Any use for a motherboard with video slot and no onboard?

[Rio Rebel]

I have a nice socket 775 motherboard that has worked well for me, but I have finally accepted that the pci video slot is dead. No onboard video at all, not even basic vga.

I hate to throw it away - was hoping to use it for a basic file server...but have to get video somehow. Any suggestions?

 

[VirtualLarry]

PCI video card, rather than PCI-E? They are still available.

 

[Rio Rebel]

Good tip. Hard to find a pci graphics card, but if I can get one cheap, it's still a nice server board with 6 sata2 ports.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Meh. Once one part stops working, it's usually not too long before more parts stop working.

Shouldn't be hard to find a new board in FS/FT.

 

[SPBHM]

you can try using the PCIE 1x slot, at least is not as bad as PCI.

 

[piasabird]

Maybe sell the processor and upgrade to sandy or ivy assuming you have a SATA hard drive.

 

[Sheep221]

Maybe sell the processor and upgrade to sandy or ivy assuming you have a SATA hard drive.

You can still get IDE>SATA replicator card, and there are also offerings of LGA1155 boards with Floppy slot as well.If you are going to new stuff with SSD, and you don't exactly require more storage or speed for data drives, don't buy new SATA disks, get $20 for card and you are good to go. When I was building this rig I sold my 3 IDE drives and got SATAs, they are not doing anything differentely than IDE drives, waste of money.

 

[Rio Rebel]

Thanks, guys. I guess I was a little vague.
I have a main computer based on Ivy Bridge. I have a use for the processor and memory, but I still have an old C2Duo chip and a couple sticks of 1gb memory, so I was thinking I would throw together a cheap NAS. The alternative is to junk the board and forget about it...but if I can spend 10 bucks or so on an old pci card that gives me just enough video capability to configure Nas4Free, it would be worth it to utilize the parts.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[PingSpike]

As mentioned you can just stick a PCI video card in there. If you're just running it as a server or something that will work fine. If you're not picky about the card (which you might want to be, depending upon the OS used to make sure you have drivers) I don't see why it would cost much to get one.

The other alternative was also mentioned. PCI-e 1x slots (if your motherboard has them) can be used for video cards. Don't buy a 1x card though, in addition to usually having their balls cut off for no reason the price premium is absolutely ridiculous for no reason at all. Instead, but a low profile card and a 1x to 16x adapter and just ghetto mount it in there. Heck, I remember a thread where people were using the 1x slot on a server motherboard and they got things working by just cutting the back out of the 1x slot and sticking a 16x card in there. Some one else cut the extra contact off his video card with a dremel and it worked.