No love at all from my system! tried newest and oldest and several (all whql) in-between. The olny one that doesn't quit after the splash is the win default... preliminary experiment w/ x1950pro = no post at all (well, maybe... none that I can SEE =) HMMMM........ One last ditch effort/thought/idea: is it possible the AGP port itself is borked? or mebbe BIOS settings for voltage?
BTW - brief rant and kinda funny story on the adventure of my first "from scratch" machine. Don't know if there is moral to it or not, but here it is:
Had hoped that the next rig would be my own creation of hand picked elements on the enthusiast end with room to grow, and was hoping to eek out another 6months to maybe a year or two on the old faithful VAIO when she started to feel a bit sluggish around the graphics turns of tech. I figured if I started now I could stock up on cash and research and be ready to go for it with gusto, but the VAIO had other ideas and forced the issue along with her capacitor tops. Had to scramble for a replacement, but figured I might try to step up a notch at least since I would have to spend something now before I was really ready and bought a piece here and there that was top of the line (of what I could actually afford, and missed a GREAT deal on a complete and pristinely well cared for used system nearly identical to the one I'm building for fear of spending too much when I was only shopping for the Mobo back then - That'll teach me to ignore that gut feeling - sometimes I think too much).
Anyway, here we run into a major pitfall of buying used components (esp. for CHEAP on thebay...): Troubleshooting is a bit less cumbersome when you can at least make a temporary assumption that something OUGHT to be in working condition. Even though sometimes it don't, you probably have some recourse to fix it (or at least diagnose it) if you bought it new or from someplace with a warrantee. Nearly all the major players in this setup are second-hand from unknowns and pretty near dirt cheap for what they are. One talent (or recurring bit of luck) I do have is finding the steal-deals online, but sometimes you get what you pay for anyway. Ususally I would test each thing separately, but the problem is this build was so far from my old one I didn't have anything to test with that was compatible with ANY of the new(used) parts! I think the only thing I'm even 99% sure about besides the drives I already had is the OCZ ram, and I think I trust that even more than the PSU I bought brand new!
Bottom line is, I was scrambling for something I could put together NOW... That was in Septermber, and I even found the case that caught my eye in Frye's like five or six years ago brand new and cheap enough to customize it to my liking with pretty UV nifty paint and bling, but so far she's all show and no go (it DOES look cool, though; for my first case mod, I'm more than pleased...I'm delighted! Feels like "Home" when I look at it, so at least there's that, I suppose.) But you know the REAL irony?
Out of curiousity and just for the helluvit, I scavenged some capacitors off a dead AMD board that was headed for the dumpster and tried soldering them in place of the blown ones on my old faithful. They were rated the same, but a little to fat to fit in the holes and between the thinner ones on the board that weren't blown, so I ended up desoldering those and alternated them fat and skinny so the legs might be able to stretch more evenly and reach the holes. Entirely confident that the experiment is doomed to fail (they're looking sorta tilted like bad cartoon teeth after a character gets whacked in the head with a mallet) I figure what the heck, it may blow up in two hours or two weeks if it even powers on at all, but at least I can shop for the new machine online till it does, right? (I'm kinda addicted to the internet; kinda like totally.)
Would you believe the research on the parts, the purchasing of the parts, and all correspondence about the problems in putting them together properly, has all been done on the bloody dead VAIO!! She's been running 24/7 since her forced retirement nearly 5 months ago...
DOH!!