64-Bit or Bust

By Jerry Pournelle

September 20, 2004

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Troubleshooting, Part Three

The system turned on fine. I could hear the disk drives whirring. Unfortunately, that was all that happened. There was no beep or POST (Power On Self Test) code—and there was no video. It was trying to boot, and all seemed well—but no video and no POST code beeps wasn't a very good sign.

OK, first things first. The usual problem is that the AGP card isn't seated properly. Check that. In fact, change video cards, taking out the NVIDIA Personal Cinema FX 5700 and replacing it with a known-good NVIDIA card. Still no video.

Next, check the monitor. It was the new LaCie flat panel, and perhaps I wasn't feeding it properly; haul in the old reliable InterGraph monitor I have used at my experimental work station for a decade. Still no video.

OK, I thought, that's it. Nothing else I can do. No POST codes, no video, what could it be? And then I remembered.

When I bought this motherboard/CPU combo, I was offered a gigabyte of RAM for the system for another hundred dollars. Now I don't trust el cheapo memory, and I have told you at least forty times not to trust el cheapo memory, but it was such a bargain, a gigabyte for a hundred dollars—

I took out the el cheapo RAM and replaced it with a gigabyte of Kingston RAM, turned on the system, and up came the video.

The moral of this story is plain. Don't use el cheapo RAM no matter how cheap it is. Modern systems deserve good memory. Get Kingston or Crucial RAM.

Why No POST Codes?

OK, I had video. Why didn't I get POST codes? Why no beeps?

That turned out to be simple. No speaker.

For years I have built systems and in every one of them there was an on-board speaker, a tiny thing, but capable of doing the beeps for POST codes. All Intel boards have these, and so have all the others I have used including the AMD system I use upstairs in the Monk's Cell where I write fiction: Indeed, that machine not only does beeps, but talks to me in a contralto voice, saying things like "Power On Self Test Completed, now booting from operating system."

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