A30P no output on VGA

[Neil]

Hi folks,

Just got an A30P in with what I thought was a bad CCFL. The LCD does NOT light up, but I can read the BIOS screens when shining a fluorescent lamp on the panel. But, the strange thing (to me anyway) is that there is NO output on the external VGA connector.

I have not yet had the time to trouble shoot, or swap any parts around, but would like any insight you guys can give on what I need to be looking for. So what'd'ya think?

[Harryc]

Neil, with the external monitor attached have you tried to switch to it via the FN-F7 key combo? Try it repeatedly.

[Neil]

Sure have, Harry. The Fn+F7 combo will shut off the LCD, but the external never displays anything.

[Harryc]

Have you tried the same thing through a dock?

[Neil]

Not yet. Good suggestion, I had not thought about trying that. Maybe later tonight. I'll put it on the dock and see what happens.

OK...I am now getting output to the external monitor through the dock. So what?, maybe a fault on the I/O board, or just a loose jumper...I'll have to do some more digging around later...

[ajkula66]

Try removing the keyboard bezel after playing with the "sleep" button for a bit. If you're lucky, that's going to be your culprit.

I don't want to go into the other options until we've heard what results this one brought...because they're not going to make you happy whatsoever.

Good luck.

[Neil]

Update: I finally got around to working with this machine a little more. Swapped out the LCD panel today, with one that has a working CCFL. Booted up BrowserLinux, and I am using the A30P right now to write this. But, alas, all is not well.

Still no output on the external port. The "sleep" button is not the problem. So, George, looks like the "other options" you wrote about are about to come into play. It's not going to make me too unhappy, though. This machine was never meant to be anything more than a parts machine. I just want to determine which "parts" are good and which are not. And have this need to trouble shoot and try to fix things if possible.

So, it looks like we have a graphics adapter problem, because although the IBM splash and the BIOS display fine, I could not get Xorg to display at all on the LCD panel (I tried every resolution from 640X480 on up to the panels native rez. I'm using VESA right now, which will display up to 1280X1024, but will not display the panel's native resolution of 1600X1200. The panel lights up at higher resolutions, but nothing gets rendered. On the dock Xorg will render up to the limits of my old CRT monitor, but that's only 1024X768, so not much of a test.

Now I have the dilema of deciding whether to salvage a few parts from here, or try and find a use for a semi-functional A30P.

[ajkula66]

Try to get the machine really hot, shut it off and then turn on again. Repeat this five or so times in a row.

Are you now getting "funk" in the splash screen and BIOS or not?

[Neil]

What would be a good way to get the machine really hot?

I searched for GPU stress test software, and while I found some, they seem to require directX or GL processing, which doesn't seem to work on this machine. Guess I could run a CPU stress test, but would that really help isolate my problem?

Just kind of thinking out loud here. I'll be playing around a little more with it this evening.

[Harryc]

How about looping the PC-Doctor video tests?

[ajkula66]

I'm with Harry...PC Doctor is the way to go.

Benchmark the system ten times in a row, run VRAM and ATi tests twenty times in a row, then shut it down...

[Neil]

First, thanks for the reminder about PC-Doctor. I have, of course, used PCDR before and don't know why I didn't think of it this time.

Anyway, ran the benchmark ten times, and the video tests, twenty. Surprisingly it passed all the video tests. Shut down, and on reboot, the IBM splash screen looked fine. Since my last post, I have temporarily installed Windows XP, and XP behaves very much like Xorg and VESA in Linux. Using the standard graphics driver in XP, I can run a desktop resolution up to 1280X1024 but not the full 1600X1200. But, if I enable the Radeon driver, as XP boots, after the XP splash screen, the display go dark, then lights up, but still blank. Then I have to shut down blind (something I have no trouble doing since I've done it so many times), boot into Safe Mode and disable the Radeon driver to boot back to the desktop with the standard graphics driver.

Strange thing is that I have an A22P that behaved much the same way a couple of years ago. I destroyed the A22P motherboard trying to fix the problem, and have always wished I had just left well enough alone. This A30P is actually somewhat useful as is for some things.

So, what do you guys think? What's the next step?

[ajkula66]

Ha...I was willing to bet on corrupt VRAM which these machines are infamous for, but would've lost that one most likely.

Curiosity is now killing this old cat...install Everest and let us know how much VRAM it reports, would you?

Until then, I'd be calling this a weird (for an A3x unit anyway) GPU failure...

What to do? I'd ride it in SXGA until it dies...

[Neil]

Well, Everest reports 32MB VRAM, so.... guess it just is what it is and I'll run it like this for something.