I think the problem is the Gateway keyboard. :-D
Just kidding. Seriously now...
Quote:
Originally posted by Skarn
bad power supply? nope fans still getting power when the screen is black...
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Yeah, but your fans only run on 12V power. Your power supply can be supplying impure power on the other lines (5V and 3.3V) while this is happening. That could certainly explain some of the other problems you're having, since the motherboard uses 3.3V for both the RAM and the PCI slots. As for AGP...I'm not sure on this, but I believe it uses both 5V and 3.3V lines.
One thing to try would be to go into the BIOS and watch the voltage ratings on VTT and Vcc and the rest. If any of them vary by +/- 0.5V, then there's a pretty good indication something *may* be wrong. It's not a guarantee. The system I'm running right now says that the -12V line is running at almost -13V, but it's steady there, and it's not hurting anything. Try that and post anything that looks funny.
Quote:
Originally posted by Skarn
we decide to flash the cmos or something like that ... it was supposed to clear out the bios memory or something. moved the jumper powered the cpu up ... there is some weird battery error now ... my friend says something like oops shoulda read the whole thing first. power it off ... you were supposed to power down, move the jumper, then move it back, then power back up. ok we did that and the black screen kept coming back to haunt us. so we decided to flash the motherboard bios ... we went to the page of the manufacturer got the exe file needed to do the procedure. double clicked it to extract the files onto a bootable floppy ... took the floppy and booted my puter off of it .... before the floppy could get going the screen went black again... so we booted and tried again ... well we never successfully updated the bios cause it wouldn't stay on long enought to do it.
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If you boot the system while that jumper is gone, or not in the normal position, then you've opened a circuit between the battery and the BIOS chip. AC power will run the chip in absence of battery power (In fact, that's how the computer keeps that little battery charged), but if the battery's not there, then your computer will complain and tell you that you may need to replace it.
To best reset your CMOS data, turn the computer off, UNPLUG IT, and pull the jumper off. Wait for about fifteen seconds, and then put everything back to normal. Put the jumper back in its place _before_ rebooting.
Keep us posted on how things are going! Oh...and sorry I just got around to posting this. I haven't gotten the chance to visit the forums much today...Stupid Java lab!