the vynsane asylum

Fuckin moron. I thought virgins were good at computer stuff.

Well, moron or not, this baby's passed the first test. I've got the motherboard, CPU and ram stick installed - and when I powered the bitch up, on came the fans and lights just like it's supposed. Fuck I'm smart.

Even a blind squirrel JJ........

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by jjreason</i>
<br />Well, moron or not, this baby's passed the first test. I've got the motherboard, CPU and ram stick installed - and when I powered the bitch up, on came the fans and lights just like it's supposed. Fuck I'm smart.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></font id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

no vid card yet, though? does it have on-board video that you could hook the monitor up to? you want to make sure it's getting to BIOS.

Copy that. It looks like I could hook the monitor up through the "old style" connection... but I haven't done that. I need a video card and the DVI cable, then I'll be good to go. The next chapter in my dummy guide is going to deal with that methinks.

i would hook up the old monitor just to make sure. and make sure it's acutally a monitor connection - sometimes they have two serial ports on the board instead of a serial and monitor port (also called a VGA connector, analog connector, or 15 pin D-sub. why just have one name?) anyway, the way to tell the difference is that serial ports have pins coming out of (male) them while VGA ports have holes for pins to go into (female.)

Well, JJ, you have surprised me. Kudos to you on accomplishing this task so far.

Alright, I've hit my first snag that I haven't been able to solve. I got the video card installed, hooked up the monitor (through the old cable, with the help of a DVI adaptor piece as the vid card ONLY has DVI out and the monitor only has D SUB in - stupid). I'm getting "NO SIGNAL" on the monitor, even though I believe the vid card to be in properly and all the other stuff hooked up.

Can anyone think of any reason OTHER than improper vid card installation and improper monitor to card hookups why the monitor wouldn't show the bios screen?

which monitor is this... the old CRT or the new LCD?

Ahh fuck, I was panicking like the little bitch that I am..... but I got it figured out. I was trying to use the new DVI cable that I bought, but the new monitor doesn't have an input for it (even though it's LCD), so I went to the old cable into the monitor, then used a modifier to put the old cable into the DVI out jack on the card. Didn't work, and had me thinking that the vid card was fucked. That's when I realized that I should probably just run the old cord through the old port on the vid card and straight into the monitor, which worked fine of course.

So the question this raises: even though I paid careful attention and bought a DVI vid card, LCD monitor and connection cable - am I boned if my new monitor doesn't have a DVI connection port? I already know the answer.....

does the vid card have an analog out as well? or just one DVI, nothing else? i've found that the best connection is analog to analog or digital to digital. for some reason changing a digital to analog seems worse than starting out as analog. if you only have analog in to the monitor, i would just get an analog out vid card. it's not the end of the world, DVI is better for playing games and stuff, but i've found very good analog to analog connections...

It seems to be working fine with the d-sub cable. I bought and installed a DVD/CD burner today, and tried to get Windows installed.... but the dinks that sold me Windows didn't stick the COA label back onto my copy so I'm stalled again until the place opens tomorrow. I can't wait to make my first visit here on the new PC!