8500LE 64MB won't work in older agp slot

[TechBoyJK]

my roommate has an older p3 500 with an agp slot (emachines) I tried putting my old 8500LE in and it wouldnt boot the machine, just a black screen. I tried everything, uninstalling the old card first, etc. Could it be possible that the AGP slot is an older version and simply doesn't support the 8500LE, maybe for voltage reasons?

 

[eLiu]

I thought the various AGP standards are all backwards compatible..?

Anyhow, did you test the 8500LE in a newer machine?

 

[TechBoyJK]

nope, i guess it could be possible that it got screwed up in the time I took it out of my machine and put it in the static bag and back in the box. I hope not, but possible. The only other machine in the house is my rig, and i dont feel like fussing around with it.

 

[eLiu]

Well if you don't want to try that, then see if you can borrow an ancient AGP card (like say a TNT) to find out if that AGP slot is functional or not.

It should all be backwards compatible--at least that's what I was told in a thread I opened a few months ago.

 

[apoppin]

not all older MBs support the correct voltage for the 8500.

My soyo tisu didn't (it's only about 3 years old)

(if you have to "force" it into the slot - dont!)
it'll fry the card and maybe the mb

 

[Ryoga]

Generally speaking, AGP slots are keyed to only accept AGP adapters for that particular slot configuration. It's not possible to plug in a wrong voltage adapter into a wrong voltage slot (unless emachines didn't key their slot).

http://www.ati.com/support/faq/agpchart.html

Given my experiences with eMachines, I strongly suspect your PSU cannot power everything. Do the fans spin? Do the HDD spin up?

 

[TechBoyJK]

ok,

I checked the PSU and it was definately a problem. I tried a different PSU, and even though it obviously was powering everything up this time, it still didnt' boot. So I tried the card in my machine and it worked. So its either that the card fits the slot but it still isn't the correct voltage or????

 

[TechBoyJK]

bmp?

 

[Arcanedeath]

The 8500LE is an AGP 4x card I'm willing to bet the Emachines has a 1x or 2x only slot and doesn't support the correct electrical specs to run your Agp 4X card, If I recall the 8500LE was a 1.5V only card and most older AGP slots were 3.3V only. Anyways g'luck w/ this and hope this info helps...