Buiding New PC - Not Booting

[bpp0417]

Hi All,
Hope you can help! I just purchased a Soyo - K7VTA motherboard with a AMD 1ghz processor. I assembled the PC with just memory and a video card. Al I get is a series of beeps for 3 seconds when I power it up, then it powers down.
Any thoughts???

Thanks

[a1953model]

The documentation for your mother board should tell you what the beeps mean. It is different for each bios mfg. Find out what the beeps are telling you and I'll bet you'll find your shutdown problem.
Lee

[bpp0417]

Thanks for the reply....It says that either the video card or memory is not detected. I just ordered a new memory DIMM...I'll try that.
If it's not that...looks like I need to buy a new video card!!


Originally posted by a1953model:
The documentation for your mother board should tell you what the beeps mean. It is different for each bios mfg. Find out what the beeps are telling you and I'll bet you'll find your shutdown problem.
Lee

[sleddog]

What type of video card? If it's PCI try it in a different slot -- actually, try it in every slot.

[bpp0417]

Actually it's an ISA card. It's from an old system I used to have. The system I currently have has the video built into the motherboard...so I can't use that. So I dug out an old PC. I have a Voodoo2 card, but if I remember right...you need a 2D card to go with it. Do you think that could be the problem?? Do I need to have an AGP or PCI card?? Is it not recognizing the ISA card?

Originally posted by sleddog:
What type of video card? If it's PCI try it in a different slot -- actually, try it in every slot.

[sleddog]

Doubt it's the problem. Should boot with the ISA card, provided it's good -- can you test the card in another machine and confirm its okay?

[bpp0417]

Well...I went out and bought an AGP card and installed it. Still getting the same beeps. So it must be the memory. I've ordered a 128 MB DIMM...which should arrive any day now. I'll try that. The manual says that the beeps indicate the memory isn't seated properly....although I have a stick in there. If the memory wasn't compatible, would the same problem occur...or would it boot and give me 'other' problems???

Originally posted by sleddog:
Doubt it's the problem. Should boot with the ISA card, provided it's good -- can you test the card in another machine and confirm its okay?

[sleddog]

You probably checked this but anyway...
If you have a single stick of memory in the machine, it probably needs to be in the first DIMM slot. If there are, say, 3 slots, are you sure its in slot #1 and not #3?

[cromwell]

Slot #1 is usually the closest to the CPU

[Jumby]

And make sure they are the correct MHz speed. 66, 100 or 133.

[bpp0417]

Well,
I think I have a bad motherboard. I just figured out that the board has an auto shutdown if it doesn't detect the CPU fan. The fan works when tested on another PC. but doesn't come on in either of the CPU fan sockets. Plus it doesn't detect any memory even though I have 3 sticks in there. You can get around the auto shutdown by holding the INSERT key...which I did. It doesn't shut down, but still doesn't give me anything on the video display. Just seems that there;s too many things happening for it not to be the motherboard.
Any thoughts???

[bpp0417]

Thanks all...it was a bad motherboard!!!