Hello video card wizards, I hope you all enjoyed Back to the Future day. I have a video card problem and have pretty much run into a brick wall. Looking for info/advice.
I bought a Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 R5 (rev. 1.0) mainboard. From what I can tell, the "R5" means it is a recent revision, although I have no clue what they changed. AMD FX-4350 cpu 32 GiB ECC memory ( 4x 8GiB Kingston KVR18E13/8 ) UD5 has no onboard video. I currently have 2 video cards: card #1 = DEC card #2 = Number Nine Motion 331 S3 765 Trio64V+ 1MB PCI dated 1997 Both cards are PCI and have 1 vga d-sub on the bracket. (other machines have RS-232 consoles, some have onboard video) No video card -> unhappy beep code A. Video card #1 -> same unhappy beep code A. Video card #2 -> different unhappy beep code B. It only has 1 ps2 port. So I bought a usb mouse. It doesn't recognise ps2 keyboards (two different make/model) that work fine on other machines. The "different unhappy beep code B" from above. No keyboard at all also gives different unhappy beep code B. Bought a usb keyboard. Tried USB mouse + USB keyboard + #9/S3 video card + Jmicron 363 SATA/PATA PCIe card with PATA optical drive. No ps2 anything. Some Number Nine copyright screen appears for about a second (not long enough to read it). 12-13 seconds after reset it gives one short beep. (POST happy) A couple seconds later it runs the firmware in the Jmicron card, the text appears on the display. Then the screen goes solid blue and stays that way. The UD5 itself never puts anything on the display other than solid blue. No text, no graphics, no nuthin. Display is Dell ST2220T (1920x1080). It puts up complaints about "no vga cable" (when the FreeBSD screensaver (on current Tyan board) turns off the signal), and some sort of "I see a signal I don't understand" (probably during a transition). If it doen't receive a signal for awhile it turns the backlight off (and turns black). Therefore the solid blue must be a valid signal. Pressing delete after reset but before the beep gives no change. Should go into firmware setup, right? Hmm, maybe it does go into setup, but I just can't see any difference on the display? I have an LED dongle connected to the onboard RS-232 port. RS-232 LEDs never change (port never gets opened). Same for USB to RS-232 bridge. Tried to boot NetBSD from CD (Jmicron card) -> nothing. Left it sitting there over 10 minutes. Powered up sata drive (connected to AMD chipset port 0), reset UD5 -> nothing. (several minutes) Removed NetBSD CD, reset UD5 -> nothing. Left it sitting there about 24 hours so far. (should boot FreeBSD from sata) SO: No video card -> unhappy beep code. PS2 keyboard -> different unhappy beep code. #9/S3 video card + USB keyboard -> UD5 POST seems happy (one short beep) The #9/S3 video card can put its copyright text on the display. The Jmicron SATA/PATA card can put its text on the display. Something (I assume the UD5?) can paint the display solid blue. The UD5 never puts text on the display. So it seems to be happy with the #9/S3 video card, and can paint solid blue. The display is happy with the signal from the video card. As far as I can tell it does not boot NetBSD from CD or FreeBSD from sata. I'm not sure if it even tries. It is not obvious why this isn't working. Ideas? I am told that an earlier version of the UD5 works okay with this video card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161010 As far as I can tell, there is no FLOSS firmware for the UD5. (or pretty much any other recent board) And without a working console, probably no way to install it. So, video card experts, is there something odd about the #9/S3 video card that would explain this? Any ideas about how to get more info on what is going on? A more recent card might work better? (or might not?) A PCIe card might work better than the PCI card? (or might not?) (similar the the ps2 vs usb keyboard wierdness) I am shopping for a new video card, but cannot find one with what I want: At *least* 4K resolution (more if possible, 8K?) Fits in 1 slot (tall is ok, long is ok, wider than 1 slot is NOT ok) fanless Freesync (which unless I missed something, implies AMD & displayport) Google is of course just plain broken and insists on showing links to cards that are 2 slots wide and have fans. Clicking verbatim doesn't help. I only found a few fanless cards on newegg. None do Freesync. One nvidia "1.5 slot" (whatever that means) card claims to do "4K", but didn't specify which of several flavors of 4K. Of course newegg's search engine is wrong a lot, so maybe it missed something? I am NOT looking for some obese, power hungry, hot gpu. I have no plans to start running weather simulations or design a replacement for the Saturn V Rocket, or whatever. Current gpu sits on PCI (not PCIe) bus, has no heatsink, and is plenty fast enough. There are smartalec phones with 4K displays, so it obviously isn't the 4K framebuffer that needs multiple slots, several hundred Watts and multiple fans. The freesync thing sounds great for home theater (telecine judder sucks), but home theater doesn't need a massive gpu (or *any* gpu, really), and some unecessary gpu fan whining away would spoil the experience. It seems that AMD releases yet another batch of obese, power hungry, hot gpu cards every few days, but where are the svelte, energy efficient cards? I supposed the OGP-C card is never going to happen? _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
