> So, I put everything together, crossed my fingers, and
> powered up my new box. Fans spun, and the hard disk and cdrom
> spun up, but there was absolutely no video signal. My monitor
> shows a general grayness if there's no VGA sync signal, and
> at powerup there is a brief flicker to black, but then the gray
> comes back like there's no video signal.
>
> I've tested the video card on a different box after this, and
> the card works fine. I'm also using the same monitor, so I don't
> think it's a problem with the VGA card or monitor.
Which PCI slot is the graphics card in?
> I went through the MB manual several times to see if there
> were any jumper settings I've missed, but I can't find any. I've
> also unhooked the floppy, hard disk and cdrom, to see if these could
> be interfering with the system somehow. That didn't help.
>
> I then tried setting the jumper to the fail-safe BIOS, and
> to my relief, I heard the sequence of 1-2-3 beeps that is supposed
> to happen during bootup. So, my first question is, does this indicate
> that the CPU may be okay? Because there's no video, I can't tell what's
> going on inside. Does this also indicate that the memory is okay?
Probably, that means the FSB code has been loaded and at that point it's
actually looking at the floppy for the firmware image. Have you tried
putting either AlphaBIOS (lx164nt.rom) or SRM console (lx164srm.rom) onto
a FAT floppy for this?
> My other question deals with video cards. Is there any reason
> to believe this matrox card won't work? I assume just about any vga
> card should at least work during bootup and bios initialization. Does
> anyone have any input about this?
Matrox cards work fine.
> Thirdly, the manual mentions that error messages may be sent
> out the serial port during bootup. Can I interface this with my
> other linux boxes via a null modem to try to get the messages over
> the port?
Yes you can...
> I have two other questions, too. Firstly, I was told it was
> a 533MHz CPU when I bought it, so I have the jumpers set for this
> speed. I've tried the other speed settings (466 and 600) but they
> didn't work either. Is there a way to verify the 533MHz speed?
If you remove the heatsick it should be stamped on the top (at least I
know the Samsung one's are).
> Also, there are jumpers on the MB to change the cache size
> from 2MB, but they are all 'reserved' for later options. Should I
> just assume I have the 2MB cache?
If it came as a 2 meg that it probably is a two meg. There were two
version of the LX board, LX-2 and LX-4. The later having 4MB of
cache. However....upgrading one to the other would be a difficult process!
> And is there a way to tell if the memory is okay? Basically,
> I'd like to know what the series of beeps implies is working. CPU
> and/or memory? maybe my PCI bridge is broken so hence no video?
Try it in another machine? If I remember correctly the LX uses PC100 ECC
memory DIMMs. If the memory is bad you should get 6 beeps from the
motherboard during a normal startup (aka: no FSB jumper). You may want to
try the MB with no memory and see if it produces the 6 beeps.
> Thanks alot for any and all replies. Once again, this is
> my first time using an alpha, and I've just joined this list yesterday,
> (although I've scanned through the archives) so please bear with me
> if I've breached any protocol or whatever :-)
--rdp
-- Rich Payne rpayne@alphalinux.org www.alphalinux.org
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