the board before we put it in the case i missed something.

Right now i am waiting for the new CPU to arrive somewhere this week so i can continue testing.

A couple of things to try...

Try holding down the DELETE key, before you power on and keep it pressed.

Put only one stick of RAM in and put it in one of the black slots.

See if it'll come to life.

The machine has come to life!

We already tried the RAM one by one, resetting the CMOS, etc to no avail today.
So this time we tried checking the CPU without its cooler to see if the CPU would get warm, when suddenly the GPU jumped to life and it booted.
After another time of adjusting both the CPU and its cooler it stayed in its functional state, so despite being firmly locked in the socket and an earlier attempt of checking / reseating it was a CPU socketing issue after all, with the third time being the charm.

I only had a quick run off some bootable Windows PE environments and a quick run of MS-Dos, so its to early to tell what the driver support will be like later on.
But i can tell Namrok that so far the 6800GT has been giving me a great VGA signal and has been detected by HWiNFO as a NV40 chip, despite product specification saying NV48.

Once my benchmarks, experimentation and OS installations have come to a conclusion i plan to make a showcase post for this build and all i managed to do with it in which ill try and detail the 6800GT compatibility further.

Now that the machine boots the initial results are very promising, i wasn't able to detect any IRQ conflicts or other stability issues yet.
Tomorrow ill make sure with a family member that i can safely wipe the old drive of her data and begin installing.

Many thanks to everyone who helped me with advise in the topic!

Congrats! That's heartening to hear!

henk717 wrote on 2020-12-12, 01:42:

the 6800GT has been giving me a great VGA signal and has been detected by HWiNFO as a NV40 chip, despite product specification saying NV48.

Which product spec? https://vintage3d.org/dbn.php#sthash.VE9XlzHm.MZ0GgmtB.dpbs says it's an NV40 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_6_series says NV40/NV45/NV48

This one : https://www.gpuzoo.com/GPU-GIGABYTE/GeForce_6 … 68T256DH-N.html (The seller mistakenly added a NX instead of N, so its also possible i did not actually get the -n version and he made a mistake there to) but gpuzoo lists both as nv48.

Back then I get the impression that the actual chip used was different for different makers who used the same 6800 GT name. What is the full PCI device ID and NVidia Chipset ID.

If you post the Menu->Machine->GPU Info screen from my SIV utility I could comment further.

110DE:00F9=NV40 [GeForce 6800 GT/GTO/Ultra]
210DE:00F9:1043:0334=NV43 [GeForce 6800]
310DE:00F9:1043:0338=NV43 [GeForce 6800]
410DE:00F9:107D:2A02=NV43 [GeForce 6800] [WinFast PX6800GT]
510DE:00F9:10DE:00F9=NV40 [GeForce 6800 GT]
610DE:00F9:1682:2120=NV43 [GeForce 6800 GT PCIe]