On Wed, 05 May 2004 03:28:53 GMT, "Retreatgal" wrote:

Hi

I wondered of anyone could help me here. Maybe someone else has encountered
this problem.

I am fixing an old socket 7, 550mhz pc. It currently uses a PCI video card
and I purchased a second hand AGP card. When I booted I got the 8 beeps
video card error. I went into BIOS and the primary video adapter is set for
PCI.

The questions a

Does putting in an AGP card whilst the BIOS is configured for PCI cause
these beeps? Rather than a dead AGP card.

And if I change the setting to AGP, reboot, and still get the beeps, will I
have any display happening if I put the PCI card back in but before I
reconfigure the BIOS for PCI? Or do I just get a black screen until I
source another AGP card???

Cheers
Retreatgal

Many super 7 boards were fussy about AGP video cards, moreso than other
comtemporary platforms or anything that has come after them. Often super
7 boards used Voodoo3 video because in it's agp version it lacked many agp
features and acted like a PCI card, except in the faster AGP slot. If
your card is a TNT chipset then that was a known problem, but largely
because it was a popular chipset during the super 7 era, cards coming
afterwards could have same problem but simply weren't tested in sufficient
volume.

Then there's power... different video card likely uses more power so the
question of the power suppply adequacy comes into play.


Sometimes it's not a matter of whether the bios is set to agp or PCI, but
that it does need to be reset, "clear cmos" to get the new video card to
work. 8 beeps isnt' telling, you might be best off to just reinstall the
PCI card as a 550Mhz super 7 system isn't worth the time or money to fool
with, better to just have it working with the PCI card and consider other
alternative systems if it won't perform appropriate for intended use.