Hi Paul,

Paul wrote:

Jiggling a video card in its AGP slot is very dangerous. The
faceplate should have the screw installed, to keep the card in
place. If the motherboard has a latch, to hold the "heel" of the
card, that should be engaged also. That helps to prevent accidents.

The jiggling is done with the power off as the continuous beeping
problem always seems to be at bootup. Now and then I get
freezes/reboots and maybe the cause is the graphics card?

The screw is installed and the latch auto-engages once the card is
slotted in.

Would you say this continuous beeping (and going away once the
card/power connectors are moved around) was a sign the card was dying
anyway? I am trying to be optimistic about it and tell myself "It was
dying anyway..."

Chances are, the wrong pins in the socket made contact with the
connector on the video card when the card was bumped. That might
have destroyed the video card.

There don't seem to be any burnt components on the card, etc. Is there
any way for me to definitively check if the card is salvageable? Now
that I'm in my final year at uni my savings are low and I would really
like to avoid buying another graphics card if I can.

I've also checked Sapphire's website for their warranty durations - do
you know how long they last? I bought this card around October 2003.

If a high voltage, like the +12V, were to make its way all the
way to the output drivers (which would seem unlikely), I suppose
it could go down the cable and blow the input stage on the monitor.
Anything is possible.

The wierd part is that the monitor was on a different comp. I don't get
how the monitor suddenly stopped working at the same time today either.
I'm so incredulous about the string of disasters today...I've been
spending the whole day jiggling cables in very cramped spaces and
taking out/pushing in AGP cards it is not funny!

You can try buying another VGA to separate output video cable,
but my guess would be the input stage on the LCD monitor has
been affected. Buying the cable is most likely a waste of time,
but considering the cost of another monitor, I suppose if the
cable is cheap enough, the experiment is worthwhile.

Yeah thanks. I'll be buying a new cable to test it.

I really hate to buy a new AGP graphics card for my ok-ish AMD XP 2500+
PC, especially considering how I'd basically be buying an obsolete card
as things are going PCI-e now.

Search keywords would be VGA, RGBHV, BNC.

http://www.digitalconnection.com/Pro...les/eehd5b.asp

This pinout for VGA shows pin 9 is [Key]. Meaning the pin
may be missing. Wikipedia lists pin 9 as "No connect".

http://pinouts.ws/vga-cable-pinout.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VGA_connector (diagram)

HTH,
Paul

Yes, thanks, it was very helpful Paul.