display garbage on an old computer

[frischmoutt]

TXP4 Asus Mobo w/ a K6-200, running Win98SE, w/ an USB ADSL modem, playing
the role of gateway / firewall.
I don't have the intention to modify my configuration, needing to monitor
the traffic. Changing the computer by a recent one is not an optimized
solution, I don't need power.

After 30 mn at 28°C room, the monitor began to display ASCII characters
everywhere, ending with a BSOD.

After 15 mn cooling, I rebooted. Same behaviour under DOS as well. I'm
highly suspecting the graphic adapter. A thorough visual inspection didn't
end with any issue. The capacitors aren't bulging but I can't say if they
are dry or not.

Prior to borrowing a bord to a colleague, I'd like to analyze more deeply
the situation.

Would the C-MOS be one of the reasons (the battery is a little bit above 3V)
?
What else might induce this display corruption ?

Thanks in advance

 

[Paul]

TXP4 Asus Mobo w/ a K6-200, running Win98SE, w/ an USB ADSL modem, playing
the role of gateway / firewall.
I don't have the intention to modify my configuration, needing to monitor
the traffic. Changing the computer by a recent one is not an optimized
solution, I don't need power.

After 30 mn at 28°C room, the monitor began to display ASCII characters
everywhere, ending with a BSOD.

After 15 mn cooling, I rebooted. Same behaviour under DOS as well. I'm
highly suspecting the graphic adapter. A thorough visual inspection didn't
end with any issue. The capacitors aren't bulging but I can't say if they
are dry or not.

Prior to borrowing a bord to a colleague, I'd like to analyze more deeply
the situation.

Would the C-MOS be one of the reasons (the battery is a little bit above 3V)
?
What else might induce this display corruption ?

Thanks in advance

Change graphics adapters ?

I see the board has PCI and ISA slots, so you'll likely
need a PCI adapter. I have a PCI FX5200 for such occasions.
The PCI adapter likely has its own memory on the video card,
so won't be wasting any system RAM. I think my FX5200 has
Win98 drivers, so the driver support goes back a bit.

The TXP4 doesn't have integrated graphics that I can see
in the manual.

Sometimes, a video card fails, because the cooling fan
stopped turning. Then the GPU overheats. Check the fan
of the video card, as a first step.

Paul

 

[GMAN]

TXP4 Asus Mobo w/ a K6-200, running Win98SE, w/ an USB ADSL modem, playing
the role of gateway / firewall.
I don't have the intention to modify my configuration, needing to monitor
the traffic. Changing the computer by a recent one is not an optimized
solution, I don't need power.

After 30 mn at 28°C room, the monitor began to display ASCII characters
everywhere, ending with a BSOD.

After 15 mn cooling, I rebooted. Same behaviour under DOS as well. I'm
highly suspecting the graphic adapter. A thorough visual inspection didn't
end with any issue. The capacitors aren't bulging but I can't say if they
are dry or not.

Prior to borrowing a bord to a colleague, I'd like to analyze more deeply
the situation.

Would the C-MOS be one of the reasons (the battery is a little bit above 3V)
?
What else might induce this display corruption ?

Thanks in advance

Is the fan functional on the video card?

 

[frischmoutt]

Change graphics adapters ?

I see the board has PCI and ISA slots, so you'll likely
need a PCI adapter. I have a PCI FX5200 for such occasions.
The PCI adapter likely has its own memory on the video card,
so won't be wasting any system RAM. I think my FX5200 has
Win98 drivers, so the driver support goes back a bit.

The TXP4 doesn't have integrated graphics that I can see
in the manual.

Sometimes, a video card fails, because the cooling fan
stopped turning. Then the GPU overheats. Check the fan
of the video card, as a first step.

Paul

Thanks Paul,
You're a mine of information.

This computer has been lying for years in a corner. Used 4 to 12 hrs a day
depending on the day
Sometimes it had issues win 98SE but nothing of serious.
The graphis adapter is PCI Ram equipped , no fan on it. The CPU fan has been
replaced this winter and the dust removed.

The question: May other computer parts (C-MOS, RAM, chipset, ...) induce
such a problem considering that the computer is able to boot ?
The answer might change my way to proceed with the repair.

Bye

 

[frischmoutt]

Is the fan functional on the video card?

Hi,
No fan at that time, the board has been bought in 1996 !
I also forget to mention that the computer case was always open and the
airflow around it wasn't disturbed.
The board probably died because of its age (~20000 hrs).

