GP6-300 Power Supply, Radeon video problem

Thanks for your replies.

I'll try a different monitor and if that doesn't work I'll try a bigge
power supply.

I have a 400W ATX power supply on hand, but unfortunately, it appear
to be about 1" deeper than the Gateway 6500126 so it may not fit insid
the case. I don't recall there being much extra depth available in th
case. At least cabling it up temporarily would tell me if that is th
problem.

The Gateway supply also has a small two-conductor lead labelled P8. I
connects way up in the corner of the mobo. No similar connector i
present on my standard ATX replacement supply. Is this just for th
external fan and I don't need to worry about it?

Thanks again,
-Marty

Fireclown Wrote:
Ben Myers wrote:
-
Marty,

First, if the monitor is the one that came with the computer, i
sounds like the
monitor may be failing. Can you try another monitor?

Second, yes, why not use a standard ATX power supply? The motherboar
in the
GP6-300 is a straight generic off-the-shelf Intel board with 440L
chipset, and
the Gateway power supply is a standard one, a little light on th
wattage. But
I've seen worse: Packard Bell systems and some earlier Gateway system
with 145w
power supplies. But first, try another monitor to see what effect th
system
has under the same conditions.

If I had to place a bet on this one, I'd bet on a failing monitor..
Ben Myers
-

Ben has demonstrated his computer accumen. However, my money is on
Marty's first suspicion, the power supply. If by some miracle th
power
supply isn't browning out, I would expect an eventual failure.
However,
as Ben says, check with a different monitor first before spending any
money.

Fireclown


-
On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 17:09:47 +0000, Mart

wrote:

-
Sorry this is a long post. I hope someone will be persistent enough to
help me out.

I have been working on a friend's old Gateway 2000 GP6 (maybe G6?)
300MHz PII MMX system.

It has a problem where the video "zaps out" frequently. I say that
because the monitor literally makes a zapping sound as the screen
contents quickly collapse into a bright white spot and then it goes
black.

The video card in question is an ATI Radeon 9000 64M AGP card that was
installed by "some guy" a year or so ago because they needed to ru
two
simultaneous displays (one on the monitor and another on the s-video
output).

I have determined that after the problem occurs, the OS (Win98 first
edition) is not locked up. I can use the keyboard shortcuts to blindly
shutdown or restart the machine. However, the video will not come back
until the system is powered off/on (restart won't get it back).

The problem seems to occur when the system tries to display a lot of
white. For example, clicking maximize in a blank Internet Explorer
window will do it every time. I have also noticed that by startin
with
a small IE window and dragging it bigger and bigger, the problem will
occur when the window has almost filled the screen.

First I thought this was a software problem (drivers or something)
but
now I don't think so.

The Radeon manual says the system should have at least a 300-wat
power
supply. This system only has 200W.

However, my friend insists that they did not always have this problem.
I'm not so sure. I don't think one would really pay attention to
wheteher they were doing things full-screen and/or what the color
content of the screen was.

Therefore I theorized that maybe the power supply had weakened over
time and what used to be borderline OK had become a borderlin
failure.
Miraculously, I happened to have a brand-new replacement power suppl
of
the exact same model (6500126) which I got stuck with on a prio
repair
job. I tried the brand-new 200W supply and we still had the same
problem.

The peripherals in the machine, besides the Radeon card are 1 IS
modem
card, 1 ISA sound card, 1 HDD, 1 floppy, 1 Zip drive, 1 CDRW. These
components have all been there since before the Radeon card.

While I had the new power supply hooked up, I tried disconnecting the
Zip drive to see if that would give us the boost we needed but it did
not.

I cleaned everything out with a can of air so it should be cooling OK.
All fans appear to be fine and nothing feels hot to the touch. This
problem occurs even when the system is cold, however it may be a
little
worse when it gets hot (this is what first lead me in the direction of
power supply).

Just for a test, I replaced the hard disk with another and installed
Win98SE from scratch (did not load ATI drivers). Even in this default
state, 640x480 with MS VGA drivers, the problem occurred as soon as I
maximized Internet Explorer. To me, this test eliminates software from
my possibilities.

So what do you all think?

Could the power supply cause something like this (especially since the
Radeon doc specifically asks for 300W)? I want to believe my friend
that "it used to work fine" but I just think most people don't always
pay that much attention.

Given the power supply theory, could it be the content of the screen
(i.e. mostly white) that pushes it over the edge?

I tried different resolutions and that did not help. It occurred to me
while typing this that one thing I did NOT try was disabling the
secondary display. Do you suppose that the combined content of both
displays trying to do "all white" is what draws more current than we
have available? When we ask the video card to run both displays, will
it need more juice?

Does it take more power for a video card to display more bright
colors,
or white?

Lastly, I would like to try a beefier power supply but I am afraid to
hook up a standard ATX replacement. I've been under the impression
that
Gateway used a standard ATX connector but the pinouts may be
different.
The physical differences are obvious, but I may be able to do a little
drilling and fabricating to make a standard ATX supply fit physically.
It's just the electrical (pinout) part that scares me. I don't want to
fry my friend's machine.

If you've read this far, THANK YOU VERY MUCH IN ADVANCE!

-Marty


--
Marty-

-


--
Marty

That is the "Power supply fan control connector" on the motherboard.
Controls the power supply fan.
Jack

"Marty" wrote in message
...

Thanks for your replies.

I'll try a different monitor and if that doesn't work I'll try a bigger
power supply.

I have a 400W ATX power supply on hand, but unfortunately, it appears
to be about 1" deeper than the Gateway 6500126 so it may not fit inside
the case. I don't recall there being much extra depth available in the
case. At least cabling it up temporarily would tell me if that is the
problem.

