Booting without a video card possible??

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pharaoh
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Booting without a video card possible??

Post by pharaoh »

I have an old 2U rackmount case that I'd like to put my BP6 into for my home internet server/router. There's only 3 PCI slots on the riser card, and they're taken up with 2 nics and a scsi adapter. Is there some way to make this board boot without a video card present? Thanks in advance :D
Derek
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Post by Derek »

In the BIOS there should be an option labeled "HALT ON." Set that to "NO ERRORS" and the computer will boot up regardless of any errors (ie. no video card, no keyboard etc.)
-Derek
pharaoh
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Post by pharaoh »

Yeah I did try that first, but I still get the video error beeps so I figured it was impossible with this board. I didn't want to switch everything over to this board if I wasn't able to leave the video card out. So I thought I'd check with you guys first :wink:

Maybe I'll try to boot to a CD without video to verify that it POSTs even with the beep error.
davd_bob
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Post by davd_bob »

pharaoh wrote:Maybe I'll try to boot to a CD without video to verify that it POSTs even with the beep error.
Set it up with video for network access. Pull the video and see if you can still access it.
There are *almost* no bad BP6s. There are mostly bad caps.

No BP6s remaining
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Derek
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Post by Derek »

It will beep regardless of the "Halt On" setting. It's just letting you know what's going on :)
-Derek
kuun
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Post by kuun »

will it still boot tho?


that'd be cool to control a pc with no video card
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pharaoh
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Post by pharaoh »

I've tried this with a different Abit board that I used to use, and it didn't go on and boot after the error beeps. I ended up not needing to keep the video card out of it after all (using a different case now). But I'm thinking that if it was going to work without a video card then it wouldn't give the error beeps at all.
davd_bob
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Post by davd_bob »

I worked with a tool company in the 90's with multiple toolrooms in a chemical plant. One system was the server and others connected via 10Mb nics. One of my co-workers fried the keyboard interface on the server mobo (a 486-33) and I had to back the system up using one of the remote terminals. It was pretty cool, except for having to yell to the fool when it was time to put in the next floppy disk.

I will try, next week to boot my BP6/less video and access it via my home network. I am not experienced enough to try anything other then MS operating systems.
Pharaoh, what OS are you planing to use?
There are *almost* no bad BP6s. There are mostly bad caps.

No BP6s remaining
Athlon 2800
Sempron 2000
ViaCPU laptop with Vista.(Works great after bumping ram to 2Gig)
P-III 850@100
pharaoh
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Oct 26, 2004 12:59 pm

Post by pharaoh »

Sorry, it's been awhile since I've been back here :shock: I run Gentoo Linux for my server and desktop machines www.gentoo.org Right now my BP6 won't boot anymore and I'm hoping it's that capacitor issue since mine does have the "too small" size on it. I have the new one, just no soldering gun at the moment. Soooo anyway...

I don't think this runs without a video card. Even with "halt on no errors" set in the bios, it won't boot. So I guess my only options are to either ditch SCSI or use a NIC that has 2 ports on it so as to free up a slot for the video card. Or I could just not use the 2U case :wink:
davd_bob
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Post by davd_bob »

Im kinda foggy on whats needed here. A riser card on a BP6? :shock:

Anyway, I used to have a really short ISA vga card.
One of those might do the trick.
There are *almost* no bad BP6s. There are mostly bad caps.

No BP6s remaining
Athlon 2800
Sempron 2000
ViaCPU laptop with Vista.(Works great after bumping ram to 2Gig)
P-III 850@100
Dave Rave
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Post by Dave Rave »

pharaoh wrote:I don't think this runs without a video card. Even with "halt on no errors" set in the bios, it won't boot. So I guess my only options are to either ditch SCSI or use a NIC that has 2 ports on it so as to free up a slot for the video card. Or I could just not use the 2U case :wink:
uhm, there is an AGP slot for the video card.
and you can get not fat agp cards, might need to cut the tall metal bit off though
pharaoh
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Post by pharaoh »

Dave Rave wrote:uhm, there is an AGP slot for the video card.
and you can get not fat agp cards, might need to cut the tall metal bit off though
uhm, in the first post I mention that I'm talking about a 2U rackmount case with a riser card that only allows for 3 PCI cards.
Dave Rave
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Post by Dave Rave »

now, c'mon, that was more than one post ago.
who reads that far back....

=====
anyone know how hard it might be to unsolder the vga connector from an AGP card and re-mount it either sideways or on a cable so it can be read from the pci slot ?
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