I've recently finished building a secondary computer from mostly spare parts that I had leftover from previous upgrades, but I ran into a few problems while booting it up. At first I was only getting a blank screen (although everything on the tower seemed to start up properly). I tried with a different monitor, and sure enough I was able to see the BIOS, but everything looked "wierd". On the graphic card screen, some of the text was garbled, and there were upside-down question marks all around. It proceeded beyond that, but on the memory test, and drive detection, there were short green lines and dots in the backround like this: | |.
I currently don't have a floppy drive installed, as that was one of the parts I didn't have an extra of (I plan to pick one up fairly soon) so I would get a message saying "Floppy disk(s) fail (40). Pressing F1 to continue, I would get a message "Disk Boot Failure, Insert System Disk and press enter".
The system specs are:
400mhz celeron processor
ECS P6BAP-A+ Motherboard
3GB hardrive (not sure what make,but it's fairly new, hasn't been used)
Vodoo 3 2000 video card
64MB RAM

I'm going to see how far I get once I put in a new floppy drive, but the screen glitches really bother me. Any help or Information I could get would be greatly appreciated.

Make sure the video card is securely seated. If that's ok, try another video card.
Did all of the spare parts work in other systems?
Is the 2nd monitor that you used a good one?

Yes, all of the other parts worked in other systems. The video card was actually fine on that same motherboard last time it was used. The monitor is the one on my main computer, so I know that isn't the problem. I'll check to make sure the video card is seated properly, although I was pretty sure that I had it in firmly.

Okay, i've finally gotten back to working on the comp. The video card is firmly in place, so that shouldnt be the problem. I did notice that the BIOS shows a multimedia device with the same IRQ as something else (although the garbled text prevents me from reading what it is). Also, the motherboards manual mentions that it has a built-in VGA graphics system. Could the problem be some sort of conflict? if so, how would I go about fixing it?

Well you can look on the back of the computer for a video connector and hook the monitor cable up to it and see if you get a good picture. If you don't pull your video card and try again. If you do then use that to disable the onboard video before you try connecting your video card again.




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mjc
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Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.