My BSD box runs a amd 1.6 gig processor had/has a AGP video card. This machine runs as a server with the video rarely seeing the light of day. Meaning, I ssh into it almost always.
I came home today from work and found my home network down. When rebooting the bsd machine, I powered up the flat screen that is beside it and seen that I had all kinds of ascii characters appearing on the screen. This is during the both the bios boot and the os coming up. There may have been a power spike during the day(love cleveland, such a lovely power grid). The bsd machine is sitting on backup battery/upc but the monitor was not. Just a surge protector.
I plugged the monitor itself into another pc and seen that it is a clear screen with no ascii characters and clear video.
When I ripped everything apart and moved the machine to another room(girl friend was waaing about the parts all over) to work on. I found that I the video issue was more intense then previously described. Sometimes I had distorted video on the boot, sometimes I had nothing. I also found that the machine would not always boot….. It would post, but not always go through the identification of hardware.
Now…………. This is a server, it has no other purpose in life then to be that. I only ever use a monitor on this beast when I am trouble shooting problems that can not be corrected via ssh. Chuckle, like right now.
My question is…. With the possibility of a power spike and the symptoms that I see. Does this sound like a video problem???? Or something greater? I do not have the eyesight to mess with the motherboard, don’t have the knowledge either. I’m willing to have someone look at it, but I am unwilling to put a new motherboard in when I know that I will have to pay for someone to do it for me. Don’t live where I use to to have friends help.
Can anyone offer any other possibilities of what this problem might be?
Dan