The Gateway supply also has a small two-conductor lead labelled P8. It
connects way up in the corner of the mobo. No similar connector is
present on my standard ATX replacement supply. Is this just for the
external fan and I don't need to worry about it?

Thanks again,
-Marty

Fireclown Wrote:
Ben Myers wrote:
-
Marty,

First, if the monitor is the one that came with the computer, it
sounds like the
monitor may be failing. Can you try another monitor?

Second, yes, why not use a standard ATX power supply? The motherboard
in the
GP6-300 is a straight generic off-the-shelf Intel board with 440LX
chipset, and
the Gateway power supply is a standard one, a little light on the
wattage. But
I've seen worse: Packard Bell systems and some earlier Gateway systems
with 145w
power supplies. But first, try another monitor to see what effect the
system
has under the same conditions.

If I had to place a bet on this one, I'd bet on a failing monitor...
Ben Myers
-

Ben has demonstrated his computer accumen. However, my money is on
Marty's first suspicion, the power supply. If by some miracle the
power
supply isn't browning out, I would expect an eventual failure.
However,
as Ben says, check with a different monitor first before spending any
money.

Fireclown


-
On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 17:09:47 +0000, Marty

wrote:

-
Sorry this is a long post. I hope someone will be persistent enough to
help me out.

I have been working on a friend's old Gateway 2000 GP6 (maybe G6?)
300MHz PII MMX system.

It has a problem where the video "zaps out" frequently. I say that
because the monitor literally makes a zapping sound as the screen
contents quickly collapse into a bright white spot and then it goes
black.

The video card in question is an ATI Radeon 9000 64M AGP card that was
installed by "some guy" a year or so ago because they needed to run
two
simultaneous displays (one on the monitor and another on the s-video
output).

I have determined that after the problem occurs, the OS (Win98 first
edition) is not locked up. I can use the keyboard shortcuts to blindly
shutdown or restart the machine. However, the video will not come back
until the system is powered off/on (restart won't get it back).

The problem seems to occur when the system tries to display a lot of
white. For example, clicking maximize in a blank Internet Explorer
window will do it every time. I have also noticed that by starting
with
a small IE window and dragging it bigger and bigger, the problem will
occur when the window has almost filled the screen.

First I thought this was a software problem (drivers or something),
but
now I don't think so.

The Radeon manual says the system should have at least a 300-watt
power
supply. This system only has 200W.

However, my friend insists that they did not always have this problem.
I'm not so sure. I don't think one would really pay attention to
wheteher they were doing things full-screen and/or what the color
content of the screen was.

Therefore I theorized that maybe the power supply had weakened over
time and what used to be borderline OK had become a borderline
failure.
Miraculously, I happened to have a brand-new replacement power supply
of
the exact same model (6500126) which I got stuck with on a prior
repair
job. I tried the brand-new 200W supply and we still had the same
problem.

The peripherals in the machine, besides the Radeon card are 1 ISA
modem
card, 1 ISA sound card, 1 HDD, 1 floppy, 1 Zip drive, 1 CDRW. These
components have all been there since before the Radeon card.

While I had the new power supply hooked up, I tried disconnecting the
Zip drive to see if that would give us the boost we needed but it did
not.

I cleaned everything out with a can of air so it should be cooling OK.
All fans appear to be fine and nothing feels hot to the touch. This
problem occurs even when the system is cold, however it may be a
little
worse when it gets hot (this is what first lead me in the direction of
power supply).

Just for a test, I replaced the hard disk with another and installed
Win98SE from scratch (did not load ATI drivers). Even in this default
state, 640x480 with MS VGA drivers, the problem occurred as soon as I
maximized Internet Explorer. To me, this test eliminates software from
my possibilities.

So what do you all think?

Could the power supply cause something like this (especially since the
Radeon doc specifically asks for 300W)? I want to believe my friend
that "it used to work fine" but I just think most people don't always
pay that much attention.

Given the power supply theory, could it be the content of the screen
(i.e. mostly white) that pushes it over the edge?

I tried different resolutions and that did not help. It occurred to me
while typing this that one thing I did NOT try was disabling the
secondary display. Do you suppose that the combined content of both
displays trying to do "all white" is what draws more current than we
have available? When we ask the video card to run both displays, will
it need more juice?

Does it take more power for a video card to display more bright
colors,
or white?

Lastly, I would like to try a beefier power supply but I am afraid to
hook up a standard ATX replacement. I've been under the impression
that
Gateway used a standard ATX connector but the pinouts may be
different.
The physical differences are obvious, but I may be able to do a little
drilling and fabricating to make a standard ATX supply fit physically.
It's just the electrical (pinout) part that scares me. I don't want to
fry my friend's machine.

If you've read this far, THANK YOU VERY MUCH IN ADVANCE!

-Marty


--
Marty-

-


--
Marty

You guys were right - bad monitor.

I wasn't able to try a different monitor, but I was able to make the problem
go away by turning down the brightness. Therefore I conclude the problem is
the monitor.

Thanks for the suggestions.

-Marty



Ben Myers wrote:



Marty,

First, if the monitor is the one that came with the computer, it sounds
like the
monitor may be failing. Can you try another monitor?


Second, yes, why not use a standard ATX power supply? The motherboard in
the
GP6-300 is a straight generic off-the-shelf Intel board with 440LX
chipset, and
the Gateway power supply is a standard one, a little light on the wattage.
But
I've seen worse: Packard Bell systems and some earlier Gateway systems
with 145w
power supplies. But first, try another monitor to see what effect the
system
has under the same conditions.


If I had to place a bet on this one, I'd bet on a failing monitor... Ben
Myers