Before asking around for a board replacement, I'd like to focus on all the
possible causes.

Thanks

 

[Jan Alter]

Hi,
No fan at that time, the board has been bought in 1996 !
I also forget to mention that the computer case was always open and the
airflow around it wasn't disturbed.
The board probably died because of its age (~20000 hrs).

Before asking around for a board replacement, I'd like to focus on all the
possible causes.

Thanks

Have you checked temps in the cmos setup? (I would hope they're available in
the cmos setup).
Look at the caps as well on the graphics card.
My first thoughts, along with your own and Paul's, are to substitute a PCI
graphics card.
If the issue doesn't clear up with that then its possibly the mb.

 

[Paul]

Hi,
No fan at that time, the board has been bought in 1996 !
I also forget to mention that the computer case was always open and the
airflow around it wasn't disturbed.
The board probably died because of its age (~20000 hrs).

Before asking around for a board replacement, I'd like to focus on all the
possible causes.

Thanks

There were some BIOS settings, that could upset a graphics adapter.
But I thought they were associated with AGP slots, and not PCI.
For PCI, I didn't think the BIOS settings would have as much of an effect.

http://www.techarp.com/showFreeBOG.aspx?lang=0&bogno=150

All sorts of BIOS settings are documented here.

http://www.techarp.com/freebog.aspx

In the TXP4 manual, I only see "video BIOS cacheable", and I
doubt that would be the problem.

I'd try to borrow a graphics adapter first. The thing is,
if some other part of the computer was failing, it likely
wouldn't have booted at all. If you had bad system memory,
there might have been other symptoms. That leaves bad
memory on the video card perhaps, a bad GPU, or some BIOS
setting which is corrupting data sent to the video card.
Of all those choices, I'd pick the video card first. If you
have reported other software crashing, then I'd look at
system memory first, then move on to swapping out the
PCI video card.

A memory test is easy to do in any case, and one of the
advantages of running this particular program, is it runs
the screen in a 640x480 VESA mode. It would be interesting
to see if the screen corrupts, while memtest is running.

http://www.memtest.org

Some motherboards of that era, seemed to have problems with
chipset failures, due to the soldering. A guy who used to
work a lot on 440BX boards, reported losing a few and it
seemed to be the chipset was dying on them. And all
he could figure, was perhaps a soldering problem.

Before the capacitor plague, you would have predicted a
10-15 year lifespan for electrolytics, so the capacitors could
easily last for as long as the TXP4 has been around.
The "bad caps" we see now, might last for 2 years, and
might burst even if not used. But they weren't always like
that.

Paul

 

[frischmoutt]

There were some BIOS settings, that could upset a graphics adapter.
But I thought they were associated with AGP slots, and not PCI.
For PCI, I didn't think the BIOS settings would have as much of an effect.

http://www.techarp.com/showFreeBOG.aspx?lang=0&bogno=150

All sorts of BIOS settings are documented here.

http://www.techarp.com/freebog.aspx

In the TXP4 manual, I only see "video BIOS cacheable", and I
doubt that would be the problem.

I'd try to borrow a graphics adapter first. The thing is,
if some other part of the computer was failing, it likely
wouldn't have booted at all. If you had bad system memory,
there might have been other symptoms. That leaves bad
memory on the video card perhaps, a bad GPU, or some BIOS
setting which is corrupting data sent to the video card.
Of all those choices, I'd pick the video card first. If you
have reported other software crashing, then I'd look at
system memory first, then move on to swapping out the
PCI video card.

A memory test is easy to do in any case, and one of the
advantages of running this particular program, is it runs
the screen in a 640x480 VESA mode. It would be interesting
to see if the screen corrupts, while memtest is running.

http://www.memtest.org

Some motherboards of that era, seemed to have problems with
chipset failures, due to the soldering. A guy who used to
work a lot on 440BX boards, reported losing a few and it
seemed to be the chipset was dying on them. And all
he could figure, was perhaps a soldering problem.

Before the capacitor plague, you would have predicted a
10-15 year lifespan for electrolytics, so the capacitors could
easily last for as long as the TXP4 has been around.
The "bad caps" we see now, might last for 2 years, and
might burst even if not used. But they weren't always like
that.
Paul

Paul and other people who replied, thanks guys.
Replacing the board first seems to be the best approach.
Anyway I didn't realized that before but going into the BIOS conf would be
useless since the display is everything but readable!
Should be cleared 1 sec after boot starting !
I'll drop a line when fixed.

Regards