G450 and Compaq Deskpro: No boot

[TomT]

I have been trying to install a new G450 into a Compaq Deskpro EP 350, in place of an ATI Rage card.

With the G450, the system refuses to boot past the Compaq intro screen. All other cards were removed from the system, the bios was updated to Compaq's most recent, but still no luck. I contacted Compaq tech support, who so far cannot come up with a solution, or cause of this problem. They have escalated the issue, and asked me to contact Matrox as well.

I tested the 450 in a Dell system, and it worked fine, but cannot get anywhere on the Compaq, not even into the bios. Here is what happens with the G450 in the system:

System starts up, monitor comes on; Compaq intro screen appears (where pressing F10 should access bios); system stays on this screen for about 30 seconds; screen goes black, monitor no longer receiving any signal. I should add that pressing F10 to access bios does not work.

Compaq tech support had me clear the CMOS a couple of times as well, but to no avail.

Putting the ATI agp card back in, the system boots normally.

G450 is brand new.

Any suggestions/advice would be greatly appreciated. This was a test to allow some of our users to run dual monitors, and if successful, we would be buying more of these cards, and installing in the same kind of sytems (Compaq EP's)

Thanks for your help,

Tom Tucker

[xortam]

Keep the G450 and get rid of the Tampaq. Never liked their proprietary approach to PCs.

[TomT]

As much as I agree with you, this is not an option. We have a lot of these sytems, and there is no way my company is going to replace them all right now.

[xortam]

Other than seeing if Tampaq can provide you with a newer unreleased MB BIOS, I don't have much to offer you, except ... go over to the IT person who made the decision to buy these P.O.C. and put the problem on them. They may be able to apply some pressure or at least you'll be able to vent your frustration.

[Taz]

Put the ATI card back in and boot into Setup, check everything is as it should be, (Compaq's by default set all cards to the same IRQ and have bus mastering disabled), change values where appropriate, shutdown and replace ATI with G450, see if it works

[TomT]

For anyone interested, the problem turned out to be the power supply: it was too low (145w). I put in a 250w and it worked fine.

[xortam]

Geesh ... on top of proprietary HW, Tampaq is now making marginal equipment? Times must be getting pretty tough for them.