New Via Soltek SL-85DRV3 mobo wont boot monitor....

[Job]

I fired a new Via PX266 mobo today. This new mobo has the VT8753 North Bridge and VT8233 South Bridge and onboard Promise RAID Lite. It think its a rebadged Soltek SL-85DRV3
Here's a review at lostcircuits.com

http://www.lostcircuits.com/motherboard/sl_85drv3/3.shtml

Its loaded with 2x256 MB of PC2100 Kingston DDR in slots 1 and 2 and no other peripherals - I have the RAID jumpered out at the moment. I've installed a PIV 1.6A northwood.

I plugged in a 16MB dual head Matrox G400 Max and booted - but no monitor when it fires up after the BIOS beep.

It seems to boot okay as the boot System boot Floppy goes through the motions of reading and loading to RAM - however the monitor doesnt kick in. Cant even see the BIOS boot.

I exchanged cards with my 8MB G200 Mystique which was working in my present PC for the past few years and still no result.

Strangely enough it seems to be mucking with the BIOS on the vid card as now my old 'puter (after I put the G200 back in) is not booting the monitor either until I get to the Window's
password screen. I guess if I had a full OS installed on this new PC - then that would also may be the case.

I'm using a "Ghost" HD copy of my old PC on a 15GB IBMGXP75 to launch the new one and of course all the old settings are installed - so it could be asking "new hardware" stuff and not getting to this password stage and hence no screen on the new 'puter. Same if I use a system floppy to boot from as mentioned above.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Follow this thread for a few replies I have so far....

http://www.lostcircuits.com/discus/messages/13/2205.html?1026220260

TIA anyone.....

[The PIT]

Well it seems to be corrupting the bios of the video cards which suggest either incorrect settings on the motherboard or a faulty motherboard.
Clear the motherboard bios and load safe defaults. However since graphics cards bios seems to bem messed up you're going to need to use the bios recover utility from the matrox website.
Is the motherboard setup a totally jumperless one if it isn't you may have to set some jumpers so the board can run correctly.

[Job]

Success....

Success!!!.....
Not sure yet, but I did a couple of things at once.
1. I re flashed the BIOS on my vid card - no go - same problem....
2. I changed some jumpers;
a) the RAID jumper to intitialise
b) the APCM to enable and
c) flashed the CMOS

Boot up no problems

Reflashing the BIOS on my video card got me back up to normal on my old computer too after the vid card had beenaffected by the new board.

My bet's on the CMOS settings of the new mobo. They must have somehow - changed my video card BIOS (didnt think this was possible) and after flashing and re BIOS'ing my vid card and falshing the cMOS back to factory defaults - all is well....

Now all I gotta do is get a new handle (-Celstk855) after I get this 1.6A sucker to 2.1GB.
Will arctic silver make that much of a difference to normal generic thermal paste?

[The PIT]

I had a motherboard that used to currupt my G400 and G550 bios's. Thast now gone and they're happily working away one at work and the other in my server machine at home.

[Technoid]

Arctic Silver gives a BIG difference compared to standard paste....