Graphics debacle: Bad video card? or worse?

Today I was listening to music via rythmbox in ubuntu 9.10. The system had shut down the monitor since there was no action on computer except music playing. I jumped up when the audio was degraded, like what may happen when saving a big file, the audio gets wavy and a little staticy. When I moved mouse and hit the keyboard nothing happened, the monitor did not power back up.

Using key commands I managed to turn off music, but was not able to restart or powerdown machine, so finally, I was forced to push power button until machine powered down. When I fired it up again, it booted to grub fine, but as an OS started (Ubuntu or Win) the monitor shut off again and I was unable to access machine -blind- via keyboard. Push button power down, power up. I moved the monitor jack to the other dgital out on my video card, and when it rebooted it went further, as far as the Canonical C graphic before the monitor lost signal. After that, the machine no longer displayed the pre boot screen (where you hit delete to goto bios) and the motherboard no longer gave its single beep. Just silence and a black screen. Bummer. I've tinkered with it, reseated the graphics card, carefully of course.


The history: In August the mother board failed, and I brought it in to my trusty computer shop and suggested the power supply may be bad, and the motherboard seems to have failed. I had a replacement motherboard from an earlier RMA, so they swapped everyting out, and I was back in action. They insisted the power supply was okay. A PCI USB card had failed, perhaps killing mobo, so I replaced that. Then about 3 weeks ago the 4 year old graphics card failed, so I replaced that. Everything good, until today....

Heres the hardware: Tyan K8W w/ dual opteron 1.67's, 2gig ram, Visiontek RAdeon 9200, 2 sata drives, 1 ide drive, cd drive, dvd rw drive, floppy. The machine was originally built in 2003, and the power supply, memory and one optical drive date to original build, but everything else has been replaced.

It seems like a bad video card, but I am to inexperienced to have any concrete idea. Do any of you have a comforting word or suggestion? Power supply? Fried Mobo, again

:cry:cry:cry

 

Update: replaced video card, but still no video. Mobo is beeping on startup, unlike yesterday. And even though I can't see it, it seems to be booting to grub. It restarts with ctrl-alt-del, and it powers down with short push of power button.

I think its the power supply....... How can I find out? Given the mass of cables inside the case, replacing the power supply doesn't seem like a job for a first timer?

 

Not that anyone cares, but the power supply was fried and had to be replaced.

 

I'm am sorry you didn't get a reply, very unusual here!

I would however suggest keeping you op shorter, so more can be "bohered" to read it

 

Thanks Burrell. I will keep your advice about length in mind in future posts.

 

Thanks radiot!

I appreciate your posting the resolution. No signal to the monitor is one of the hardest things to troubleshoot from what I've seen here at MG. In 20/20 hindsight the new graphics card could have put strain on the PSU, but I guess you figured that out before me.