PCA Forums

I'm looking for any help you can give for a what used to be a Compaq Presario 7900 series.

I'm attempting to use the motherboard which is a hybrid of the FIC SD11 as far as I can tell. Only visible difference is there are two memory slots instead of three on the 'original' version.

I've searched all over the place, including Compaq, for a manual, a BIOS update and any other information that is available with no real success.

The problem I'm having is that the system won't POST. Screen stays blank but all the fans spin up. I had a TNT2 in the AGP slot, so I swapped that for an old 4Mb PCI video card but still get the same result. IE nothing! Monitor definately works as do both video cards so I'm stuck.

Also, as it's never been used by myself, I have no OS, drivers or anything else installed yet, so to get to the BIOS would at least be a start. I also have no idea if the system was working Ok previously.

I'm using a Slot A 750Mhz Athlon and one stick of 128Mb PC100 ram. I still have the PCI graphics card installed in one of the slots along with a 20gig HDD and a floppy, but thats it as far as connected hardware is concerned. Keybd and mouse as well of course!

Anybody out there shed some light on the subject, any known issues or anything?

Thanks!!

sounds like a dead cpu possibly or vid problems...

Thanks for the quick reply Pred.

The CPU is definately OK, I have another Slot A board that confirms that.

I was thinking more along the lines of the BIOS. Maybe theres a secret Compaq 'Key' that will let you use the board only if you have the correct combination!!

OK now I'm thinking that this paricular BIOS won't support the Thunderbird Athlon which is exactly the type of CPU I have.

Has anybody else heard of this limitation?

I remember reading that certain vendors didn't issue support for the Tbird, only the 'original' Athlon with the 512k L2 cache.

Anybody know if this is the case with the Compaq version of the FIC SD11? The FIC website states support for both types as far as I can tell.