VOGONS


First post, by rick6

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Hi!

A while ago i bought a Geforce 6200 PCI for a Compaq Deskpro EN, Pentium III 1GHz and 512mb of ram.
Problem is when i turn on the computer, it acts like there's no video card. I power it down, try it again and it boots like a charm, so it works only on the second try, everytime. The video card works flawlessly and this symptom doesn't show on any other computer i have with this card.
I already tried a bit of everything in the bios but nothing seems to solve this. It's a minor nuisance i know but it's a nuisance nonetheless.
Any idea how to solve this please?

My 2001 gaming beast in all it's "Pentium 4 Williamate" Glory!

Reply 1 of 15, by Skyscraper

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Bad caps on the motherboard or in the PSU.

If you do not find any bad caps you could probably ignore it for now. The issue is that the power isnt getting to where its needed fast enough when you cold boot.

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Reply 2 of 15, by rick6

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Caps look perfect on either the motherboard or psu. I know that that doesn't mean they are good, but to be fair i'm a bit more inclined to some bios\board chipset incompatibility with this particular Geforce 6200 PCI.
Other pci video cards work fine, so some bios setting i'm missing here? I've tried so many things already but maybe someone here is more acquainted with these old Compaq bios and can point me something i'm missing out!

My 2001 gaming beast in all it's "Pentium 4 Williamate" Glory!

Reply 3 of 15, by alexanrs

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Have you tried this with the motherboard outside the case? I recall some time ago another member had weird issues with PCI graphics cards and it turned out to be some weird ground issue that did not happen when the PC was mounted outside the case.

Reply 4 of 15, by rick6

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No i haven't, but i guess i should give it a try because i already had some other (non graphic related) problems when it comes to the motherboard working in and out of the computer case.
The computer is quite modular and doesn't require a screw driver to remove the motherboard so i'll try it later at night.

Again, when it boots on the second try, the computer works flawlessly. The only problem seems to be about artifacting when gaming for more than a hour but that should be due to the crappy fanless cooling the video card has and the extremely little space the computer has inside for airflow.

My 2001 gaming beast in all it's "Pentium 4 Williamate" Glory!

Reply 5 of 15, by rick6

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Well that didn't help either. Also a believe that these bios for these computers are a bit bugged. There was a time today when i switched back to the onboard vga under the bios settings, and then back to the Geforce 6200 PCI and it wouldn't work. Nothing appeared on the 6200 vga output because the computer was using the onboard vga, even though it was clearly disabled in the bios and showed the Geforce 6200 PCI as the boot VGA card.

I guess i'll have to bare with this double power cycle thing in order to use this computer with this card. Quite annoying but at least it works fine under windows xp.

My 2001 gaming beast in all it's "Pentium 4 Williamate" Glory!

Reply 6 of 15, by Jorpho

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Have you tried a fresh CMOS battery? (It's a bit of a long shot.)

Reply 7 of 15, by rick6

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Jorpho wrote:

Have you tried a fresh CMOS battery? (It's a bit of a long shot.)

I'm sorry to come back at this so late, but i only got around this computer again today, and no that didn't work either 😐
I seriously this is some weird issue with the unbranded PCI 6200 and the Compaq bios. At least it starts at the second try and works quite well for what it is.

My 2001 gaming beast in all it's "Pentium 4 Williamate" Glory!

Reply 8 of 15, by mockingbird

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rick6 wrote:

Caps look perfect on either the motherboard or psu. I know that that doesn't mean they are good, but to be fair i'm a bit more inclined to some bios\board chipset incompatibility with this particular Geforce 6200 PCI.

Post pics of the caps.

mslrlv.png
(Decommissioned:)
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Reply 9 of 15, by rick6

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mockingbird wrote:
rick6 wrote:

Caps look perfect on either the motherboard or psu. I know that that doesn't mean they are good, but to be fair i'm a bit more inclined to some bios\board chipset incompatibility with this particular Geforce 6200 PCI.

Post pics of the caps.

There you go:

DSC_01621331_zps1hkyxh0p.jpg

DSC_01631332_zpsy93yupvw.jpg

DSC_01651334_zpswifwfcnw.jpg

DSC_01671336_zpsvo8vshmh.jpg

DSC_01681337_zps8fcmgslv.jpg

(power supply)
DSC_01691338_zpskcjpjcw2.jpg

and a view from the whole machine totally gutted

DSC_01711340_zpssp9owlrz.jpg

My 2001 gaming beast in all it's "Pentium 4 Williamate" Glory!

Reply 10 of 15, by meljor

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This is what EVGA states for their 6200 pci. Could be a bit much and on the safe side but it will need more power than most older pci cards.

Minimum of a 300 Watt power supply.
(Minimum recommended power supply with +12 Volt current rating of 18 Amps.)

It will probably need a little less but when your psu is a bit borderline this could be the problem. Most problems i had with graphics cards and strange behavior were power related.

asus tx97-e, 233mmx, voodoo1, s3 virge ,sb16
asus p5a, k6-3+ @ 550mhz, voodoo2 12mb sli, gf2 gts, awe32
asus p3b-f, p3-700, voodoo3 3500TV agp, awe64
asus tusl2-c, p3-S 1,4ghz, voodoo5 5500, live!
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Reply 11 of 15, by rick6

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Makes sense, the problem is that this is a proprietary power supply. Maybe there are better compaq power supplies with this type of connector. I could just try to use a regular power supply and connect the right wires to the board, at least that would tell me if this is a weak power supply type of problem.

Still it "bothers" me that the computer works flawlessly afterwards, even if playing demanding games like Painkiller or even Doom3, no freezes, blue screens or random reboot problems at all.

My 2001 gaming beast in all it's "Pentium 4 Williamate" Glory!

Reply 12 of 15, by meljor

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Does it work correctly without the drives hooked up and only 1 dimm, and no other cards ? Could give it the edge as it doen't have to deal with the ''power peak'' to start those parts up?

asus tx97-e, 233mmx, voodoo1, s3 virge ,sb16
asus p5a, k6-3+ @ 550mhz, voodoo2 12mb sli, gf2 gts, awe32
asus p3b-f, p3-700, voodoo3 3500TV agp, awe64
asus tusl2-c, p3-S 1,4ghz, voodoo5 5500, live!
asus a7n8x DL, barton cpu, 6800ultra, Voodoo3 pci, audigy1

Reply 13 of 15, by GeorgeMan

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Try with a different PSU. Time consuming I agree, but otherwise you cannot exclude the no1 part to be blamed in this type of malfuctions, the PSU. 😀

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Reply 14 of 15, by rick6

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GeorgeMan wrote:

Try with a different PSU. Time consuming I agree, but otherwise you cannot exclude the no1 part to be blamed in this type of malfuctions, the PSU. 😀

Will do, just need to get my time around it again, get a decent enough power supply and tackle the right wires down from it's socket and connect them to the board. Can't mess that up or i'll burn the board.

I'll keep this updated once it's done.

My 2001 gaming beast in all it's "Pentium 4 Williamate" Glory!

Reply 15 of 15, by mockingbird

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rick6 wrote:
GeorgeMan wrote:

Try with a different PSU. Time consuming I agree, but otherwise you cannot exclude the no1 part to be blamed in this type of malfuctions, the PSU. 😀

Will do, just need to get my time around it again, get a decent enough power supply and tackle the right wires down from it's socket and connect them to the board. Can't mess that up or i'll burn the board.

I'll keep this updated once it's done.

Your PSU isn't the problem, and you're right, the caps in it and on the motherboard are high quality, and look absolutely fine.

mslrlv.png
(Decommissioned:)
7ivtic.png