My G400Max is dead :~(

[Tilsan]

Woke up this morning, turned on the puter and get 3 beeps and no signal on the screen. Turned it off last nigh when the screen was all corrupt as you get sometimes, you all would have seen it at one stage or another. You know, lines going everywhere.

Is it totally Kuput? or can it be salvaged?

Now what? What do I replace it with :~(

Cheers Till

[PXR5]

oh hey
never say die
3 beeps... hmmm, here's a link to help figure out what that means for your BIOS: Beep codes

First thing I'd do is re-seat your G400 in the AGP slot--had something like this happen once & it was just that the card had been bumped loose (whew).

---e

[Kruzin]

If reseating the card doesn't help, Matrox has a recover utility for those times when the BIOS fails. It can be downloaded from MURC or Matrox's site. Just follow the instructions in the readme file.

[Tilsan]

PX5:

3 beeps is usually video related


Kruzin:

Thanks for that, I'll give it a go, but it will not boot even boot, so can this still save it?


Tis a sad day here in the Tilsan clan today. Lest we forget. A good friend has passed away. do dodo do dodi do dodo :~(

Cheers Till

[Kruzin]

You will need to put in a PCI video card, along with the G400, and set the mobo BIOS to boot from the PCI. then you can recover the AGP cards BIOS.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

I encountered that 3 beeps POST sound too when i was using a G200 AGP. I took the card out and inserted it back. It worked... so it must have slid off the AGP Slot, just like what PXR5 have said. Besides, matrox cards are rather reliable ... so just give it a try. Good luck!

[DGhost]

Also, check to make sure the memory is inserted completely. A lot of boards with the award bios have the same error beeps for memory errors as video errors...

[Tilsan]

Alas I tried everything, but nooooo go

Stuck a voodoo 5500 coupled with my old mill2 in, until they decide to bring out something new. I'm not impressed with talking heads at all, as I quoted once before, "I've got a wife for that "

Thanks guys Till

[DGhost]

Sorry to hear it couldn't be fixed =(

[xortam]

R.M.A.

[Evildead666]

Just for information:

I had a G400 a couple of years back, and overclocked it.
It worked fine with a small fan attached to the heatsink for months.
It wouldn't accept a very high AGP bus clock (<73MHz) or overclock very well at all really.
Neither the memory or the core...

Then one day i went about some spring cleaning in my PC and took the fan off to clean it....
...and forgot to put it back on.

The computer booted a few times, and i thought it had died immediatly, but the video came on in windows.
The card would not show any DOS screens up to the windows startup screen.

An hour or so later it would not come up with the Windows screens either....
Thats when the famous beeps came in and i noticed the lacking fan.

Needless to say i didn't repeat this with my new card...G550.

Just one thing that might interest tho, i got a voodoo banshee (diamond monster fusion) AGP to run stable on an AGP clock of 99MHz...(2/3 of 150MHz; Abit BE-6 Mobo rev.1 )
it was a bit warm (very hot) but stable.

Just to say that u shouldn't clock your cards unless they actually benefit from it.

Oh, and i preferred the G400 to the 550, i actually seemed to have a better image with it (when watching films.).

[edzel]

My G400DH died today. I tested it in a different PC to be sure it was not the motherboard.

I was about to order an replacement (my card was 15 months old) and searched for some info on the differences between the G450 and the G550. That's how I found this forum (I hadn't visited for months) and the instructions on how to fix a dead card. I used an old PCI card and the Windows flashing utility and it worked.

Thanks

[Tilsan]

Perhaps I did something wrong then?

I got an old pci card, my Mill2 and stuck that in, I then created the emergency bios disk and rebooted the system and set the bios to boot from agp. The erd could not find a card to repair.

Should I try it from within windows?

Till

[Tilsan]

Well here are my results at attempting to fix my G400. I thought it was my max at first but it turns out it was one of my vanilla G400's. I have two Max's and two Vanilla's

http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/Forum8/HTML/001061.html

Read it for a laugh, I now have to figure out how to get it back to normal

Thanks all that helped out!!

Till

[DentyCracker]

Good old Haig

Haig D. for president